A GLOSSARY

A goal of research, according to Bourdieu, is to make the familiar and the observable
appear strange or problematic. One way of making the observable strange is by the use of
specialized language. Bourdieu appropriated several words, mostly from the language of social
sciences, and by redefining them over time, expanded the words into a series of concepts. The
key concepts for which Bourdieu prescribed meanings include social field, field of power,
position, habitus, practice, disposition, social reproduction, symbolic violence, and capital. The
interrelated concepts generate the framing structure by which a researcher might interpret the
action of agents in a field.
Social field is a configuration of objective relations among imaginary positions that are
grounded in the reality of interpersonal relations, but objectively derived.
1
A social field, or field
of action, is filled with dominant, subordinate, and intermediate positions, distributed about two
axes, according to the positions relative command over the specific resources identified as
valuable by that field. The resources may be of the four different types of capital, depending on
how the capitals are judged as worthy within a given social field. The social fields, although
autonomous, are also oriented hierarchically in a manner similar to positions in the central fields
of power. For example, the social fields of academia include differentially valued departments or
disciplinary units. Nevertheless, in the hierarchy of social fields, the university administration
dominates the departments however they are valued. In turn, the individual university
administration is dominated by the university system, which is controlled by politically
appointed Regents.
According to Richard Jenkins interpretation of Bourdieu, the boundaries of the social
fields are imprecise and shifting, determinable only by empirical research. The boundary of any
given fieldthe edge at which the field cease to have impact on the practice of agentsdoes

1
Bourdieu normally used correspondence analysis to determine the geometry of the positions on the graphically
displayed social space. The positions were based on extensive biographical or statistical data about often coupled
with survey, questionnaire, and interview responses tied to the individuals in the field of interest.
have many points of entry and is always at stake in the struggles which take place within the
field.
2

Field of power serves as a dual-purpose term to refer to the socially preeminent field that
overtime usurped or gained the right to judge worthiness and value, to allocate monies
(economic capital), and control the dispensation of titles or credentials (cultural and symbolic
capital) at global, national, and regional levels. The term also interchangeably refers to the
homologous forces or positions within sub-fields that attempt to enforce or adjudicate dominant
norms.
Position refers to a given conceptual location of relative status, power, dominance,
subordination or equality in a given social field. For instance, in the field of academia there are
positions of relative sub-ordination along the continuum of lecturer, adjunct, assistant, associate,
and full professor below the deans, administrators; with all superordinate to the position of
student.
Habitus alludes to a persons or a collectivitys combination of dispositions, literally
embodiedinternalized and expressed through the bodypermanent guiding principles,
prejudices, preferences. These preferences are classifying and self-classifying schemes, with
which people generate and organize everyday practices and representations.
The notion of habitus encompasses a combination of personal ethos, habitual postures,
and inculcated cultural mores only modified to fit the adaptive strategies which are supported by
everyday cultural milieux (provided that they are recognized by the individual). Habitus carries
across to similarly located positions in other social fields but produces awkwardness and
ineffective behavior when individuals attempt to relocate or assume other positions in the same
field. To overcome ineffective behaviors, one rehearses new strategies and eventually adapts to
new practices or adopts new habits.

2
Richard Jenkins, Key Sociologists: Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 1999), 85.
Dispositions are tendencies, propensities, or inclinations of individuals, institutions, or
even things. Bourdieu uses the examples of timidity and arrogance, with which we associate
body postures, stereotyped actions, and even internal states of persons.
Practice refers to purposeful, mostly improvised, not fully conscious performances based
on a repertoire of habituated responses that actors assume, correspondent with the demands of
social fields. Competent practice may be deduced, learned, or taught. Mastery of practice springs
from an interplay of interests, skills, situational constraints, and the limitations of means,
unintended consequences, personal idiosyncrasies and failings, and always the weight of the
history of relationships between individuals. In this context, decision-making choices fall within
a circumscribed repertoire of solutions graspable by the individual from those available in the
particular social field.
Capital Bourdieu differentiates among four different types of negotiable, valuable,
legitimate resources attributable to people, institutions, and things which people struggle to
obtain for themselves. He describes peoples transformations of the various capitals from one
type to another as alchemy. I think of it as leveraging resources and adding value.
Economic capital money, credit, inheritance, properties or other means for acquiring
and controlling people, goods and services
Social capital friends, social class of family, social connections to people with money,
power, or both; social capital is associated or linked with economic power; enhanced in those
judged to have a minimum degree of separation from others in power positions
Cultural capital cultural inheritance, upbringing, education, academic qualifications,
certifiable credentials, legitimated knowledge
Symbolic capital prestige, honors, distinction of some form linked to cultural capital,
although not necessarily positioned for power or economic capital.
Symbolic violence refers to the habituated, systematic negation or dismissal of the values,
norms, and worldview of the dominated by the dominant, who because of their social positions
and power, however temporal, can impose arbitrary values and cause them to be misrecognized
as superior, normal, and right.
Social reproduction, as applied by Bourdieu, refers to the continuance and duplication of
the dominant positions, values, and practices of a given social field through the reproduction of
expected and repeated production of field-appropriate and competent actions. The dominant
culture is arbitrarily accepted (but sometimes resisted) by all as the default, correct state of
affairs.