Discuss how Pierre Bourdieu's theories could be used to analyze power and inequality in society.

Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist. His work had many facets, among them the idea that one's tastes are formed by the class in which one is born. He believed that a person's aesthetic taste marked them as from a certain social class and prevented the movement of people from lower classes to higher classes. The higher class is defined by aesthetic tastes and aesthetic dislikes that children acquire, and people retain these tastes for...

Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist. His work had many facets, among them the idea that one's tastes are formed by the class in which one is born. He believed that a person's aesthetic taste marked them as from a certain social class and prevented the movement of people from lower classes to higher classes. The higher class is defined by aesthetic tastes and aesthetic dislikes that children acquire, and people retain these tastes for their entire lives. The acquisition of the likes and dislikes of the elite classes is referred to as "cultural capital," and it cannot be achieved by the later acquisition of capital (or money). Instead, cultural capital is acquired when one is a child, and it perpetuates the class system and inequality.

In addition, he believed that the social order is maintained by social agents who have an innate understanding of the cultural "game" and who understand the symbolic representations of their actions. Through what he called symbolic violence, people perpetuate the social order and inequality by pretending that these cultural barriers to social mobility do not exist. He also developed the theory of cultural deprivation, which stated that the elite class considered the lower class inferior and held them responsible for their children's failures in the educational system.

His theories help people understand the ways in which power is perpetuated in society and inequality is maintained. His work identifies the invisible cultural barriers that people use to assume superiority over others and keep others out of the elite classes. We should be attentive to the ways in which the culture and the educational system maintain systems of inequality, and prevent access into the elite classes for people born into other classes.