The editors would like to thank Gabrielle Balazs, Jérôme Bourdieu, Pascale Casanova, Christophe Charle, Olivier Christin, Yvette Delsaut, Paul Lagneau-Ymonet, Gilles L’Hôte, Pierre Rimbert and Gisèle Sapiro for their valuable comments which have made it possible to clarify certain passages in the lectures, and in particular Loïc Wacquant for his close reading of the text.

Establishing the text of Pierre Bourdieu’s lectures given at the Collège de France required a number of editorial choices. These lectures form a lattice of written texts, oral commentaries and more or less improvised reflections on his own approach and on the conditions that led him to present this. The material for the lectures was a mixture of manuscript notes, extracts from special presentations and marginal notes on books and photocopies. Bourdieu’s remarks on the conditions in which his teaching was received, by a large and very varied audience in the big amphitheatre of the Collège de France,¹ show how his lectures cannot simply be reduced to the written versions of them that he left, given that they could take unexpected turns as they proceeded, depending on his perception of audience reactions.

One solution, which would have had the apparent merit of neutrality and formal fidelity to the author, would have been to publish a literal raw transcription of the whole lecture course. But reproducing the spoken word would not have been enough to preserve its properties, i.e. the whole pedagogic work conducted during each lecture. Nor was the text pronounced that of the ‘published’ version, as we have been able to verify in the case of a number of lectures whose retranscriptions had been substantially reworked, sometimes even completely reshaped, for conversion into articles published in scholarly journals. In fact, the form explicitly chosen in the lectures is closer to the logic of scientific discovery than to that of a perfectly arranged written exposition of research results.

If the editors clearly cannot substitute for the author after his demise, and write in his place the book that he would have made on the basis of his lecture course, they can try to ensure that the properties bound up with the spoken character of the exposition are preserved as far as possible – which presupposes that they should be detectable and perceived, and conversely, that the effects specific to the transcription should be reduced as far as possible. The editors have also had to bear in mind that this publication, without replacing that which the author would have conceived, has to give the work that it continues its full force and necessity. The transcription accordingly seeks to avoid two reefs, literalness and literariness. And if Bourdieu always recommended people to refer to his writings to understand what he was saying,² he also took advantage of oral delivery and the freedom of expression this afforded, vis-à-vis an audience that he knew were already familiar with his work, to raise implications and go over his line of argument and presentation.

There is a paragraph in The Weight of the World, headed ‘The risks of writing’, in which Bourdieu analyses the transition from oral discourse to written text as ‘a genuine translation or even an interpretation’.³ And he reminds his reader that ‘mere punctuation, the placing of a comma’ can ‘govern the whole meaning of a sentence’. The publication of these lectures thus seeks to reconcile two contrary but not contradictory demands: fidelity and readability. The inevitable ‘infidelities’ that are inherent to any transcription (and, more generally, to any change of medium) are undoubtedly here, as in the interviews that Bourdieu analysed in The Weight of the World, the ‘condition for true fidelity’, in his own expression.

The transcription of these lecture courses at the Collège de France respects procedures that Bourdieu himself applied when he revised those of his lectures or seminars that he went on to publish: minor stylistic corrections, tidying of awkward passages in spoken discourse (interjections, repetitions, etc.). Some obscurities and inexact constructions have been corrected. Where digressions remained within the theme being developed they have been noted by dashes; where they involved a break in the line of argument they have been placed in parentheses; and where they were too long, they have been made into a separate section. The division into sections and paragraphs, as well as subtitles, punctuation and notes giving references and cross-references, are those of the editors, likewise the subject index. The bibliographic references given in footnotes are those of Bourdieu himself, and have been completed when they gave insufficient information. Some have been added to facilitate understanding of the discourse: explanations, cross-references, implicit or explicit reference to texts that continue the reflection. The reader can also consult the list of books, articles and working documents that Bourdieu drew on throughout the course, and that has been reconstituted on the basis of his working notes and his many reading files.

Part of the material in these lectures was subsequently reworked and published by Bourdieu himself in the form of articles or chapters of books. These have in all cases been indicated. As an appendix to the lectures we reproduce the course summaries published each year in the Annuaire of the Collège de France.

These three years of lectures on the state have been selected to commence the publication of Bourdieu’s Collège de France courses because, as can be seen from the ‘position of the lectures’ at the end of the present volume,⁴ they make up an essential piece in the construction of Bourdieu’s sociology, but one rarely seen. The following volumes will complete the full publication of his lectures over the next few years, in the form of books on autonomous problematics.