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.

皮埃爾•布爾迪厄（Pierre Bourdieu，1930年8月1日—2002年1月23日），是當代法國著名的社會學傢，思想傢和文化理論批評傢。1954年他畢業於巴黎高等師範學院，1956年應徵入伍，在阿爾及利亞服役兩年。1964年迴到巴黎，於1975年創辦《社會科學研究行動》（Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales）。1982年成為法蘭西學院唯一的社會學教授，社會科學高等學院（Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales）學術總監。主要著作有《實踐理論大綱》《藝術的規則》《帕斯卡式的沉思》《男性統治》《區隔》等。