By analysing the work of Schutz, Gurwitsch, Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu, the book considers the historical development, influenced by social context, of competing philosophies of social science. Through detailed scrutiny of key texts, it examines the relations between phenomenology, Gestalt psychology, and empirical social science in the first half of the twentieth century, and then explores the way in which Bourdieu responded to this legacy by gradually advocating a form of reflexive social scientific investigation which would remain faithful to primary experience without disowning accumulated intellectualism. It asks whether the Bourdieu 'paradigm' retains value beyond the specifically French conditions of its production. It offers an analysis of the development of Bourdieu's thought and practice which constitutes an invitation to readers generally to reassess the value of the western tradition of the social function of the detached intellectual for mass democratic