Bourdieu, Ethics and Symbolic Power

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Bourdieu, ethics and symbolic power
Lna Pellandini-Simnyi
Abstract
This article critically discusses Pierre Bourdieus views on ethics and normative
evaluations. Bourdieu acknowledged that people hold ethical stances, yet sought to
show that these stances are unconsciously conducive to obtaining symbolic
power and legitimizing hierarchy. The first part of the article looks at this argument
and charts the shifts it went through particularly in the early 1990s. The second part
discusses ontological and empirical critiques of the ethics as ideology argument and
suggests the latter to be more salient, as Bourdieu proposed his argument as an
empirical rather than as an ontological point. The reason why he nevertheless found
the ethics as ideology explanation fitting to nearly all the cases he studied, as the
third part argues, is not simply that reality obliged him to do so, but his circular
definition of symbolic capital as qualities that are worthy of esteem. This definition
makes his argument of ethics as ideology unfalsifiable and impedes him from
distinguishing between cases when legitimate power is the aim of ethics and
between those when it is merely their side effect.The article concludes by suggesting
ways in which Bourdieus work can be fruitfully incorporated into the study of
ethics once the tautology is resolved.
Keywords: Bourdieu, esteem, ethics, sociology of morality, symbolic power
Introduction
The sociological study of ethics and morality has taken diverse paths from the
birth of sociology as a discipline in the 19th century. Durkheim (1993) and
Weber (2003) attributed a central role to ethics (or ethos) in explaining social
and economic phenomena. Marx (1977a, 1977b), in contrast, radically questioned the explanatory power and hence the importance of ethics, by arguing
that values merely reflect structures and interests defined by economic relations. Following this tradition, critical sociologists analysed peoples normative
stances mainly as covert interests. The study of ethics qua ethics in this tradition was seen not only as futile, but also harmful: values considered as ideologies were seen as something to be unmasked rather than acknowledged
(Sayer, 2004). Recent years, however, witnessed a renewed interest in the
study of everyday ethics as a phenomenon that is related, yet not reducible to
economic relations and interests (see, for example, Bauman, 1993; Laidlaw,
The Sociological Review, Vol. 62, 651674 (2014) DOI: 10.1111/1467-954X.12210
2014 The Author. The Sociological Review 2014 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review. Published
by John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, 02148,
USA.
2002; Sayer, 2005, 2011; Abend, 2007; Evens, 2008; Zigon, 2008; Hitlin and
Vaisey, 2010). This is the field that this article wishes to contribute to by
providing a critical discussion of Pierre Bourdieus dismissal of ethics.
Bourdieus work is important in this regard because it contains some of the
most well-developed arguments that posit ethical stances as covert means of
power struggles. Bourdieu did not suggest that people do not engage in normative evaluations; on the contrary, he emphasized the centrality of evaluations in everyday life. However, in the predominant part of his work he
interpreted these as covert competitive strategies to advance ones position
and legitimize power (Bourdieu, 1984, 1991a, 1991b). His works are so allencompassing ranging from religion (Bourdieu, 1991a) to art (Bourdieu,
1996), science (Bourdieu, 1999a, 2004), and everyday taste (Bourdieu, 1984)
that if one is to study everyday ethics qua ethics, one almost inevitably comes
across a relevant work of Bourdieu that argues ones efforts to be futile. This
is why the study of ethics qua ethics can only proceed if one is able to show
where Bourdieus arguments, by which he dismisses it, are found wanting. This
is the focus of the current article.
The article starts by outlining Bourdieus position on ethics, charting the
shifts that it went through and the tensions that exist within it. This part
suggests that although the argument that sees ethics as a pretext for powerstruggles characterizing most of his oeuvre is mitigated in his works
following the early 1990s, he did not revise his original position, merely complemented it by exceptions (as in the case of science) and somewhat inconsistent additions. The second part discusses the two main lines of existing
criticism of Bourdieus dismissal of ethics. The first challenges Bourdieu on
ontological grounds, proposing a view of humans as ethical beings as opposed
to the power-driven depiction posited by Bourdieu (Honneth, 1986; Taylor,
1989; Evens, 1999; Sayer, 2005). The problem with this line, as this part argues,
is that Bourdieu did not mean his arguments to be ontological but empirical
and, in principle, falsifiable. The second line of criticism attempts such an
empirical falsification (Lamont, 1992; Sayer, 2005; Boltanski and Thvenot,
2006), however, all empirical counterevidence listed by these theories seems
reconcilable with Bourdieus theory. This leads to the core question of the
article: How does Bourdieu manage to maintain the claim that all seemingly
ethical actions are objectively power-driven? The answer, proposed in the
third part, lays in his tautological definition of symbolic capital as esteem. As
esteem is granted on an ethical basis as it involves looking up at someone for
worthy qualities an esteem-based hierarchy always presupposes ethics. This
means that Bourdieu is only able to show that all ethics are objectively powerdriven because his very concept of legitimate power is grounded in an ethically
based notion of esteem. The article concludes by outlining ways in which
Bourdieus work can be usefully incorporated into the study of ethics, once
this tautology is corrected.
Before moving to the main analysis, a note on what I mean by the term
ethical: I will use the words ethics, morality and normative evaluations
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2014 The Author. The Sociological Review 2014 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review
interchangeably1 to denote stances that Charles Taylor refers to as strong

evaluations (Taylor, 1989: 74). Strong evaluations are normative principles
that are experienced as independent from personal inclination and are
therefore different from preferences constituting outer standards by which
our very desires can be judged: We sense in the very experience of being
moved by some higher good that we are moved by what is good in it rather
than that it is valuable because of our reaction (1989: 74). This formulation
implies a descriptive rather than a substantive, normative use of the term
ethical: what makes an idea ethical is the fact that for particular people it
represents a way of living or being that they consider higher as opposed to
being simply more desirable. The advantage of this descriptive definition is
that it allows for the empirical analysis of very different normative stances
even of those that the analyst might happen to disagree with. Also note that
unlike some theories of ethics that treat agency as the prerequisite of ethical
action,2 the conception of ethics used here does not require agency, but also
includes the unreflexive adherence to existing moral traditions.
Bourdieus shifting views on ethics

Bourdieu dedicated a large part of his work to the analysis of normative
evaluations people pass: he studied the basis on which honour is granted in
Algeria (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990b), the qualities that the French education
system values (Bourdieu, 1988), the evolution of the criteria that define good
art (Bourdieu, 1996) and the normative distinctions people make in their
everyday life under the heading of taste (Bourdieu, 1984). His position on
these normative stances although containing some contradictions that will be
discussed shortly can be classified as social constructivist.3 Social constructivism sees ethics as a matter of social agreement. This distinguishes it from
objectivist theories that argue that the definition of the good and what is
valuable can be grounded in something objective: in human nature and needs,
or in the intrinsic qualities of goods and practices (Sayer, 2011). Yet social
constructivism also differs from subjectivist or emotivist theories that suggest
that the definition of the good is subjective, simply a matter of individual likes
and dislikes (Taylor, 1989). First, social constructivism suggests that ethical
standards are beyond individuals; as Taylor argues Each young person may
take up a stance which is authentically his or her own; but the very possibility
of this is enframed in a social understanding of great temporal depth, in fact
tradition (Taylor, 1989: 39). Second, unlike emotivism, most social constructivist theories do not see ethics as preferences, but as strong evaluations
(Taylor, 1989: 74) in the sense described above: as qualities and principles that
people experience as higher external standards by which their own conduct is
to judged. Yet, unlike objectivist theories, they locate the source of these
external standards in society and culture rather than in human nature.
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Social constructivism can be further divided into two camps, based on

how the content of the ethics reached through such a social agreement is
explained: with reference to interests of the dominant group, or to cultural
traditions that are independent from socio-economic relations (see second
part for further discussion). In this debate the largest part of Bourdieus
work falls into the former camp: he interpreted evaluative stances first and
foremost as a means by which struggles over power are fought. This position,
however, shifted and carried a number of contradictions. The major shift
took place in the early 1990s (Sintomer, 1996; Fber, 2007; Fowler, 2011)
when Bourdieu took a more explicit stance on political matters, which was
related to the revaluation of his relativist views on science and to a limited
extent, on ethics. In this section I look at his views on ethics before and after
the shift.
Ethics as ideology
Bourdieus explicit position on ethics until the early 1990s was informed by
two related points. First, he suggested that people incorporate different conditions of existence as well as existing moral frameworks through the habitus.
The habitus is a largely unconscious, internalized, even bodily sense of the
social world acquired through upbringing. It delimits tastes, bodily gestures,
ways of eating, sitting and talking; in short, everything we think and do,
including our normative ideas (Bourdieu, 1984, 1995). This argument lends
itself to the interpretation proposed by Andrew Sayer (2011), according to
which our ethical stances are developed as part of our habitus. For example,
Bourdieus Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977) includes vivid descriptions
on how the sense of honour, a deeply ethical sense of how a man of virtue
should behave, and more broadly, what it means to be a proper man is inculcated in the earliest years of life until it becomes a permanent disposition,
embedded in the agents very bodies in the form of mental dispositions,
schemes of perception and thought, extremely general in application (1977:
15). Similarly, in Distinction he describes how world views, philosophies of
life (Bourdieu, 1984: 292) and a sense of belonging to a more polished, more
polite, better policed world (1984: 76) are learnt and transmitted through
practice. This argument, in itself, does not say that normative stances are
ideological, unconsciously aimed at legitimizing power; simply that personal
ethics are partly developed through acquiring a practical and symbolic sense
of a historically, socially and culturally located position through upbringing.
The habitus, understood this way, offers grounds for understanding ethics not
only as abstract ideas but as an embodied and practical sense of the good (see,
for example, Shove, 2003; Lakoff and Collier, 2004; Skeggs, 2004; Sayer, 2005;
Ignatow, 2008; Introna, 2009; Pellandini-Simnyi, 2009; Slater, 2009; Sayer,
2011).4
The second point, on which I wish to focus in this article, explains ethics
as unconscious competitive strategies to maintain and advance ones position
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and to acquire and legitimate power. Bourdieu calls legitimate power

symbolic power, by which he means the kind of power that is reinforced by
authority (as opposed to, say, sheer force). He suggests that symbolic power is
the prime target of social life, which is therefore depicted as a struggle to win
everything which, in the social world, is of the order of belief, credit and
discredit, perception and appreciation, knowledge and recognition name,
renown, prestige, honour, glory, authority, everything which constitutes symbolic power as recognized power (Bourdieu, 1984: 251).
The struggle for symbolic power unfolds between groups, defined by specific sets of capitals and their relations to one another (Bourdieu, 1984).
Groups try to acquire symbolic power, firstly, by playing according to the
existing rules, that is, by maximizing the symbolic profit (1984: 270) on their
existing assets, without putting into question the basis on which symbolic
power is granted. This unconscious drive to maximize symbolic profit dictating different strategies in the light of specific compositions of capitals
explains for example evaluative, normative stances to art: The preference of
intellectuals characterized by low economic and high cultural capital for
cheaper, avant-garde art theatre is governed by the pursuit of maximum
cultural profit for minimum economic cost, expecting the symbolic profit of
their practice from the work itself, from its rarity and from the discourse about
it (after the show, over a drink, or in their lectures, their articles or their books)
through which they will endeavour to appropriate part of its distinctive value
(1984: 270). Note that what Bourdieu describes here may well be experienced
by the agent as genuine intellectual curiosity; yet his point is that objectively it
is merely a strategy that leads to the highest symbolic profit that can be
acquired given a specific set of capitals.
Secondly, groups also try to change the rules in their own favour: they
struggle over the basis on which symbolic capital is granted so as to increase
the value of their existing assets. Every group tries to impose the taxonomy
most favourable to its characteristics, or at least to give to the dominant
taxonomy the content most flattering to what it has and what it is (Bourdieu,
1984: 475476). In other words, every group has an interest in promoting its
own qualities as the most valuable ones, as this would give grounds for legitimate power over other groups (Bourdieu, 1991b). For example, if an intellectual manages to impose her value system on others who are not from
intellectual families, therefore come with a different habitus and a lower level
of cultural capital and hence others adopt and measure their own worth
according to how culturally sophisticated they are, she created a situation
where she comes out winning. Others will look up at her and accept her
superiority. She gained symbolic power. Adapting to a dominated position
implies a form of acceptance of domination . . . the sense of incompetence,
failure or cultural unworthiness imply a form of recognition of dominant
values (Bourdieu, 1984: 389).5 This is why Bourdieu suggests that what a
French intellectual proclaims to be the ethical value of cultural sophistication
is objectively nothing else than an unconscious competitive strategy: it is
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about attaching higher evaluation to qualities that one gained through ones
upbringing in order to establish ones legitimate claim to power.
Bourdieu makes this argument with respect to social groups (see, for
example, Bourdieu, 1984), as well as to the struggles within and between specific
fields (see, for example, Bourdieu, 1996, 2000). Fields are organized around
specific stakes that all participants of the given field pursue. These stakes are
always a form of symbolic power, which is granted on different grounds in each
field. For example, in the scientific field scientific expertise and new, truer results
grant symbolic power, whereas in the autonomous artistic field artistic achievement does. The qualities and achievements that are valued within a given field
could be read as their central values or founding ethics. However, Bourdieu
argues that these seemingly disinterested ethics are guided objectively by the
same logic of competition for symbolic power between groups of different
capital compositions described above: each tries to give a definition of what
counts as a valuable achievement and who can be considered a genuine member
of the field that is most favourable to it:Each is trying to impose the boundaries
of the field most favourable to its interests or which amounts to the same thing
the best definition of conditions of true membership of the field (or of titles
conferring the right to the status of writer, artist or scholar) for justifying its
existence as it stands (Bourdieu, 1996: 223). This is why the prime form of
antagonism is always between orthodoxy and heresy . . . the struggle between
those who espouse conservatism because of the dominant position they temporarily occupy in the field (by virtue of their specific capital) . . . and those who
are inclined to a heretical rupture, to the critique of established forms, to the
subversion of the prevailing models (Bourdieu, 1996: 234). For example, novel
normative visions of good art by an artist, or a new morality preached by a
prophet can be understood objectively as best strategies of groups whose
capital composition is not valuable enough according to the existing rules, who
therefore try to get new valuations accepted. Bourdieus point, in other words,
is that stances that seem and are experienced as disinterested and ethical
correspond, objectively, to the best strategies that particular capital compositions permit in the struggle over power within a given field.
How are peoples normative stances synced with those required by these
struggles? People enter unconsciously, guided by their habitus those fields
and within them those positions where they can expect the highest profit (in
terms of power) on the kinds of capitals and habitus that they possess
(Bourdieu, 1990a, 1996). For example, the habitus and cultural capital of
someone from a French intellectual family will grant her a higher position in
the academic field than in, lets say, football or the church (Calhoun 2003), so
she is more likely to enter that field. Her habitus and capital portfolio will also
define which position within the chosen field she will enter: that of the conservator or the rebel, depending on which position promises her higher symbolic profits.
Once having entered a position in a given field, its occupant is moved by the
requirements of the position: the institutional space, in which all social agents
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. . . have their places assigned to them, produces so to speak the properties of

those who occupy them, and the relations of competition and conflict which set
them against each other (Bourdieu, 1990a: 193194, emphasis in the original),
as a result of which occupants of these positions unless they exclude themselves from the game, have no other choice than to struggle to maintain or
improve their position in the field (Bourdieu, 1990a: 193). In this sense it is not
so much the agents, but the positions that they occupy that are competitive and
power-driven and that move the people occupying them according to their
logic.
In this scheme, all actions, even those understood as disinterested or nonpurposive, and thus freed from economic motives, are to be conceived economically (Bourdieu, 1977: 235), as a means to maximize symbolic profit.
Albeit this view of social life may seem close to rational action theory,
Bourdieu clearly distinguishes his position from that school by emphasizing
that the struggle for power does not take place through conscious strategies,
but intuitively (Bourdieu, 1990b). Partly because it is guided by the habitus
that provides an unconscious sense of the social world; and partly because it is
moved by the requirements that a specific position in any given field exerts on
its occupant (Bourdieu, 1990a).
Based on this depiction, Bourdieu suggests that even though people may
subjectively experience their actions as value-driven, objectively these normative stances can be shown to be conducive to acquiring power. As Sayer (2005:
42) argues:
At one level, Bourdieu recognized the deeply evaluative character of social
behaviour in terms of how people value themselves and members of other
groups, and the practices and objects associated with them. However his
interests in this regard lay primarily in the valuation of these things in
strategic, functional and aesthetic terms. This is partly a consequence of his
interest- and power-based model of social life, and his adoption of a hermeneutics of suspicion that is reluctant to acknowledge disinterested
action, including ethical responses. Any ideas that certain actions may be
disinterested are quickly deflated by deriving them from their habitus and
interests (e.g. Bourdieu, 1984).
Bourdieu applied this theory to a wide array of fields from religion to art and
science, arguing that normative views within these fields are to be understood
as a product of the competing positions within and between them. However, as
Sayer points out, alongside these explicit arguments, he seemed to hold an
implicit, crypto-normative (Sayer, 2005: 99) stance that condemned social
inequalities and injustice (see also Evens, 1999, 2008). This stance informs his
work, for example, on the education system and taste, which expose the hidden
mechanisms through which inequalities are reproduced and naturalized.
Applying his theory to analyse this stance would mean that his own view of
inequality being a bad thing is merely the best means, in the light of his
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capital-composition, of advancing his position within the scientific field. Yet

Bourdieu surely did not see his indignation over injustice in these terms, but as
an ethical stance that is at least in part beyond the struggle for power. In
fact, his very concept of mis-recognition suggests that the good can be established with reference to objective standards outside power-struggles (Sayer,
2001, 2003, 2005).
Sayer suggests that these objectivist stances represent a contradiction to
Bourdieus avowed relativist position, according to which the definition of the
good is a matter of power-struggles. This point is correct if we read Bourdieus
theory as a general one, applying to all human actions. In my reading
(explained in the next section), however, he sought to provide descriptions of
particular empirical cases, and did not exclude in principle the existence of
other cases when ethics are not driven by interests. If my reading is correct, the
objectivist stances signal not a contradiction, but a gap in Bourdieus theory:
whereas he gives abundant descriptions of cases when ethics are unconscious
means by which people advance their own power position, he did not explore
any instances when normative views are not ideological including his own
case, which he, as his implicit crypto-normative language suggests, presumably
considered as such.
The normative shift of the 1990s
The late 1980s, early 1990s marked a change in Bourdieus views on ethics,
which is related to his political turn and to a partial revision of his original
relativist position (Sintomer, 1996; Fber, 2007; Fowler, 2011).6 From the early
1990s Bourdieu increasingly took part in political action for example, he gave
a talk at the railway workers demonstration in 1995 (Wolfreys, 2000) and
took a more explicit normative stance in his writings on current social and
political matters. For example, in his political essays collected in Political
Interventions he attacks neoliberal regimes that produce an extraordinary
mass of suffering (Bourdieu, 2008a: 102) and in an interview with Terry
Eagleton (Bourdieu and Eagleton, 1992) he is explicit about the elimination of
human suffering as the ultimate benchmark of the good.This more objectivist
approach to ethics is clearly articulated in the Pascalian Meditations, where he
argues that:
sceptical or cynical rejection of any form of belief in the universal, in the
values of truth, emancipation, in a word, Enlightenment, and of any affirmation of universal truths and values, in the name of an elementary form of
relativism which regards all universalistic manifestos as pharisaical tricks
intended to perpetuate a hegemony, is another way, in a sense a more
dangerous one, because it can give itself an air of radicalism, of accepting
things as they are.
There is, appearances notwithstanding, no contradiction in fighting at the
same time against the mystificatory hypocrisy of abstract universalism and
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for universal access to the conditions of access to the universal, the primordial objective of all genuine humanism which both universalistic preaching
and nihilistic (pseudo-) subversion forget. (Bourdieu, 2000: 71)
These arguments are clearly at odds with his standard theory, outlined above,
that posits hidden power-interest behind ethical stances. In order to reconcile
these arguments, he needed either to complement his work with a description
of the conditions under which the ethics as ideology argument does not apply;
or, if it was meant to be a general description, to revise the theory altogether.
He did indeed make steps to both directions to accommodate this now explicit
non-relativist position; yet these changes, I will argue, remained partial, resulting in a somewhat contradictory theory.
First, major modifications of his original position focused on his arguments
on the scientific field, which after the early 1990s appears to be the exceptional
area where people are able to break free from the power-driven logic.Whereas
in The Specificity of the Scientific Field (Bourdieu, 1999a), published originally
in 1976, he provided a standard analysis of science where scientific arguments are described as matters of power struggles in Science of Science and
Reflexivity (Bourdieu, 2004), published in 2001, the scientific field is posited as
a field where a transhistoric, universal truth can be arrived at. Reflexivity of
sociologists in particular seems to be the key to apprehend and overcome
social determinism and the power-driven logic characterizing other fields, as
sociologists can find weapons against social determinism in the very science
which brings them to light (Bourdieu, 1990a: 178). It is this knowledge that
enables, and in fact, obliges them to take part in political matters (Bourdieu,
1989).
The special status of the scientific field means that it could be the empirical
case, missing from his earlier work, where ethics qua ethics could be analysed.
Unfortunately, Bourdieu does not provide such an analysis. Rather, he limits
his arguments to the possibility of achieving Truth, rather than Ethics.
Although he urges intellectuals to engage in political issues (Our dream, as
social scientists, might be for part of our research to be useful to a social
movement Bourdieu, 2008b: 58), he warns them that they should not fall
into the trap of offering a program (2008b: 56): their role should be limited to
providing statements of facts rather than value-judgements. Bourdieu resolves
the apparent contradiction between this argument and his explicit normative
position by suggesting that good sociological descriptions talk for themselves,
automatically leading to the good, that is, to the eliminations of suffering and
freedom. For example, they have a liberating effect as they give voice to people
(Bourdieu, 1999b), helping them express what they suffer (Bourdieu and
Eagleton, 1992: 121), and they pinpoint the ways in which social determinism
can be overcome, allowing people to equip themselves with specific weapons
of resistance (Bourdieu, 1996: 340). In this light, what I called his explicit
normative position can be interpreted as not even a normative position, but
simply a set of statements of facts of suffering, exploitation and unfreedom.
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However, in itself the statement of these facts should not have any normative
implications: unless one holds the normative position that exploitation is a bad
and freedom is a good thing, one should feel no moral indignation. This is
clearly not the case with Bourdieu, which suggests again an implicit ethical
stance in his work.Yet his writings fail to provide grounds for such a normative
position even in this period, as the question of how ethics qua ethics is possible,
if at all, is evaded by the above argument that only discusses the possibility of
interest-free factual statements.
The second, much less developed, yet more fruitful modification of
Bourdieus original theory can be found in traces in the Pascalian Meditations
(Bourdieu, 2000), where he offers a somewhat different interpretation of
recognition, which is the essence of symbolic capital. Whereas in earlier writings he described recognition and symbolic capital largely in terms of their
effect of legitimizing power, here he suggests that they are central to human
ontology and a meaningful life. He argues that as children grow up in the
domestic field they move from a stage of narcissistic self-love to a stage where
they discover themselves as an object of others and start to seek their
approval. This process, suggests Bourdieu, relies [my emphasis] on one of the
motors which will be at the origin of all subsequent investments: the search for
recognition [emphasis in the original] (Bourdieu, 2000: 166). In this text he
suggests that the search for recognition is a universal human quality, the very
basis of our human, social nature; though even here he sees it as a form of
self-love rather than ethics (Such might be the anthropological root of the
ambiguity of symbolic capital glory, honour, credit, reputation, fame the
principle of an egoistic quest for satisfactions of amour propre which is, at
the same time, a fascinated pursuit of the approval of others (Bourdieu, 2000:
166, emphasis in the original).)
Furthermore, the pursuit of symbolic capital in this text is equated with the
search for recognition, which appears here not simply as a means of acquiring
power, but as central to a meaningful life:
The social world gives what is rarest, recognition, consideration, in other
words, quite simply, reasons for being. It is capable of giving meaning to life
. . . One of the most unequal of all distributions, and probably, in any case,
the most cruel, is the distribution of symbolic capital, that is of social
importance and of reasons for living . . . Conversely, there is no worse
dispossession, no worse privation, perhaps, than that of the losers in the
symbolic struggle for recognition, for access to a socially recognized social
being, in a word, to humanity. (Bourdieu, 2000: 240241)
This suggests that social games are moved by the quest for a meaningful life,
a purpose, a social mission without which, as he argues, people sink into
indifference and depression (Bourdieu, 2000: 240). He uses the term illusio
for this belief that the stakes of social games and fields in particular are worth
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pursuing. Although it is an illusion in the sense of lacking an objective basis, it

is still essential for the participation in social games that provide the meaning
of life.
These arguments are somewhat inconsistent with his standard depiction of
ethics as a means of acquiring power. In fact, as we will see in the next sections,
the very same points form the basis of theories that argue, against Bourdieu,
that ethics are not reducible to power-struggles, but often stem from the
human pursuit of meaning and purpose. My own view, explained in the third
part, is that the two positions are not necessarily contradictory; in fact, normative evaluations are double-faceted in that they simultaneously involve
ethics and allow for the legitimization of power. The problem is, however, that
Bourdieu does nothing to explain how the two points can be reconciled, but
presents these arguments alongside his original theory, as seamless additions
to, rather than as a revision of it. In the very same text he writes that it is
competition for a power that can only be won from others competing for the
same power, a power over others that derives its existence from others, from
their perception and appreciation (Bourdieu, 2000: 241) and that symbolic
capital . . . is not a particular kind of capital but what every kind of capital
becomes when it is misrecognized as capital, that is, as force, a power or
capacity for (actual or potential) exploitation, and therefore recognized as
legitimate (Bourdieu, 2000: 242). This way these arguments, although promising, remain unconcluded.
In the following sections of the article therefore I will focus on the original
argument that seeks to expose the ideological nature of ethics, which despite
these modifications represents his most well-elaborated position.
Critiques of Bourdieus view on ethics

Against the view that sees ethics as covert, unconscious means to acquire
power, a number of recent works have argued for treating ethics and normative evaluations as autonomous phenomena that can be related, but not
reduced to power motives. These theories challenge the ethics as ideology
argument on two grounds: ontological and empirical. Albeit empirical data
always require interpretation that is in turn informed by ontological assumptions (see next part), the distinction is useful here to capture the distinct focus
of the critiques.
Ontological critiques
Authors proposing an ontological argument suggest that contrary to the
power-driven picture painted by Bourdieu holding normative, ethical stances
is an inevitable, intrinsic quality of being human. Sayer, for example, argues
that we are evaluative beings (2005: 139), not because it helps us to acquire
power; rather it is vulnerability to suffering and capacity for flourishing that
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gives experience its normative character, and from which the force of the
ought as regards ethical matters derives (Sayer, 2009: 12).
A related ontological point is put forward by Charles Taylor (1989), albeit
on different grounds. He also argues that people are inherently evaluative
beings, yet not because of their capacity to suffer and flourish, but because
moral agency is the basis of identity. Identity depends on taking a position with
respect to strong evaluations, which makes evaluative choices an imperative of
being human:
Living within such strongly qualified horizons is constitutive of human
agency, that stepping outside these limits would be tantamount to stepping
outside what we would recognize as integral, that is, undamaged human
personhood . . . To know who you are is to be oriented in the moral space,
a space in which questions arise about good or bad, what is worth doing and
what is not, what has meaning for you, and what is trivial and secondary.
(Taylor, 1989: 2728, my emphasis)
This does not mean that people behave morally at all times; but that taking
certain moral positions is the very essence of being human, therefore an
inescapable human condition.
Axel Honneth (Honneth, 1995; Fraser and Honneth, 2003) puts forward a
similar idea in that he sees moral integrity and personhood as the core of
human life. According to him personhood is dependent on recognition by
others (an idea also strongly present in Taylors 1994 work), therefore he
stresses the interdependence between respect and self-respect. For him,
normative evaluations are understood as part of the core human pursuit of
recognition:7
[T]he reproduction of social life is governed by the imperative of mutual
recognition, because one can develop a practical relation-to-self only when
one has learned to view oneself, from the normative perspective of ones
partners in interaction, as their social addressee. (Honneth, 1995: 92)
These critiques are important, as any project that seeks to acknowledge ethics
qua ethics is only made possible by an ontology that does not see humans as
intrinsically power-driven. Yet they are insufficient to disprove Bourdieus
arguments because he did not intend them as a description of human ontology,
but of particular, historically specific empirical realities. For example, in an
interview with Terry Eagleton he talked about the possibility of other forms of
actions:
Terry Eagleton: That is a true description of many fields of our experience,
but are there not other forms of discourse, other forms of action, which you
couldnt conceptualize so easily in those agonistic terms?
662
Pierre Bourdieu: . . . [T]hat is an important question, and one that I ask

myself; I agree that it is a problem. I dont know why I tend to think in those
terms I feel obliged to by reality. My sense is that the kind of exchange we
are now engaged in is unusual. Where this happens, it is the exception based
on what Aristotle called philia or friendship, to use a more general
expression. Philia is, according to Aristotle, an economic exchange or
symbolic exchange that you may have within the family, among parents or
with friends. I tend to think that the structure of most of the fields, most of
the social games, is such that competition a struggle for domination is
quasi-inevitable. (Bourdieu and Eagleton, 1992: 116)
There are indeed parts of Bourdieus work, for example in the Outline
(Bourdieu, 1977), that suggest that he saw this logic of philia as informing the
good faith economy of the Kabyle in Algeria, in contrast to profit-maximizing
Western capitalism. In this reading, the competitive, instrumental logic
described above is a historical product that emerged only with modern capitalism, rather than a universal human characteristic (Fowler, 2011).
Empirical critiques
If the reduction of ethics to power-struggles is not an ontological argument, it
follows that it can be questioned empirically rather than on ontological
grounds. These empirical critiques have been formulated along two major
lines.8
The first suggests that Bourdieu ignored the normative operations and
moral distinctions that people make in everyday life. For example, Boltanski
and Thvenot (2006) suggested that traditional critical sociology, and
Bourdieu in particular, underestimated the critical capacity of agents and they
argue that people do engage in normative evaluations and judgements. Similar
points are made by Lamont (1992), who provides the empirical evidence of
moral distinctions that people use to evaluate each other, as well as by Sayer
(2001, 2005, 2009, 2011).
The problem with these critiques is that showing that people take normative stances and that they experience their motives as ethical does not suffice
to falsify Bourdieus ethics as ideology argument. The core of that argument is
not that people do not engage in normative operations, but that they do so in
ways that help them to advance their own position in the hierarchy. In fact, in
Bourdieus account the subjective experience of genuine, disinterested normative judgement is essential for the legitimatization of hierarchy (Bourdieu,
1984, 1991a, 1991c, 1993). This means that it is not enough to show that people
see themselves as evaluative beings, as it could fit into the ethics as ideology
account as well; what needs to be proven is that these evaluations cannot be
explained simply in terms of power interests.
This is the focus of the second line of empirical criticism that argues that the
content of ethical ideas cannot be derived from power interests, but from
663
sources that are independent from these struggles. What are these other
sources? One line of critique is based on an objectivist approach to values,
mentioned in the previous part, that suggests that what people value can be
linked to relatively universal, objective standards of human needs (Sayer,
2005).9 The difficulty of this theory is that in order to disprove Bourdieu, one
would need to show that certain qualities are highly valued independently of
social and cultural settings. This is probably possible if we define these valued
qualities loosely enough to accommodate plurality, as Sayer (2011) suggests;
but then the theory becomes too vague and loses its explanatory power. If on
the other hand, we define them narrowly, such a universal applicability is
impossible to show: what people consider valuable, worthy of respect varies
across fields, cultures and goes through temporal change. The theory then is
unable to account for what has been the key question of Bourdieu: why these
valuations differ (between and within groups) and why they change (for
instance, in the field of art).
Another line of critique comes from social constructivist theories that agree
with Bourdieu in that the content of ethics is a matter of social agreement
rather than deducible from an objective standard, yet they contend that it is
cultural tradition, rather than mere power relations that explain them
(Calhoun, 1991).10 At one end are theories that in line with the strong
program of cultural sociology advanced by Jeffrey Alexander (Alexander and
Smith, 2001) explain ethics by the autonomous, internal development of
culture that is independent from socio-economic structure. Boltanski and
Thvenots (2006) work on systems of justifications, each of which is centred
on a particular worth which, in my reading, correspond to particular ethics
lends itself to this interpretation, as they explain the emergence of each
system of worth by the internal development of cultural traditions.11
Other theories within the same line take a more balanced approach, maintaining that ethics are shaped both by cultural traditions and power-struggles.
For example, Lamont argues that cultural repertoires that include ethics
depend not only on socio-economic factors, but also on cultural resources that
are independent from them, such as national traditions. Furthermore, she
draws attention to the temporal dimension that allows even those ethical
stances that once reflected group interests to become independent: [cultural
repertoires] need to be analyzed separately because, even if these repertoires
are shaped by a wide range of economic, political, and socio-historical factors,
they take on a life of their own once they are institutionalized. In other words,
they become part of the environment, of the structure . . . (Lamont, 1992:
135).
Similarly, Honneth acknowledges that economically powerful groups do
have a considerably greater chance of institutionally generalizing their own
value conceptions in society and thereby increasing the social recognition of
their own conduct of life (Honneth, 1986: 65), yet he maintains that economic
power alone is not enough. Cultural traditions, treated here as interrelated yet
autonomous explanatory factors, play a larger role:12
664
[T]he recognition which an existing social order lends to the values and
norms embodied in the life-styles of a particular group does not depend on
the volume of knowledge or wealth, or the quantity of measurable goods
the group has managed to accumulate, rather it is determined according
to the traditions and value conceptions which could be socially generalized
and institutionalized in the society. (Honneth, 1986: 65)
The problem with this counterargument is that Bourdieu did not claim that it
is always the group possessing the highest economic and cultural capital that is
able to set the standards of values in its own favour. As it will be discussed in
the next section in detail, he held that capitals resulting in a dominant position
are dependent on fields and societies. This is why he would be able to refute
the above counterargument by showing that traditions and value conceptions
themselves reflect certain group interests.
The fact that all these empirical critiques seem to be reconcilable with
Bourdieus theory raises the question of whether it is possible even to envisage
an empirical instance that would contradict it. In the next section I argue that
the answer to this question is negative: the possibility of such an instance is
foreclosed by a circularity in Bourdieus argument. This is the reason why,
rather than being obliged by reality, the ethical actions in all the cases studied
by him appear to be ideological.
Circular definition of symbolic capital

Why is it that in nearly all the cases studied by Bourdieu seemingly ethical
pursuits turned out to be, at the end, hidden strategies to acquire power?
Evens (1999, 2008) suggests that the answer lies in fact that albeit Bourdieu
claimed that his description merely reflected reality, his own taken-for-granted
lens through which he interpreted reality was ultimately biased towards
power-driven interpretations. Indeed, as noted previously, the clear separation
between ontology and empirical data applied so far does not take account of
the epistemological point that data do not speak for themselves, but are always
filtered through interpretation. According to Evens, Bourdieus avowed
empiricist position implied a particular ontological assumption according to
which people are moved primarily by power, and it is this assumption that
drove him to interpret even ethical action in those terms.
Evens links ethics to agency, suggesting that Because all of our decisions
ultimately rest on our decided agential capacity, in the end all must be a
question of ethics (Evens, 2008: xxii). This is why for him, Bourdieus inability
to acknowledge ethics qua ethics is ultimately rooted in his tendency to fall
back to a deterministic, objectivist view of human action despite his claim of
overcoming the subjectobject dualism. The solution therefore, according to
Evens, is an ontology that recognizes agency and therefore ethics. Similarly to
Sayer and Honneth discussed above, he maintains that human practice is a
665
question of value qua value, which is to say, a question of ethics (Evens, 1999:
4); however, unlike them, he does not propose a fixed, singular ontology, but a
heterodox one with crosscutting materialist and ethical motives. As he points
out, the existence of materialist motives does not contradict an ethics-centred
ontology: material gain and power need to be valued first in order to be
deemed worthy of pursuing, hence their appreciation implies an initial ethical
choice. As he argues, Though in a plain sense wealth and power sum up
antivalue, they are themselves products of moral selection, and thus they too
presuppose the possibility of value as such (Evens, 1999: 20), therefore even
these motives are always already ethically informed and determined (Evens,
1999: 7).
The implication of Evenss critique is that viewed through Bourdieus interpretative lens informed by a materialist ontology all data will be interpreted as demonstrating the existence of underlying power motives; in other
words, the theory becomes unfalsifiable. To trace this process we need to ask
first what kind of empirical material would be necessary to falsify Bourdieus
theory of ethical stances as unconscious means of the pursuit of power. It
would need to be first, an ethical position that is not conducive to acquiring
and legitimizing power; and second, an instance where ethics cannot be
explained objectively by the interest of the more powerful group.
Can there be an empirical case of ethics that is not conducive to symbolic
power? Hardly. Bourdieu defines symbolic power as power based on recognition: renown, prestige, honour, glory, authority (Bourdieu, 1984: 251).
What he describes here is what Honneth (1995; Brink and Owen, 2007) calls
esteem, and what Charles Taylor (1994) refers to as conditional recognition.
The essence of these and of Bourdieus notion of recognition is that they
denote respect which is granted based on ones achievements and qualities
that people recognize as valuable, as worthy of their admiration.13 This means
that all forms of symbolic power presuppose a normative evaluation, an
underlying ethics. This is not to say that everybody will participate in particular fields out of pure dedication, but that symbolic power is only possible
if there exist field-specific ethics that participants accept regardless of how
well they stick to them in their actual conduct. Without them, achievements
and qualities would not yield esteem and any conception of symbolic power
would be impossible.
However, all ethics automatically and inevitably create different degrees of
esteem and hence a hierarchy. This is because ethics denotes strong evaluations, that is, normative distinctions between better and worse: being a
dedicated mother or a devoted scientist is not simply different from being a
reckless one, but normatively better. If I think that being a good mother or
scientist is something worthy of my awe, this belief will automatically create a
hierarchy in the way I see people. This is why, as Dumont argues, to adopt a
value is to introduce hierarchy, and certain consensus of values, a certain
hierarchy of ideas, things and people (Dumont, 1970: 20). In fact, as Evens
suggests without value there can be no hierarchy (1999: 20). Every ethics
666
produces a sense of legitimate hierarchy; and any legitimate hierarchy can only
be based on a shared system of valuation, on a shared ethics.
This means that ethics is always conducive to symbolic power; but not
because of an underlying, unconscious competitive logic that it masks, but due
to its normative nature, which always implies a hierarchy. As symbolic power
is recognition granted based on ethical qualities, it is an inevitable side-effect
of any particular ethics.14
At points, Bourdieu himself noted this double-faceted nature of symbolic
power. For example, he argued that [society] alone has the power to justify
you, to liberate you from facticity, contingency and absurdity; but and this is
doubtless the fundamental antimony only in a differential, distinctive way:
every form of the sacred has its profane complement, all distinction generates
its own vulgarity (Bourdieu, 1990a: 196). However, he failed to see that the
consequence of this argument is that it is the very nature of ethics that implies
recognition and symbolic power rather than a hidden competitive drive.
The main problem of this tautology is that it renders Bourdieus explanation unable to distinguish between cause and effect in particular empirical
cases. In some cases the pursuit of power creates what look like values from
the inside. In other cases, however, the commitment to particular, historically
specific ethics and the drive to be better according to them is what creates a
hierarchy and what induces actions that may look like mere competition
from the outside. In these cases, what provides the energy that sets the field
in motion is not simply an invisible underlying competitive power motive, but
the nature of ethics itself. It is the essence of ethics that it exerts a binding
force, and hence the very impetus that pushes one to be better according
to its principles. The motive to become a good scientist, a good artist, or a
good mother can be seen as aims worth pursuing irrespective of the power that
their achievement grants (see also Sayer, 2005, on internal goods). Yet in
Bourdieus tautological framework in both cases ethics is interpreted as
pretext for legitimizing power.
A related tautology provides the key to the second question, of whether it
is possible to find empirical instances where ethics cannot be explained objectively by the interest of the most powerful group. To unravel the tautology we
need to start by having a look at what such an objective analysis means in
practice. The most powerful group is defined objectively in terms of its capital
composition. Bourdieus concept of capital retains some aspects of Marxs use
of the term (Calhoun, 1993). It is an accumulated product of effort, hence a
means of transmission: parents can pass on their money, connections and
cultural capital to their children, who can therefore start from a better position
(Calhoun, 2003). Yet Bourdieu also extends Marxs notion; in Distinction
(Bourdieu, 1984) he focuses on three sorts of capital: economic, social and
cultural (I treat symbolic capital separately).
There are two possible ways of interpreting the notion of capital and,
correspondingly, the argument according to which the most powerful group, in
terms of capital composition, determines the dominant ethics. First, we can see
667
these capital forms as universally applicable, which I would like to call the
stable view. This view suggests that these capital compositions denote objective relations that will universally determine subjectivities in predictable ways
regardless of social setting. In this interpretation, Bourdieu uses France in
Distinction as an example of an argument that could be made anywhere else in
the world. Lamont (1992), for example, treats capitals as stable, when based on
empirical evidence gathered in the US she suggests that Bourdieu overestimated the importance of cultural capital and generalized a characteristically
Parisian situation. The argument in this form can be falsified by studies like
Lamonts.
The second interpretation treats capitals as field-dependent. I think this
reading is more correct, as Bourdieu writes that capitals are species of
power . . . whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are
at stake in the field (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1989: 39). According to this
definition, capital denotes the power by which the stakes which, lets not
forget, are always forms of legitimate power of a specific field can be
acquired. This means that capital is not absolute but dependent on the field;
different features and possessions serve as capitals in different fields. We can
talk about religious, scientific, cultural or fashion capital (Bourdieu, 1991c,
1999a; Rocamora, 2002; Entwistle and Rocamora, 2006), because these terms
stand for qualities by which legitimate power can be acquired in particular
fields. In this reading, Distinction shows that in contemporary French society
legitimate power can be achieved by three sorts of capital: economic, social
and cultural. In France these are capitals because stakes can be acquired by
them; if in another society other qualities would grant power, they would not
be capitals.
At this point it is important to make a distinction between what I would like
to call instrumental and ethical capitals. Instrumental capitals are those
that allow one to enter and progress in a given field, yet in themselves do not
provide symbolic capital, legitimate power. For example, becoming an academic requires long years of study that is easier to sustain if one is well
endowed with money; certain positions are easier to get if one has connections,
and so on. Yet money and connections alone do not result in symbolic power.
An academic with no scientific qualities, who only got a position because she
is the main financial donor of the university, will have power, but not symbolic
power.
To acquire symbolic power, then, one needs more than instrumental capitals: qualities that yield esteem. I will call these qualities ethical capital.
Ethical because those achievements and qualities yield esteem that others in
the given group or field recognize as normatively higher, of ethical value.15
Note, again, that I am using ethical in a broad and relativist sense. Among
intellectuals, intelligence and knowledge which Bourdieu calls cultural
capital are the values that grant esteem, whereas in the religious field piety
yields respect and functions as religious capital; simply because participants
acknowledge the importance of these qualities as ethical values.
668
The reason why distinguishing ethical capital is important is that it sheds

light on the circularity of the argument by which Bourdieu proves that ethics
reflects the qualities of most powerful group, and therefore are more favourable to that group. He defined capitals as qualities that allow one to acquire the
stakes, which are always a form of symbolic power, of a particular field.
However, it is only the ethical capitals that truly fit the definition; instrumental capitals do not grant symbolic power, merely facilitate the achievement of
ethical capitals in some cases. This means that powerfulness is defined as the
possession of the sufficient amount and type of ethical capitals; which are, in
turn, defined by their ability to grant symbolic power, in other words, respect
and recognition. This is why the powerful group is by definition the one that
is looked up at and whose qualities are deemed as worthy of respect.Along the
same logic, a position is dominated if it lacks ethical capitals, which in other
words means that the qualities that belong to it are not acknowledged as
worthy in a given field or culture. This is why, again, by definition, it will always
be the case that the qualities of the dominated are not given enough recognition. It is due to this tautology that Bourdieu is always able to prove that the
accepted values belong to the most powerful group; and this is the reason why
all empirical counterarguments trying to find instances when ethics are not
dictated by the dominant group just like the one proposed by Honneth at the
end of the previous section can be dismissed by him.
Conclusion
The aim of this analysis was to open up the analytical space for taking ethics
qua ethics seriously by exposing the flaws in Bourdieus arguments that discount ethics as covert means of the competitive pursuit of power. The point
that I proposed here is not that people act ethically and out of pure devotion
at all times; simply that sometimes they do, yet in Bourdieus framework these
occasions are indistinguishable from those when they consciously or unconsciously pursue power.16 What I hoped to show is that it is not empirical
evidence that justifies Bourdieus scepticism; but a tautology that labels all
qualities worthy of esteem as capitals and hence mistakenly sees all instances
of legitimate power as the hidden aim rather than a side effect of normative
stances. In contrast to this depiction, I argued that the existence of hierarchy
and its acceptance as based on legitimate, symbolic power does not necessarily
indicate an underlying power-motive; ethics also create inadvertently a sense
of legitimate hierarchy and hence symbolic power.
If the tautology is resolved, a modified version of Bourdieus theory can be
fruitfully incorporated into the sociological study of ethics. I have already
mentioned the usefulness of the habitus in understanding the way ethics are
acquired and operate in practice. Beyond that, Bourdieus concept of the field
helps understanding that ethics are not a matter of individual, acultural preferences, but exist in historically evolving, culturally specific areas where their
669
value is recognized and institutionalized. Fields understood this way are the
primary arenas where ethics and the cultural traditions are located, as
opposed to abstract notions of values that float somewhere outside society.
The notion of illusio provides the useful insight that it is the field that presupposes and creates devotion to its field-specific ethics (Bourdieu and Wacquant,
1989). It is through participating in fields that these ethics can be made alive,
be engaged, reproduced or transformed by people of different ethical dispositions acquired as part of their habitus. Bourdieus analysis of the complicity
between the habitus and the fields is invaluable in understanding the ways in
which these personal and field-specific ethical commitments meet and transform one another.
Etvs Lornd University, Budapest
Received 22 September 2011

Finally accepted 16 October 2013
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Agns Rocamora, goston Fber, Gbor Vlyi, Mrk ber ron and the
three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.
Notes
1 Some authors (Bauman, 1993; Habermas, 1993; Miller, 1998) use the terms ethics and morality
to distinguish questions of good life from questions of justice. For the purposes of the present
article the distinction is irrelevant.
2 Foucault, for instance, used the term ethics to refer to the conscious practice of freedom (1997:
285), that is, to the conscious process of working on the self through practice. For a similar
discussion of ethics as bound up with agency see also Evens (1999, 2008) and Zigon (2007,
2008).
3 The debate in which I describe Bourdieus position here refers to how ethics actually works in
everyday life. There exists a related philosophical debate on how it should work, that is, on the
benchmark of the good and the right that can serve as a tenable normative position. These two
debates use the same labels for the schools they describe, which may give grounds for confusion. Sayer (2011) provides an excellent discussion of this debate and of the objectivist
normative position that he advances; for a social constructivist critique of the objectivist
normative position see Slater (1997, 1998) and Honneth (2007).
4 At times Bourdieu proposes a materialist reductionist version of this argument. For example,
in Distinction he explains normative stances by the different degrees of distance from necessity. When proposed that way the argument, as Jeffrey Alexander points out, seeks to submerge cultural norms, to demonstrate that they are determined by forces of a . . . material kind
(1995: 135).
5 In this sense not all groups try to attach a positive evaluation to the qualities in which they
excel, but only the dominant group, as one of the hallmarks of being dominated is the
acceptance of the existing, unfavourable valuation system.
6 Bourdieus early work in Algeria also exhibits a clear political commitment against the suffering caused by colonial rule and the Algerian war (see, for example, Bourdieu, 2013). In this
sense the political turn in his later work can be seen as a return to this earlier stance.
670

7 Whereas Taylor uses largely philosophical arguments, Honneth also builds on anthropology
and social psychology to support this alternative ontology. In this sense, Honneths point is
closer to the ethical naturalism promoted by Sayer.
8 A third line challenges Bourdieu for not giving enough attention to agency, which is seen by
this line as the precondition of ethics. I do not discuss these theories here because, as I
mentioned in the introduction, my use of ethics does not imply agency. For a critique along
these lines see Evens (1999, 2008) and Sayer (2011); for a discussion of the possibility of agency
as regulated liberties in Bourdieus work see McNay (1999).
9 Sayer develops arguments both about how ethics actually works and how it should work. Here
I only refer to the former, as the latter falls into the philosophical debate on ethics, which is
beyond the scope of the current article.
10 According to Taylor (1989) moral traditions can be traced back to religious and philosophical
moral sources that we forgot about and therefore we see them as ahistorically universal and
beyond debate. A somewhat similar argument is developed by MacIntyre (1981), in that he
suggests that our ethical values come from earlier traditions that we are no longer aware of.
11 For earlier formulations see Mills (1940); for a detailed discussion on the similarities and
differences between different branches of repertoire theory and their relation to cultural
sociology see Silber (2006).
12 Along similar lines, LiPuma argues that not just any symbol and valuation principle will be
accepted just because it is promoted by the dominant group, but cultural forms exert power
over agents through their meaningfulness (1993: 33).
13 Power in itself can also generate admiration, yet in order to be recognized as legitimate power,
it needs to be based on qualities deemed as valuable in the given field. This point may be less
evident in certain fields, for example in one where esteem is paid to people who earn the most.
Yet certain ethical values lay at the very foundation of even these fields. In the business word,
respect paid to high-earners is based on the implicit ethical idea that money similarly to
academic titles is a sign of appreciated qualities: an entrepreneurial spirit, hard work and
even aggressive business style (Jackall, 1988; Lamont, 1992). As soon as that assumption does
not hold for example, money turns out to have been acquired through cheating or robbery
money no longer yields esteem, which suggests that only these legitimate ethical qualities
allow money to function as a marker of ones worth in this field. Max Webers (2003) classic
analysis of the ethos of capitalism can also be read along these lines.
14 See also Lemieux (1999), Dreyfus and Rabinow (1993) and Evens (1999).
15 In this sense the notion is close to, yet broader than what Swartz (2009, 2010) calls moral
capital to refer to those qualities, capacities, intelligences, strategies, and dispositions that
young people acquire, possess, and can grow in the pursuit of moral maturity, and where
moral maturity (with its goal of being a good person) is related to educational, career, and
financial success (Swartz, 2009: 148).
16 Sayer (2003) uses the distinction between internal and external goods to capture the difference.
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Bourdieu, ethics and symbolic power

Bourdieu, ethics and symbolic power

interchangeably1 to denote stances that Charles Taylor refers to as strong

Bourdieus shifting views on ethics

Social constructivism can be further divided into two camps, based on

Bourdieu, ethics and symbolic power

and to acquire and legitimate power. Bourdieu calls legitimate power

Bourdieu, ethics and symbolic power

. . . have their places assigned to them, produces so to speak the properties of

capital-composition, of advancing his position within the scientific field. Yet

Bourdieu, ethics and symbolic power

Bourdieu, ethics and symbolic power

pursuing. Although it is an illusion in the sense of lacking an objective basis, it

Critiques of Bourdieus view on ethics

Bourdieu, ethics and symbolic power

Pierre Bourdieu: . . . [T]hat is an important question, and one that I ask

Bourdieu, ethics and symbolic power

Circular definition of symbolic capital

Bourdieu, ethics and symbolic power

Bourdieu, ethics and symbolic power

The reason why distinguishing ethical capital is important is that it sheds

Received 22 September 2011

Bourdieu, ethics and symbolic power

Bourdieu, ethics and symbolic power

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