Outline of a Theory of Practice is recognized as a major theoretical text on the foundations of anthropology and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu develops a theory of practice that is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood, illustrated by his fieldwork in Algeria. The text's rigorous, consistent, materialist approach lays the foundations for a theory of symbolic capital and, through analysis of the different modes of domination, a theory of symbolic power.