ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the traditions of analysis that have gone into the making of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the symbolic, and to specify the way in which he innovates with them, to surpass them in power and scope. Bourdieu sees a continuity between the structuralist approach to the analysis of symbolic systems and the tradition discussed above in so far as the former seems to provide a methodological instrument to realize the neo-Kantian ambition of grasping the specific logic of each of the symbolic forms. In Bourdieu’s conception, all symbolic systems share the three qualities noted above. Bourdieu concurs with the view that there is a correspondence between social structures and mental structures, and argues for and demonstrates the fruitfulness of extending this basic Durkheimian insight from the analysis of systems of classification in traditional communities to the study of those of ‘advanced’ societies.
