Contribution to the comparison of the theories of Bourdieu and Luhmann

Abstract

On the level of overall social theory thinking, there have been only very few thinkers in the past decades who have conceived a theory that contain detailed analysis in terms of several social spheres. The French Pierre Bourdieu and the German Niklas Luhmann are definitely two of the few, and their impact can be shown, albeit the approach applied is different in each scientists' community, all over the world in social science analyses. Having dug himself into the works of both sociologists, one will soon reveal that these two theories show similarities in several respects, and also find points of departure totally different from each other. This paper attempts to describe some of the differences and some of the similarities between the theories of Luhmann and Bourdieu.