General theory

Garcia (2015) provides a summary of Bourdieu’s theories. According to him, Bourdieu bases his theories on several concepts: He emphasizes the cultural arbitrariness of the pedagogical action which, by means of the social and linguistic code it requires, values cultural capital and the habitus of the dominant classes. In this respect, schools legitimize a bourgeois culture far removed from the popular classes. Bourdieu (1980) thinks that it is unnecessary to contrast subjectivism and objectivism or individual consciousness and collective consciousness. He also transforms the term “social actors” to “social agents,”

which he finds more adequate.

One of his best-known notions is that of habitus. Among the tools of Bourdieu’s theories, habitus remains the most cited. Habitus is for Bourdieu (1986) an objective foundation of constant conduct. That is why agents who endow themselves will behave in a certain way in certain circumstances. Habitus allows an individual to move in the social world and to interpret it in a way that, on the one hand, is his or her own, though which, on the other hand, is also common to the members of the social categories to which he or she belongs. However, there remains a degree of uncertainty and spontaneity in these acts; habitus does not believe in universal law.

Bourdieu distinguishes four types of fundamental capital: economic, cultural, and social capital. Economic capital measures an individual’s economic resources, both income and wealth. Cultural capital is the measure of all the cultural resources available to an individual. They can be of three forms of cultural capital: incorporated (knowledge and know-how, skills, form of speech, etc.), objectified (possession of cultural objects),

and institutionalized (school titles and diplomas). Social capital measures the resources that are linked to the possession of a durable network of relations of mutual acquaintance and inter-recognition. Symbolic capital refers to any form of capital (cultural, social, or economic), and entails a particular recognition within society. Bourdieu refers to all these social resources as capital as they result from an accumulation that allows individuals to obtain social benefits（Bourdieu, 1979）. For Bourdieu, economic capital and cultural capital are the two most important forms of capital in our societies. Yet, there exists for him a type of capital specific to each social field. This determines its structure and is the stake in the struggles.

Distinction offers a social criticism of taste judgments as common sense. Here, Bourdieu is echoing Kant’s tradition and philosophy. The book shows that the principles of classification maintain a relation of homology with the social structure. Within the social structure, classes (upper, middle, and popular) are distinguished, as are their factions (traditional bourgeoisie vs. economic or intellectual bourgeoisie). Esthetic preferences are only one of the most visible manifestations of distinction.

Judgments of taste make it possible to distinguish oneself from others. This relies on a system of perception of the social world. They contribute to maintaining this social world. Moreover, the establishment of these cultural hierarchies reproduces and legitimizes symbolic hierarchies and thereby maintains an unequal social order. Here we find the thesis of “symbolic violence.” Bourdieu mentions it in La Reproduction

（Bourdieu & J Passeron 2005）, in which he refers to the social functions of the school system. Distinction formulates central propositions in Bourdieu’s theory of the social world. It shows the complex change in social structures (the system of aim positions) and mental structures (the principle of worldview). It reveals how the former base and the second legitimize (and thus perpetuate) in return (Bourdieu, 1979). Bourdieu settled a school of thought attached to the intellectual production of a sociological critique of culture (Forquin 1981).

2. Forms of Capital

Bourdieu notes that individuals are not interchangeable. To explain this, he developed an entire theory, of which the four great forms of capital occupy the center. Individuals are distinguished by their unequal possession of capital. They have different volumes of

capital as well as different distributions of different forms of capital according to their abilities.

Lenoir (2004), speaks in particular of two principles, which he characterizes as principal, and which make it possible to distribute groups according to their position in statistical distributions. These two most efficient principles—they are not the only ones—

are economic capital and cultural capital. They are principles that are meant to be explanatory in the sense that they attach themselves to socially determining properties that makes it possible to distinguish and bring together agents who are as similar as possible (and therefore as different as possible from members of other classes).

As indicated above, cultural capital is defined by all the knowledge, skills (habitus:

the ability of an individual to position him- or herself), diplomas, and cultural property owned by an individual. It is surely the most important capital for Bourdieu and the one he discusses the most in these works and notably in Distinction. Economic capital represents the totality of the wealth of an individual; it is more the material wealth, such as income and heritage, that an individual has acquired.

Even if cultural and economic capital are the most important, there is also social capital, which is the network of relationships and knowledge that an individual and his or her family has and can activate in order to obtain critical information or additional assets.

The first is economic capital. The term generally refers to all financial and inherited resources. It is hence what economists generally refer to as heritage—all the material goods possessed by an individual, such as housing, jewelry, shares or bonds, etc.—, but also income (because these goods allow a certain standard of living and the constitution, or not, of patrimony) (Philippe 2012).

The second form of capital is cultural capital. This is often perceived as the most important form of capital of Bourdieu’s sociology. This form of capital refers to all the cultural resources available to an individual. Cultural capital can exist in three forms: in an embodied state, that is, in the form of the durable dispositions of the organism; in an objectified state, in the form of cultural goods, paintings, books, dictionaries, instruments, and machines, which are the trace or the realization of theories or of critics of these theories, problems, and the like; and finally, in an institutionalized state (Bourdieu 1979, p. 3), a form of objectification that rests on academic titles and which Bourdieu sets apart.

There is also social capital. This generally refers to the network of personal

relationships that an individual can mobilize when he or she needs them. Social capital is, for Bourdieu (1980), imposed as the only way to formulate the concept of social effects.

More specifically, it is the set of current or potential resources that are related to owning a sustainable network of relationships (Bourdieu 1980). It is, thus, a matter of belonging to a group due to there being not only common points but also common interests between members. This network is partly “inherited” (family relations, for example) and can affect any individual. Not all relationships are equal: some are more effective than others, which creates inequalities here too.

Finally, for Bourdieu (1980), social capital, linked to belonging to a sustainable network, plays a multiplicative role in creating symbolic capital in the various social fields: school, media, art, language, science, housing. This symbolic capital organizes the legitimated relations of domination in the different social fields. All of these forms of capital establishes a volume of capital, an important element as far as social space is concerned.

These three forms of capital the individual inherits for parents in one part, and constitutes them during his life for the other, and tries to transmit them as inheritance to his or her children. It is in this sense that Bourdieu uses the word “capital” for the three forms. Inequalities can thus affect these three forms of capital. However, Bourdieu also speaks of a last form of capital, symbolic capital. This is capital that validates a certain social prestige that corresponds to the influence of individuals in society. He legitimizes the possession of other forms of capital, which differ according to the importance of each in decision-making in particular.