General Sociology - 3: Forms of Capital

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This third volume of five, based on Pierre Bourdieu's early 1980s lectures at the Collége de France, aims to define and defend sociology as an intellectual discipline. Bourdieu clarifies key concepts that have significantly influenced contemporary sociology. This volume centers on the concept of capital, part of his foundational trilogy: habitus, capital, and field. A field represents a social space characterized by enduring relationships between agents and institutions, serving as a site for specific investments that require particular forms of capital, yielding both material and symbolic profits. Among various forms of capital, economic and cultural capital are particularly vital across all social fields. These forms exist in relation to the fields they inhabit, with their distribution shaping the field's structure and conferring power over its mechanisms and the resulting profits, such as the transmission of cultural capital within education. This volume serves as an ideal introduction to one of Bourdieu's most significant concepts and will captivate students, scholars, and general readers interested in the work of a pivotal sociologist and social thinker of the twentieth century.