1422 Symbolic Violence
Urban, Glen L., and John R. Hauser. Design and Marketing attempts to understand how power works without
Copyright 2011. SAGE Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or
of New Products. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1993.
Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class: An
Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions. New
York: Macmillan, 1899.
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 vio-
lence 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 rela-
tions in which both working-class and middle-class
people agree that the middle classes are more intel-
ligent, more capable of running the country, more
deserving of higher pay. In terms of consumer cul-
ture, 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, Bourdieus characterization of work-
ing-class life as operating on a principle of closing
off possibilities (thats not for the likes of us) is
relevant.
As Bourdieu notes, symbolic violence is a danger-
ous 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 rela-
tions in which they are dominated. However, such
objectionsalthough at first glance begged by the
conceptfail to do justice to its complexity. As with
all or nearly all of Bourdieus conceptual tools, sym-
bolic violence has to be seen in the context of, and in
relation to, other Bourdieusian conceptsnotably, in
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this case, doxa, habitus, (mis)recognition, and, more
generally, Bourdieus theory of power. The develop-
ment of the concept is linked with Bourdieus long-
standing attempt to problematize the line between
freedom and constraint within relations of domina-
tion. Above all, it has to be seen in the context of his
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explicit coercion.
Bourdieu is at pains to stress that symbolic vio-
lence 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 Bourdieus 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 vio-
lence. It may become apparentfor example, during
overt political strugglesbut 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
Bourdieus 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 domina-
tion 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 impla-
cable is the one exerted, quite simply, by the order of
things (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2002, 168, italics
in original).
Although, clearly, there are many examples of
power being used overtly through physical violence
and explicit coercion, Bourdieus concern in develop-
ing the notion of symbolic violence is with the ways
in which power may exist in relations that make it
misrecognized: that is, in which its power is unseen.
This is closely linked with his notion of habitushis
term for the ways in which social relations and social
rules are literally embodied. In this way, they do not
simply exist out there but are part of who we are.

Does this mean, then, that relations of symbolic
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violence are always with us? Bourdieu is character-
istically pessimistic about the possibilities of effec-
tive resistance, not because he characterizes people
as passive (People are not fools [Bourdieu and
Wacquant 2002, 130]) but because of the character
of relations of domination. His view can be summed
up in the following passage:
When the dominated quest for distinction leads the
dominated to affirm what distinguishes them, that
is, that in the name of which they are dominated and
constituted as vulgar, do we have to talk of resistance?
In other words, if, in order to resist, I have no other
resource than to lay claim to that in the name of
which I am dominated, is this resistance? Second
question: when, on the other hand, the dominated
work at destroying what marks them out as vulgar
and at appropriating that in relation to which they
appear as vulgar (for instance, in France, the Parisian
accent). Is this submission? I think this is an insoluble
contradiction. . . . Resistance may be alienating and
submission may be liberating. Such is the paradox of
the dominated, and there is no way out of it.
(Bourdieu 1990, 155)
Nevertheless, it is clear that within Bourdieus
schema, change can occur in the interaction of field
and habitus, so it would be mistaken to see his work
as locking us into endlessly repeating cycles of the
same forms of symbolic violence. Yet, unlike the
Marxist doctrine of false consciousness, it is not
something that can be sloughed off with the correct
analysis or the achievement of sufficient knowledge:
Because the foundation of symbolic violence lies not
in mystified consciousnesses that only need to be
enlightened but in dispositions attuned to the
structure of domination of which they are the
product, the relation of complicity that the victims of
symbolic domination grant to the dominant can
only be broken through a radical transformation of
the social conditions of production that lead the
dominated to take the point of view of the dominant
and on themselves. (Bourdieu 2001, 4142)
This raises the question of whether Bourdieu
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overemphasizes the efficacy of symbolic violence.
Do dominated groups really take the point of view
of the dominated? In the case of women, feminist
analysts have pointed out how ambivalently women
may inhabit feminine positions (see, e.g., Skeggs,
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Symbolic Violence 1423
1997). They may simultaneously accept and refuse
their location as other to a masculine norm.
But another question arises from this concept: if
symbolic violence is so naturalized, so legitimated
that we fail to see its workings as violence, how is
Bourdieu (or any other analyst) able to see through
it? As Bourdieu points out, intellectuals are steeped in
doxic relations and therefore unlikely to easily recog-
nize symbolic violence. Indeed, they are likely, given
their legitimated status, to be involved in exercising it
(see Bourdieu 1988). The answer to this conundrum
would seem to lie in the distinctive form of reflexivity
that Bourdieu advocates throughout his work. This
reflexivity consists of a sociological investigation
of the location of the researchers in social space (in
relation to their class, gender, etc., but also in rela-
tion to their discipline, their university, etc.). More
profoundly, Bourdieu advocates a third form of
reflexivity: that which interrogates the intellectualist
biasthe unthought categories that govern specific
disciplines and the academic world in generaland
activity that, he argues, cannot be undertaken by the
researcher alone, but must be a collective endeavor.
For Bourdieu, then, one of the tasks of a reflexive
sociology is precisely to expose and to analyze the
hidden relations of domination encapsulated in sym-
bolic violence (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2002).
Aside from exegesis, symbolic violence has only
relatively rarely been taken up and used in any
extended way by other analysts. However, Angela
McRobbie provides a vivid and compelling account
of its use in contemporary British makeover televi-
sion programs. As McRobbie points out, the pro-
grams only work because people (apparently freely)
submit themselves to the viciousness and nastiness of
the process, presumably in pursuit of some other goal.
Yet, the viciousness remains and is often a vehicle for
class-based insults and expressions of superiority on
the part of the presenters. Why, we might ask, would
anyone undergo this? In this respect, both partici-
pants and presenters indeed seem to be enmeshed
in a mutually complicit relationship of symbolic
violence that passes as entertainment through self-
improvement. McRobbies analysis gives flesh to a
difficult yet compelling concept.
Steph Lawler
See also Bourdieu, Pierre; False Consciousness/False
Needs; Gender; Resistance; Social Distinction;
Symbolic Capital; Symbolic Value; Taste
 1424 Systems of Provision
Further Readings
Copyright 2011. SAGE Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or
Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Homo Academicus. Cambridge: Polity,
1988.
Bourdieu, Pierre. In Other Words: Essays Towards a
Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity, 1990.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the
Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge, 1998.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Masculine Domination. Cambridge:
Polity, 2001.
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loc Wacquant. An Invitation to
Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity, 2002.
McRobbie, Angela. Notes on What Not to Wear and
Post-Feminist Symbolic Violence. In Feminism after
Bourdieu, edited by Lisa Adkins and Beverley Skeggs,
99109. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.
Moi, Tori. Appropriating Bourdieu: Feminist Theory and
Pierre Bourdieus Sociology of Culture. New Literary
History 22 (1991): 10171049.
Skeggs, Beverley. Formations of Class and Gender:
Becoming Respectable. London: Sage, 1997.
SYSTEMS OF PROVISION
Systems of provision is an approach to the study of
consumption that recognizes the social and economic
organization of the delivery of goods and services.
Essentially, it is a holistic approach that situates the
analysis of consumption in relation to processes of
production, distribution, and retail. Moreover, it
places consumption in historical context and so pro-
vides a useful way of thinking through changes in
patterns of consumption and, more broadly, socio-
economic change. It is most readily associated with
the work of Ben Fine and was initially developed in
The World of Consumption (1993), written in con-
junction with Ellen Leopold. The systems of pro-
vision approach emerged as a critique of so-called
horizontal approaches to consumption in which
individual academic disciplines develop their explan-
atory accounts of consumption based on a limited
selection of commodities and make generalizations
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about the consumption of all commodities across
all societies. The problem with this, according to the
systems of provision perspective, is that it overlooks
the importance of other explanatory factors as well
as the relationship between these factors and the dif-
ferences that exist between different commodities by
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virtue of the different systems of provision in which
they are located.
Eschewing the tendency to make generalizations,
the systems of provision perspective positions itself as
a vertical approach to the study of consumption. For
example, it would not offer explanations about the
consumption of peanut butter or blueberries based
on theories that have been developed to explain the
consumption of motor vehicles. Instead, it starts with
the idea that each commodity, or group of commodi-
ties, should be understood in terms of a unity of eco-
nomic and social processes that varies significantly
from one commodity to another. As such, expla-
nations of consumption are only ever specific to a
particular commodity or group thereof. These unities
of economic and social processes are best thought
of as the distinct relationships between the material
and cultural practices underpinning the production,
distribution, circulation, and consumption of the
commodities concerned. These factors and the rela-
tionships between them form a chain of activity that
represents the system of provision for a particular
commodity. It follows that each commodity should
be analyzed according to the interaction between the
factors that give rise to it. By way of example, Fine
and Leopold (1993) offer an in-depth analysis of
the food and clothing systems of provision, whereas
Fine, Michael Heasman, and Judith Wright (1998)
disaggregate their analysis of the food system even
further to explore the specific systems of provision
for meat, sugar, and dairy products.
Common to all these examples is the idea that
disparate elements across the supply chain serve
to configure the system as a whole such that more
conventional or horizontal explanations are seen as
failing to capture the complexities of socioeconomic
organization underpinning different commodities. In
this view, changes in food consumption would not be
sufficiently explained by the consumers love of vari-
ety or the need for convenience; rather, it would also
call for (among other things) a focus on agricultural
policies, relationships between various actors along
the supply chain, and international regulatory frame-
works. Another theme in Fines analyses is that the
norms governing the rules of appropriate consump-
tion with regard to any given commodity are struc-
tured vertically by the system of provision just as the
notion of consumer choice is a property of the system
underpinning the delivery of the commodity in ques-
tion. For example, Fine suggests that the quantity of