Pierre Bourdieu Power Essay

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Pierre Bourdieu was a highly influential theorist. He provides a unique and fascinating definition or understanding of power as well as an explanation and analysis into how power works. This work serves to outline what is this specific concept of power means and contains, how it is created, what are the various forms it takes on and in general, how power works. Power is a difficult concept to define conclusively or definitively however, Bourdieu explains power to be a symbolic construct that is perpetuated through every day actions and behaviours of a society, that manipulate power relations to create, maintain and force the conforming of peoples to the given habitus of that society (Bourdieu, 1977). Power, is a force created through the social conventions of a specific community that dictate what is expected or accepted by the people while also determining how they understand the world in which they live (Bourdieu, 1977). Symbolic power is created and …show more content…

Cultural capital has great power through the control and maintenance of traditions, expected and accepted roles and behaviours, notably gender roles, important artefacts, language, institutions and services (Navarro, 2006). Of these, two essential contributors being educational facilities and religious institutions (Navarro, 2006). Finally, economic capital holds power through property and literal financial capital or monetary resources, this empowers individuals to have some degree of agency and autonomy (Navarro, 2006). This gives power to individuals to interact with higher classes, or form part of such, to purchase and interact with goods and services that are valued by the society and in turn receive respect and enhances social status (Navarro,

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