The Sociology of Intellectuals

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

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2. Reflections on Patrick Baert’s The Existentialist Moment: The Rise of Sartre as a Public Intellectual

   • Simon Susen, Patrick Baert

   Pages 1-122

3. The Existentialist Moment Defended: A Reply to Simon Susen

   • Simon Susen, Patrick Baert

   Pages 123-146

4. Back Matter

   Pages 147-194

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This volume offers an unprecedented account of recent and future developments in the sociology of intellectuals. It presents a critical exchange between two leading contemporary social theorists, Patrick Baert and Simon Susen, advancing debates at the cutting edge of scholarship on the changing role of intellectuals in the increasingly interconnected societies of the twenty-first century. The discussion centres on Baert’s most recent contribution to this field of inquiry, The Existentialist Moment: The Rise of Sartre as a Public Intellectual (2015), demonstrating that it has opened up hitherto barely explored avenues for the sociological study of intellectuals. In addition, the authors provide an overview of various alternative approaches that are available for understanding the sociology of intellectuals – such as those of Pierre Bourdieu, Randall Collins, and Neil Gross. In doing so, they grapple with the question of the extent to which intellectuals can



play a constructive role in influencing social and political developments in the modern era. This insightful volume will appeal to students and scholars of the humanities and social sciences, particularly to those interested in social theory and the history of intellectual thought.

• Jean-Paul Sartre
• Pierre Bourdieu
• public intellectuals
• sociology of intellectuals
• existentialism
• positioning theory
• social theory
• Sartrean existentialism
• history of philosophy
• intellectual history
• French intellectuals
• critics
• speech act theory
• performative turn
• Pierre Bourdieu
• Intersectionality
• positioning theory
• Anna Boschetti
• field theory
• Humboldtian model

“It takes about two full intellectual generations (that is, two-thirds of a century) to establish who has an enduring reputation. Patrick Baert's The Existentialist Moment displays the insight that comes with sufficient distance from the factions of the time and their immediate followers downstream. Jean-Paul Sartre can now be seen as the ‘public intellectual’ par excellence – a concept that did not exist when Sartre broke out of a narrow Parisian circle into world-wide prominence at the end of the Second World War. This high-level debate between Simon Susen and Patrick Baert deepens the significance of social discontinuities in generating public intellectuals and, in addition, casts in perspective the conditions fostering the repudiation of public intellectuals today.” (Randall Collins, Professor of Sociology Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania, USA)

“Focused on the theoretical model deployed in Patrick Baert's superb book on Jean-Paul Sartre, this splendid little volume opens up crucial issues for the lively and growing field of the sociology of intellectual production and reception. Together with Baert's very substantial work on intellectual life in the UK, Japan and elsewhere, and Simon Susen's masterly studies of Jürgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu, Luc Boltanski and postmodernism, it constitutes a major contribution to the field.” (William Outhwaite, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Newcastle University, UK)

• Department of Sociology, City, University of London, London, United Kingdom

  Simon Susen

• Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

  Patrick Baert

Simon Susen is Reader in Sociology at City, University of London, UK. Among his recent publications are Pierre Bourdieu et la distinction sociale. Un essai philosophique (2016), The ‘Postmodern Turn’ in the Social Sciences (2015), and The Foundations of the Social: Between Critical Theory and Reflexive Sociology (2007). He is Associate Member of the Bauman Institute and, together with Bryan S. Turner, Editor of the Journal of Classical Sociology.




Patrick Baert is Professor of Social Theory at the University of Cambridge, UK. Among his recent books are The Existentialist Moment: The Rise of Sartre as a Public Intellectual (2015), Conflict in the Academy: A Study in the Sociology of Intellectuals (with Marcus Morgan, 2015), and Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (with Filipe Carreira da Silva, 2010). He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society.

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