ABSTRACT
Approaching sainthood as a social phenomenon means that, as Aviad Kleinberg argues in his study of 'living sainthood': It is more useful to regard not the saint, but the saintly situation — that situation where a person is labeled a saint and his or her behavior interpreted within the parameters of saintly performance — as the basic unit in the dynamics of sainthood. The idea of different forms of 'capital' is one of the best disseminated aspects of Pierre Bourdieu's work. Toril Moi's more careful phrasing recasts Bourdieu's notion in a more useful way, her assumption being that 'under current social conditions and in most contexts maleness functions as positive and femaleness as negative symbolic capital'. Saintly capital, then, is associated with distinction. Although different aspects of sainthood are emphasized at different times, there are a number of specific virtues and practices which have been likely to raise a person's saintly capital throughout the history of Roman Catholic sainthood.
