Notes: Pierre Bourdieu - Symbolic Power | Sociology Mains Optional for UPSC 2024 PDF Download

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Pierre Bourdieu - The concept of symbolic 
Power 
• To account for the tacit almost unconscious modes of cultural/social domination occurring within the 
everyday social habits maintained over conscious subjects 
• Symbolic power accounts for discipline used against another to confirm that individual's placement in a 
social hierarchy, at times in individual relations but most basically through system institutions, in 
particular education 
• Also referred to as "soft power" symbolic power includes actions that have discriminatory or injurious 
meaning or implications, such as gender dominance and racism. Symbolic power maintains its effect 
through the mis-recognition of power relations situated in the social matrix of a given field 
• While symbolic power requires a dominator, it also requires the dominated to accept their position in the 
exchange of social value that occurs between them 
• The concept of symbolic power was first introduced by Pierre Bourdieu in La Distinction. Bourdieu 
suggested that cultural roles are more dominant than economic forces in determining how hierarchies of 
power are situated and reproduced across societies 
• Status and economic capital are both necessary to maintain dominance in a system, rather than just 
ownership over the means of production alone. The idea that one could possess symbolic capital in 
addition and set apart from financial capital played a critical role in Bourdieu's analysis of hierarchies of 
power