'A good number of those who describe themselves as sociologists or economists are social engineers whose function is to supply recipes to the leaders of private companies or government departments. They offer a rationalisation of the practical or semi-theoretical understanding that the members of the dominant class have of the social world. The governing élite today needs a science capable of (in both senses) rationalising its domination, capable both of reinforcing the mechanisms that sustain it and of legitimising it. It goes without saying that the limits of this science are set by its practical functions: neither for social engineers nor for the managers of the economy can it perform a radical questioning.'
...
'For you, situating intellectuals means pointing out that they belong to the dominant class and derive profits from their position, even if those profits are not strictly economic?'
'Contrary to the illusion of the 'free-floating intellectual', which is in a sense the professional ideology of intellectuals, I point out that, as holders of cultural capital, intellectuals are a (dominated) fraction of the dominant class and that a number of stances they take up, in politics for example, derive from the ambiguity of their dominated-dominant position. I also point out that having a place in the intellectual field implies specific interests, not only, in Paris as in Moscow, Academy posts or publishing contracts, university positions or book reviewing, but also signs of recognition and gratifications that are often imperceptible for someone who is not part of that world but which expose intellectuals to all sorts of subtle constraints and censorship...'
Pierre Bourdieu
