Masculine domination is so anchored in our social practices and our unconscious that we hardly perceive it; it is so much in line with our expectations that we find it difficult to call into question. Pierre Bourdieu's analysis of Kabyle society provides instruments to help us understand the most concealed aspects of the relations between the sexes in our own societies, and to break the bonds of deceptive familiarity that tie us to our own tradition. Bourdieu analyzes masculine domination as a prime example of symbolic violence--the kind of gentle, invisible, pervasive violence exercised through the everyday practices of social life. To understand this form of domination we must also analyze the social mechanisms and institutions--family, school, church, and state--that transform history into nature and eternalize the arbitrary. Only in this way can we open up the possibilities for a kind of political action that can put history in motion again by neutralizing the mechanisms that have naturalized and dehistoricized the relations between the sexes. This new book by Pierre Bourdieu--which has been a bestseller in France--will be essential reading for anyone concerned with questions of gender and sexuality and with the structures that shape our social, political, and personal lives.

皮埃尔•布尔迪厄（Pierre Bourdieu，1930年8月1日—2002年1月23日），是当代法国著名的社会学家，思想家和文化理论批评家。1954年他毕业于巴黎高等师范学院，1956年应征入伍，在阿尔及利亚服役两年。1964年回到巴黎，于1975年创办《社会科学研究行动》（Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales）。1982年成为法兰西学院唯一的社会学教授，社会科学高等学院（Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales）学术总监。主要著作有《实践理论大纲》《艺术的规则》《帕斯卡式的沉思》《男性统治》《区隔》等。