Editing Pierre Bourdieu (section)

=== Symbolic capital ===
Bourdieu sees [[symbolic capital]] (e.g., prestige, honor, attention) as a crucial source of power.<ref name="Cattani2014">Cattani, Gino, Ferriani, Simone, and Allison, Paul. 2014. "Insiders, Outsiders and the Struggle for Consecration in Cultural Fields: A Core-Periphery Perspective." ''American Sociological Review'', vol.78(3): pp.417–447.[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByE7rCUuloTlZm9LLW9adXRXMFE/edit?usp=sharing]</ref> '''Symbolic capital''' is any species of capital that is, in [[Loïc Wacquant]]'s terms "not perceived as such," but which is instead perceived through socially inculcated classificatory schemes. When a holder of symbolic capital uses the power this confers against an agent who holds less, and seeks thereby to alter their actions, they exercise ''[[symbolic violence]]''. Research published in [[Organization Science (journal)|Organization Science]] shows that symbolic capital can be divided along two dimensions – reputability and respectability – and can be transferred by association.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Shymko |first1=Yuliya |last2=Roulet |first2=Thomas J |last3=de Melo Pimentel |first3=Bernardo |date=2022-06-02 |title=The Façade, the Face, and the Sympathies: Opening the Black Box of Symbolic Capital as a Source of Philanthropic Attractiveness |url=https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.2022.1603 |journal=Organization Science |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=870–893 |doi=10.1287/orsc.2022.1603 |s2cid=249332394 |issn=1047-7039}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Kanti Ghosh |first=Sumit |date=2023-05-18 |title=Body, Dress, and Symbolic Capital: Multifaceted Presentation of PUGREE in Colonial Governance of British India |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14759756.2023.2208502 |journal=Textile |volume=22 |issue=2 |language=en |pages=334–365 |doi=10.1080/14759756.2023.2208502 |s2cid=258804155 |issn=1475-9756|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

'''Symbolic violence''' is fundamentally the imposition of categories of thought and perception upon dominated social agents who then take the social order to be just. It is the incorporation of unconscious structures that tend to perpetuate the structures of action of the dominant. The dominated then take their position to be "right." Symbolic violence is in some senses much more powerful than physical violence in that it is embedded in the very modes of action and structures of cognition of individuals, and imposes the spectre of legitimacy of the social order.

In his theoretical writings, Bourdieu employs some terminology used in [[economics]] to analyze the processes of [[cultural reproduction|social and cultural reproduction]], of how the various forms of capital tend to transfer from one generation to the next. For Bourdieu, formal education represents the key example of this process. Educational success, according to Bourdieu, entails a whole range of cultural behaviour, extending to ostensibly non-academic features like [[gait]], dress, or accent. Privileged children have learned this behaviour, as have their teachers. Children of unprivileged backgrounds have not. The children of privilege therefore fit the pattern of their teachers' expectations with apparent 'ease'; they are 'docile'. The unprivileged are found to be 'difficult', to present 'challenges'. Yet both behave as their upbringing dictates. Bourdieu regards this 'ease', or 'natural' ability—distinction—as in fact the product of a great social labour, largely on the part of the parents. It equips their children with the dispositions of manner as well as thought which ensure they are able to succeed within the educational system and can then reproduce their parents' class position in the wider [[social system]].