Pierre Bourdieu

Credit Tommie Soro

• post-structuralist,
• known for his work "field theory",
• defines the terms "capital", "fields", "nomos", "doxa", "illusio", "habitus" and "the avant-garde"
  • capital: contrary to Marx, Bourdieu recognizes non-fiscal capital such as the apport of culture, knowledge and even any skills not related to an individual's main occupation that can at any point be exchanged for monetary value,
    • excess earnings are only capital when the earnings are invested in such a way that produces revenue on the invested earnings,
    • capital can be broken down into:
      • economic
        • money, investments, properties,
      • social capital (the value of social networks built), or the resources made available to an agent by virtue of the social network,
      • cultural capital, can be broken down into:
        • embodied,
          • knowledge, accent, dress, taste and even posture etc.
        • objectified,
          • objects such as artworks, books and furniture
        • institutionalized,
          • for instance, degrees accumulated via attending institutions, awards,
    • (not a distinct species of capital, but the result of recognition of the former divisions of capital) symbolic capital, a resource of reputation that an agent can use to gain advantages in different contexts (prestige),
      • is also a "fake" category of capital since it fails to recognize the underlying divisions of capital (economic, social and cultural) by instead attributing the prestige directly to the agent,
        • for example, an agent born to a rich family, has more resources to invest in the various divisions of capital (economic, social and cultural) in order to obtain prestige yet granted the initial leverage the investment fails to recognize the value of the divisions of capital (economic, social and cultural) whose accumulation is arbitrary,
        • people's accumulation of capital is based on their already pre-existing disposition of capital, namely economic capital,
    • specific capital is attributed to an actor's knowledge in different fields,
      • where fields act as contexts, specific capital is the knowledge that pertains to that and only that context (ie: cooking good for the culinary field, time in prison good for the outlaw field, social connections to athletes being valuable for sports journalism, etc.),
  • fields,
    • the social and professional context in which agents are positioned, operate and compete (ie: science, education, sports, birdwatching, etc.)
    • different forms of capital are valued differently in different fields,
    • fields are structured by relation to other fields, primarily the field of power,
    • economics and politics constitute the field of power because they have direct effects on other fields
      • economics and politics are said to possess meta-capital; the power to affect across different fields and thereby influence the different values of different fields within society,
      • media has also been said to possess meta-capital,
      • the position of agents on a field is determined by the amount of economic and cultural capital they possess,
      • fields are split in two halves:
        • "restricted production" (dedicated to the accumulation of cultural capital, small audience),
        • "large scale production" (dedicated to economic capital, broad audience),
  • nomos,
    • field-specific norms that regulate the actions of agents in a given field,
    • represent the historical struggles within fields (which forms of capital within the field is the most valuable),
    • changes to the nomos of the field typically originate in the avant-garde region,
    • vision and division; the vision of what is currently acceptable and the division when the vision is disregarded by an agent within the field,
      • division of classes in society based on social and cultural relations when in fact the division is most likely due to arbitrary result of per-existing economic relations,
  • doxa,
    • underlining universally held and accepted beliefs within a field,
    • the beliefs that are necessary to unwaveringly hold in order to be active in the field,
  • illusio,
    • the belief held by all agents in a field that the rewards of that field actually have any value,
    • the product of collective competition within a given field generates a perceived belief in the value of the generated capital,
  • habitus,
    • the most important concept,
    • accounts how different people manage their resources differently,
    • represents the cumulative dispositions that agents have accumulated within their lives,
    • it is a structuring process where previously accumulated experiences shape the outcome of future behaviours,
    • the habitus is maintained within one's life,
    • also transposable since experience in one field might imply expertise in a different field,
    • "[…] if person A selects first this type of book, then they are likely to select that type of music, and, then, likely to select a particular type of film" (Greenfell 2010; 107),
    • "[…] person A selects a book because it is not what person B would select" (Greenfell 2010; 107),
    • "[…] personal style… is never more than a deviation in relation to a style of a period or class so that it relates back to the common style not only by its conformity […] but also by [its difference" (Bourdieu 1977; 86),
      • means to say that, for instance, rebellion within a field does not mean the teardown of the field itself but rather the result of an agent seeking their position within the very same field,
    • distinguishes the primary and secondary habitus,
      • primary, the dispositions acquired in early family environment,
        • "it is rather stable [and] reflects the different positions people have in society" (Walther, 2003; 13)
      • secondary, the dispositions acquired as the total sum of the rest of the education (experience of fields during adulthood),
    • there is always a homology between an agent's haitus, their possession of capital and their position in a field,
    • "The acquisition of embodied cultural capital is identical to the formation of the habitus" (Grenfell, 2010; 110),
    • when an agent's habitus is not synchronized with their field, the agent can become an engine for change,
      • this happens in the avant-garde position within a field,
  • avant-garde,
    • agents whose practices do not adhere to the nomos of the field and thereby have little success (low value of economic and cultural capital),
    • if agents manage to transgress their positions such that their practices become recognized then they become part of the consecrated avant-gard where their practices are now accepted even though they digress with the nomos of the field,
    • defines three levels of the avant-garde where agents attempt to progress from the avant-garde to the consecrated avant-garde and then ultimately end up in the rear-garde (as seen generationally):
      • avant-garde,
      • consecrated avant-garde,
      • rear-garde,
    • while being disinterested in the nomos, the agent can focus on the accumulation of symbolic capital that can then be transformed to economic capital once the agent progresses into the consecrated avant-garde,

• Structuralism without quantification; while the structural relations are interesting, it is not specified how much of an influence or how tightly the relations of Bourdieu field theory would couple. This is very similar to Antonio Gramsci where the structuralism of the habitus without any form of quantification could naively imply some form of determinism where an agent becomes the direct product of past experiences with unquantified amounts of other influences such that it is not immediately apparent that, for example, the statement […] if person A selects first this type of book, then they are likely to select that type of music, and, then, likely to select a particular type of film" (Greenfell 2010; 107) would hold true since that would hinge on how much or how little they have been influenced; and by whom, in what way, etc.
• Bourdieu's statement that the political and economic fields (and perhaps, media) possess meta-capital implies a one-to-all relation yet it is not impossible that influence can run in various directions with other fields having their own power of influence across various other fields. It is trivial to recognize that, say, music might have had an influence on politics, or that theatre plays might have influenced monarchies such that it seems that all fields could be be perceived as possessing varied quantas of meta-capital rather than meta-capital being exclusive to just two or three glorified fields (political, economical and media). Furthermore, if one were to assume that the political, economical or media fields possess unique abilities that make economics, politics and media favorable or a preferred field, then this would, for instance, negate Bourdieu widely-held belief that "painting" or "the ability to critique and understand art" would be a "most favorable" capital since the field of "the arts" would paradoxically not hold too much of a value given other, more valuable fields that might also have the benefit of possessing meta-capital.