To some readers this may have seemed an unnecessarily critical appraisal of Bourdieu’s work. It could legitimately be argued that a brief introductory text should be positive rather than negative in its orientation. In my defence I can offer three arguments, the first of which is simply that I have accentuated the positive wherever I felt I could. What is more, I offer this as only one possible reading of Bourdieu’s theory, albeit a plausible one.