The bachelors' ball : the crisis of peasant society in Béarn / Pierre Bourdieu ; translated by Richard Nice.

Articles previously published in 1962, 1972, and 1989.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 160-163) and index.

Bachelorhood and the peasant condition -- The system of matrimonial exchanges in traditional peasant society -- Internal contradictions and anomy -- The opposition between the bourg and the hameaux -- The peasant and his body -- Conclusion -- Bibliographical notes -- Changes in population, 1836-1954 -- Dialogue between a villager and a peasant -- Another dialogue between a villager and a bachelor -- The exemplary tale of a younger son from a modest family -- Excessive maternal authority and bachelorhood -- An attempt to generalize : bachelorhood in 16 rural cantons in Brittany.

Over the past four decades, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu produced one of the most imaginative and subtle bodies of social theory of the postwar era. When he died in 2002, he was considered to be the most influential sociologist in the world and a thinker on a par with Foucault and Lévi-Straussa public intellectual as important to his generation as Sartre was to his. Bourdieus final book, The Bachelors Ball, sees him return to Béarn, the region where he grew up, to examine the gender dynamics of rural France. This personal connection adds poignancy to Bourdieus ethnographic account of the way the influence of urban values has precipitated a crisis for male peasants. Tied to the land through inheritance, these bachelors find themselves with little to offer the women of Béarn who, like the young Bourdieu himself, abandon the country for the city in droves.

Translated from the French. Original title published as: Bal des célibataires.