Bourdieu Symbolic Violence Essay

Question 3. Choose an instance of what Bourdieu might describe as ‘symbolic violence’ and explore the social mechanisms behind it in terms of ‘field’, ‘capital’ and ‘habitus.’ You can use an example from popular culture or the media, or from published literature.

In answering the major and minor elements structured in question three, I will define and explore a topical media example of what Bourdieu might epitomise as symbolic violence and critically unpack the social impetuses behind Bourdieu’s key conceptual principles using classical approaches of field, capital and habitus in relation to analysing the subjective experience by objective structures.

French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s emphasises symbolic violence extensively throughout much of his work. Symbolic violence was introduced in a Western context by Bourdieu as a concept which identifies and names social phenomena. Symbolic violence is a system identified within sociology by sociologists as a process of categorising and classifying impositions of hierarchies within society’s structure that results in violence

Cultural capital and the distinction between knowledge and taste is not superficial (Germov & Poole, 2015, p. 60) but further characterizes the lifestyle of individuals social capital and inclines them to assign less priority over functionality, to pompous choices that conform status of class as a whole. Furthermore, Bourdieu demonstrates substantial differences within both the dominant class and the “sense of distinction” through the pursuit of luxury item goods and a crafted opulence, implying there is a distinct conflict between hierarchal classes and between symbolic capital, and that there is an ineluctably symbolic component (Wright & Weininger, 2002, p. 134) which further highlights the opposition between economic advantage and cultural