Knowing One’s Place: Forms of Capital and the Sense of Symbolic Capital

• In Event: 20420 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 3: Cultural Capital and Taste

Abstract

Bourdieu argues that economic, cultural, and social capital bestow actors with symbolic capital (prestige), granting them ability to make others accept their viewpoint as legitimate. We address this idea with novel survey measures from Iceland. Extending Bourdieu's ideas about “the sense of one’s place” in “collective” and “everyday” struggles, we observe symbolic capital as the belief that one’s social position will support one’s viewpoint in two specific fields of struggle: 1) the public sphere and 2) frontstage encounters. Supporting Bourdieu, we find major forms of cultural and social capital to be associated with actors’ symbolic capital in the public sphere. Additionally, these non-economic capital forms largely “explain-away” the association between economic capital and symbolic capital in this field. However, in frontstage encounters the only capital form that is related to the sense of symbolic capital is legitimate (i.e., widely valued) lifestyle. The study suggests a new avenue for addressing Bourdieu’s influential theory.

Authors

• Jon Gunnar Bernburg, University of Iceland

• Sigrun Olafsdottir, University of Iceland