UCL Sociology Network Annual Lecture 2023

UCL Sociology Network Annual Lecture 2023
The Roots of All Capitals, or, the Human Condition and Social Division

Professor Will Atkinson, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol, UK

From Professor Will Atkinson
In this lecture I will probe the relationship between fundamental features of the human condition and modes of social division and domination. I set out several premises about what it means to be human and, from that, establish misrecognition as the key to understanding division and domination. I briefly make the case that Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of capital and fields gives this baseline best sociological form, but then immediately raise several puzzles and limitations of his work. The first relates to the prominence of the forms of capital focussed on by Bourdieu: economic and cultural capital. Why are they so important, and what are their ultimate roots? I will also clarify a form of capital mentioned only in passing by Bourdieu but of profound historical and contemporary significance: physical capital, or the perceived capacity to subjugate others physically.

The second puzzle or limitation relates to other forms of misrecognition, and capital, irreducible to economic and cultural capital that Bourdieu overlooked but which others – including myself – have broached, which also seem to have roots in fundamental features of the human condition and which extend his framework to incorporate feminist, critical race and post-colonial concerns. These are the capitals related to love, sex and perceived ‘origins’. I thus establish six prime modes of domination underpinning symbolic violence and struggle as well as modes of alienation. Domination and division are not inevitable, however, nor must any conception of the human condition be essentialist or anthropocentric. How to avoid that – the third puzzle – will be touched on at the end of the lecture.

More about the speaker
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/people/person/Will-Atkinson-c1968138-0fa0-4458-8168-aafeaab8943f/

Find out more about the UCL Sociology Network
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/research/domains/collaborative-social-science/ucl-sociology-network

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