Life of Property

Timothy Jenkins was trained in anthropology at the Oxford Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology. In 1992, he was appointed a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and in 2001, became an Assistant Director of Research (ADR) at the University of Cambridge; he currently holds these two posts. His interests are in European, particularly British and French, ethnography, as well as anthropological theory and the history of ideas. Among his publications is Religion in English Everyday Life: an Ethnographic Approach (Berghahn Books, 1999).

• Preface and AcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter 1. The Discovery of the Pyrenean FamilyChapter 2. Continuity over Time: Patterns of Land InheritanceChapter 3. The Contemporary Béarnais Farming FamilyChapter 4. Local Politics and Land UseChapter 5. Marriage, Inheritance and Social Change in a Gascon Novel: Simin Palay’s Los tres gojats de BòrdavielhaChapter 6. Bourdieu’s Béarnais EthnographyChapter 7. The Life of PropertyBibliographyIndex

“[The author’s] insights into Bourdieu’s project are intriguing and original, comprising, in some respects, the makings of an ‘anthropological biography’ of this influential figure… the work is a welcome addition to the literature on rural Europe, and France in particular, and demonstrates the ongoing potential of European ethnography for illuminating anthropology’s “unconscious” dispositions and Western intellectual mannerisms. It will be of interest to historians and sociologists, no doubt, as well as anthropologists.”  ·  Anthropos"Jenkins’s work articulates a rich theoretical framework that informs the study of regional identity and the place and motivations of rural actors in provincial modernization. It is intriguing to consider how this approach might be applied to other distinctive regions of France. Finally, this project’s ethnographic focus on families in late twentieth-century Béarn places it at the forefront of a growing number of historical studies of France in that period. As these works are increasingly interdisciplinary in nature, [this volume] offers a clear model that scholars can appreciate.”  ·  H France Review“Among other interesting insights, Jenkins uncovers the origin of Bourdieu’s [who grew up in Béarn] conception of habitus, and the basis for his passive vision of peasant agency as the realization of age-old routines.”  ·  JRAI“One peculiar genius of this book lies in the agile demonstration that Bourdieu’s failure to live up to his own theoretical principles instantiates a recognizably Béarnais problem—the conviction of imminent dissolution…[a] dense, complex, and richly rewarding historical anthropology.”  ·  Michael Herzfeld in The Journal of Interdisciplinary History