The Promise and Limits of Bourdieu's “Bodily Capital”: Theorizing Embodiment and Inequality

• In Event: 420 - Section on Body and Embodiment Paper Session. Embodied Encounters: Beauty, Pap Smears, Citizenship and Bodily Capital

Abstract

Although appearance and the body have been factors in processes of discrimination, sociology has traditionally not interrogated such phenomena outside of studies involving race and gender. While the sub-field of sociology of the body has generated numerous insights over the past 20 years, these contributions have not penetrated the dominant discipline, primarily because they are dispersed among a variety of sub-fields. In order to better consolidate insights from the sociology of the body, I suggest a clarification of Bourdieu’s “bodily capital” concept, as well as a re-organization of concepts that positions bodily capital as a fourth form of capital. Such an effort constitutes an example of what Burawoy (1991) terms “theory re-construction,” and allows currently disparate studies illuminating embodied inequality to gather under an umbrella concept (bodily capital) that will help define the field and encourage future extensions.

Author

• David J. Hutson, Whitman College