Subject: More questions on 'capital'
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 14:08:33 +1030



In writing a recent essay I noticed a discrepency in the number of guises
which capital is seen to exist. I am aware that there could in effect be an
unlimited number of specific incarnations of capital which are related to
their respective field(s) or subfields. However, these, I assume, are
understood to be characterised as either economic, cultural or social forms
of capital. In 'Forms of Capital' (1986) Bourdieu notes that there are these
three types of capital  which are all seen as 'symbolic capital' in that
they are representations dependent on being apprehended symbolically. So
even economic capital is not autonomously an expression of power but is
(mis)recognized as legitmate symbolically. However, in 'An Invitation to
Reflexive Sociology' (1992) Bourdieu notes that to these three fundamental
species "we must add symbolic capital which is the form that one or another
of these species takes when it is grasped through categories of perception
that recgnize its specific logic..." (p. 119). I have noticed that
Jenkins(1992) and Swartz (1997) note that there are four types of capital,
including symbolic capital as the fourth. Yet, to me it is still unclear,
despite Bourdieu noting that "we must add", as to whether symbolic capital
is a distinct species of capital - it seems to that it is the means, "the
specific logic", by which the other types are recognized.

Is symbolic capital a fourth species of capital that is distinct in its
attributes from the other three fundamental types, or is it that all of
these forms of capital are reliant on being 'symbolic capital'?

Is masculine domination an example of symbolic capital - apprehended
symbolically by a shared system of meanings and values, the arbitrariness of
its efficacy and possesion being misrecognized?
Or, is masculine domination a form of 'embodied' cultural capital, which is,
nonetheless, still a form of symbolic capital?

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