ABSTRACT
In his work, Bourdieu appears to have dedicated less space to the concept of social capital, even though he considers it as one of the principal forms of capital in social life, alongside cultural and economic forms of capital ( Bourdieu 1986a). A thorough investigation reveals that in 1980 he wrote and published a text entitled “Notes Provisoires”, which contains an innovative theoretical and empirical research programme that provides an accurate definition of social capital and several hypotheses for empirical analysis. More importantly, if we want to take serious account of Bourdieu’s statements in this short two-page text, we have to break with some of the recent works on social capital (Ponthieux 2006).
