"This outstanding book is bound to inspire the growing numbers of students and academics interested in Pierre Bourdieu’s general orientation and in building their own work on it. It makes an important contribution, particularly to Bourdieusian studies in family, gender and childhood." Leena Alanen, University of Jyväskylä, Finland "Atkinson’s book pushes the field of Bourdieu studies into new and exciting territory. Drawing on the author’s expertise in phenomenology, it shows how Bourdieu’s theory can illuminate the study of everyday life, the family and gender. This will be an essential resource for Bourdieu scholars for years to come." Jeffrey J. Sallaz, University of Arizona "Rather than take 'field' as the starting point, as many interpreters of Bourdieu's work have done, Atkinson argues that the individual and their movement across time and space (their lifeworld) which creates and is constrained by 'circuits of symbolic power' is a better approach. […] Atkinson offers a corrective by placing the accent on the individual without forgetting the structures of power. […] This book will be of particular interest to scholars in the sociology of education, psychological sociology, the family, and gender studies." Deborah Reed-Danahay, Anthropos