Conversion is how agents exchange and transform one form of capital they possess into another.  All conversions entail some sort of cost of time and labor both of which are of finite supply for the agent due to biological and material constraints.  An individual only has so much time, energy, and capability to use or transform their capital. Bourdieu uses the term conservation of social energy to consider that there is a labor and time cost both accumulate and transform capital.  By this logic, the goal of the economic game is to accumulate the most amount of capital by the most cost-effective means available.  No one type of capital is inherently superior to another as the value of any given type of capital is highly context dependent.  

Augustana College (IL)

Pierre Bourdieu, a renowned French sociologist, attempts to explain the mechanics by which society produces and maintains the social order.  He argues that the accumulation of Capital is the backbone by which society creates the rules that governs itself and sets constraints for the actions of individual agents within that society.   To him, the social world is in essence is an economic game where agents invest limited time and social energy to accumulate Capital by which they can produce outcomes (services, good, profit, etc.)  and rise in status.  Society is view as a field where agents play the game of Capital accumulation with the goal of ascending to the elite class, a class who has a vested interest in excluding potential new members, and a desire to reproduce the conditions that keeps them in that place of status.  To flesh out the idea of Capital accumulation, Bourdieu, challenges the traditional notions of economics at the time which understood  Capital in strictly monetary terms. He introduces two other forms of Capital that more adequately account for the structure and functioning of the social and economic worlds: Cultural, and Social.  Agents exchange and convert these types of Capital into one another to pursue their own self-interest, and Bourdieu concludes with how these forms of Capital are converted.

Forms of Capital, Pierre Bordieu

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1986. “The Forms of Capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, edited by J.G. Richardson.  Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, pp. 241-258.

Forms of Capital by Pierre Bordieu

Set of social assets and characteristics that symbolizes an agent's resources, power, and status. Cultural Capital comes in three forms:

1. Embodied State: 
2. Objectified State: 
3. Institutionalized State: 


Cultural Capital

The sum of an agent’s social network, the resources within that network, and the ability to access and mobilize the resources and individuals from that network.  Social networks come in a variety of forms and compositions that include kin networks, families, business and social organization, and government institutions.  Bourdieu uses the term “durable network” to imply that the people and institutions that an agent has some form of long-lasting association with or membership in. All individuals within an agent’s network have some sort of resource that the agent needs or wants for any particular reason, and an agent has a varying ability to access other people or resources within that network in the form of an exchange or social obligation. 

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