Sociology 2240E Chapter Notes - Chapter readings 18: Pierre Bourdieu, Economic Capital, Cultural Capital
30 Apr 2018
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Pierre Bourdieu 1930-2002
Friday, April 27, 2018
10:48 AM
A biographical sketch
• He wrote extensively about the hostility harbored by the upper class toward the middle and lower
classes, a hostility that was embedded not only in the educational system, but also in matters such
as the arts, sports, and food
o Education and cultural tastes are central to creating differences between social classes and
to the reproduction of those class differences
Bourdieu's intellectual influences and core ideas
• Bourdieu's work largely can be understood as an attempt to overcome the 'dualism' that plagues
much of social theory, he asks the question 'how can behaviour be regulated without being the
product of obedience to rules'
• Habitus
o The habitus is a mental filter that structures an individual's perceptions, experiences, and
practices such that the world takes on a taken-for-granted, common sense appearance
o Refers to an individual's 'dispositions' or 'mental structures' through which the social world
is apprehended and expressed through both verbal and bodily language
o The habitus makes possible the free production of all the thoughts, perceptions, and actions
inherent in the condition of its production
o Acquires one's point of view
o As a 'way of being' however, the habitus shapes not only interpretive schemes and thoughts
-the mind0 but also the body, by molding one's 'natural propensity' for a wide range of
movements including posture, gait, and agility
o Bourdieu goes to great lengths to demonstrate that individuals do not create their
dispositions -rather they acquire them
o 'internalization of externality'
• Since an individuals dispositions are a product of the 'internalization of externality'
▪ The externality that shapes the habitus is readily apparent if we compare it to a
point of view
o Your vision of geographic space is dependent on your position or the point you occupy
within that space
o Now extend the notion of geographic space to social space
• Your point of view is determined by your position within a space that is structured by
two 'principle of differentiation': economic capital and cultural capital
▪ Economic capital: refers to material resources -wealth, land, money -that one
controls or possesses
▪ Cultural capital: refers to the nonmaterial goods such as educational credentials,
types of knowledge and expertise, verbal skills, that can be converted into
economic capital
• It is these 2 forms of capital that constitute the 'externality' that is internalized via the
habitus by forming the social space within which points of view are taken
• Within this social space, individuals are positioned relative to one another
▪ First according to the overall volume of capital they possess
▪ Second, according to the relative amount of economic and cultural capital they
possess
• The farther apart they are in social space, the less in common they have
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