ABSTRACT
Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory is a formidable combination of theoretical and empirical rigour and innovativeness whose influence has grown steadily, first within France and then internationally, across disciplinary boundaries between sociology, anthropology, and history. The process of the importation of this theory from France into the English-speaking world, however, been without its pitfalls, that have left their imprint on the quality of the engagement of the wider sociological community. ‘The confounding variety of interpretations, the mutually exclusive criticisms, and the contradictory reactions it has elicited’ testify to the fact that the systematic nature and main thrust of Bourdieu’s endeavour have often remained hidden from view. Bourdieu’s theory of the symbolic brings together and simultaneously surpasses through critique three distinct modes of analysing symbolic systems. These are: the approach that views them as structuring structures; that which analyzes them as structured structures, and that which regards them as instruments of domination.
