Symbolic Violence

In the work of Pierre Bourdieu, symbolic violence denotes more than a form of violence operating symbolically. It is “the violence which is exercised upon a social agent with his or her complicity” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2002, 167, italics in original). Examples of the exercise of symbolic violence include gender relations in which both men and women agree that women are weaker, less intelligent, more unreliable, and so forth (and for Bourdieu gender relations are the paradigm case of the operation of symbolic violence), or class relations in which both working-class and middle-class people agree that the middle classes are more intelligent, more capable of running the country, more deserving of higher pay. In terms of consumer culture, symbolic violence might be seen to be at work through the definitional characterization of some things (goods, tastes, lifestyles) as better than others and as accruing rightly to those who deserve them. In this context, Bourdieu's characterization of working-class life as operating on a principle of closing off possibilities (“that's not for the likes of us”) is relevant.

As Bourdieu notes, symbolic violence is a dangerous formulation: it leads to questions about whether people desire their own domination, for example, or, more forcefully, whether people are little more than cultural dupes, acquiescing to social relations in which they are dominated. However, such objections—although at first glance begged by the concept—fail to do justice to its complexity. As with all or nearly all of Bourdieu's conceptual tools, symbolic violence has to be seen in the context of, and in relation to, other Bourdieusian concepts—notably, in this case, doxa, habitus, (mis)recognition, and, more generally, Bourdieu's theory of power. The development of the concept is linked with Bourdieu's longstanding attempt to problematize the line between freedom and constraint within relations of domination. Above all, it has to be seen in the context of his attempts to understand how power works without explicit coercion.

Bourdieu is at pains to stress that symbolic violence works with the tacit acceptance and complicity of both those who use it and those who are subject to it. Neither side is conscious of its operation. Hence, it is not propaganda, influence, or hegemony. It does not rely on deliberate actions on the part of those who wield it. It is disguised, its violence hidden by an apparent “inevitability” of social relations, the inequality of which may itself be hidden. As with so much of Bourdieu's work, he is concerned with showing how a social product (in this case, symbolic violence) comes to be understood and perceived as natural and inevitable. Because symbolic violence is understood as legitimate, it is not recognized as violence. It may become apparent—for example, during overt political struggles—but at that moment, it is recognized for what it is (the exercise of domination) and so ceases to be symbolic violence (Moi 1991).

What is key here is the exercise of the doxa. In Bourdieu's work, doxa refers to “an adherence to relations of order which, because they structure inseparably both the real world and the thought world, are accepted as self-evident” (1998, 471). Doxa are unthought categories: those categories and relations that appear natural and inevitable. A doxic society is one in which social rules are understood as natural and self-evident. “What is essential goes without saying because it comes without saying: the tradition is silent, not least about itself as tradition” (1977, 167, italics in original). When social actors are embedded and enmeshed within social relations that are normalized in this way, the workings of domination can become invisible. Power is misrecognized so that it comes to be perceived not as power at all: “Of all forms of ‘hidden persuasion,’ the most implacable is the one exerted, quite simply, by the order of things” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2002, 168, italics in original).

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