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(Accepted version to appear in The Sociological Review)

Léna Pellandini-Simányi*

Bourdieu, ethics and symbolic power

Abstract

This article critically discusses Pierre Bourdieu’s views on ethics and normative

evaluations. Bourdieu acknowledged that people hold ethical stances, yet sought to

show that these stances are -- unconsciously -- conducive to obtaining symbolic power

and legitimizing hierarchy. The first part of the article looks at this argument and charts

the shifts it went through particularly in the early 1990s. The second part discusses

ontological and empirical critiques of the ethics as ideology argument and suggests the

latter to be more salient, as Bourdieu proposed his argument as an empirical rather than

as an ontological point. The reason why he nevertheless found the ethics as ideology

explanation fitting to nearly all the cases he studied, as the third part argues, is not

simply that reality ‘obliged’ him to do so, but his circular definition of symbolic capital

as qualities that are worthy of esteem. This definition makes his argument of ethics as

ideology unfalsifiable and impedes him from distinguishing between cases when

legitimate power is the aim of ethics and between those when it is merely their side

effect. The article concludes by suggesting ways in which Bourdieu’s work can be

fruitfully incorporated into the study of ethics once the tautology is resolved.

Introduction

* ELTE University, Department of Media and Communication, Budapest, simanyi@emc.elte.hu

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The sociological study of ethics and morality has taken diverse paths from the birth of

sociology as a discipline in the 19th century. Durkheim (1993) and Weber (2003)

attributed a central role to ethics (or ethos) in explaining social and economic

phenomena. Marx (1977a; 1977b), in contrast, radically questioned the explanatory

power and hence the importance of ethics, by arguing that values merely reflect

structures and interests defined by economic relations. Following this tradition, critical

sociologists analysed people’s normative stances mainly as covert interests. The study

of ethics qua ethics in this tradition was seen not only as futile, but also harmful: values

considered as ideologies were seen as something to be unmasked rather than

acknowledged (Sayer 2004). Recent years, however, witnessed a renewed interest in the

study of everyday ethics as a phenomenon that is related, yet not reducible to economic

relations and interests (see for example, Bauman 1993; Laidlaw 2002; Sayer 2005;

Abend 2007; Evens 2008; Zigon 2008; Hitlin and Vaisey 2010; Sayer 2011). This is the

field that this article wishes to contribute to by providing a critical discussion of Pierre

Bourdieu’s dismissal of ethics.

Bourdieu’s work is important in this regard because it contains some of the most

well-developed arguments that posit ethical stances as covert means of power struggles.

Bourdieu did not suggest that people do not engage in normative evaluations; on the

contrary, he emphasized the centrality of evaluations in everyday life. However, in the

predominant part of his work he interpreted these as covert competitive strategies to

advance one’s position and legitimize power (Bourdieu 1984; 1991b; 1991a). His works

are so all-encompassing -- ranging from religion (Bourdieu 1991a) to art (Bourdieu

1996), science (Bourdieu 1999a; 2004), and everyday taste (Bourdieu 1984) -- that if

one is to study everyday ethics qua ethics, she almost inevitably comes across a relevant

work of Bourdieu that argues her efforts to be futile. This is why the study of ethics qua

ethics can only proceed if one is able to show where Bourdieu’s arguments, by which he

dismisses it, are found wanting. This is focus of the current article.

The article starts by outlining Bourdieu’s position on ethics, charting the shifts

that it went through and the tensions that exist within it. This part suggests that although

the argument that sees ethics as pretext for power-struggles -- characterising most of his

oeuvre -- is mitigated in his works following the early nineties, he did not revise his

original position, merely complemented it by exceptions (as in the case of science) and

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somewhat inconsistent additions. The second part discusses the two main lines of

existing criticism of Bourdieu’s dismissal of ethics. The first challenges Bourdieu on

ontological grounds, proposing a view of humans as ethical beings as opposed to the

power-driven depiction posited by Bourdieu (Honneth 1986; Taylor 1989; Evens 1999;

Sayer 2005). The problem with this line, as this part argues, is that Bourdieu did not

mean his arguments to be ontological but empirical and, in principle, falsifiable. The

second line of criticism attempts such an empirical falsification (Lamont 1992; Sayer

2005; Boltanski and Thévenot 2006), however, all empirical counterevidence listed by

these theories seems reconcilable with Bourdieu’s theory. This leads to the core

question of the article: How does Bourdieu manage to maintain the claim that all

seemingly ethical actions are objectively power-driven? The answer, proposed in the

third part, lays in his tautological definition of symbolic capital as esteem. As esteem is

granted on an ethical basis -- as it involves looking up at someone for worthy qualities -

- an esteem-based hierarchy always presupposes ethics. This means that Bourdieu is

only able to show that all ethics are objectively power-driven because his very concept

of legitimate power is grounded in an ethically-based notion of esteem. The article

concludes by outlining ways in which Bourdieu’s work can be usefully incorporated

into the study of ethics, once this tautology is corrected.

Before moving to the main analysis, a note on what I mean by the term ‘ethical’.

I will use the words ethics, morality and normative evaluations interchangeably1 to

denote stances that Charles Taylor refers to as ‘strong evaluations’ (Taylor 1989, p.74).

‘Strong evaluations’ are normative principles that are experienced as independent from

personal inclination -- and are therefore different from preferences --, constituting outer

standards by which our very desires can be judged: ‘We sense in the very experience of

being moved by some higher good that we are moved by what is good in it rather than

that it is valuable because of our reaction’ (1989, p.74). This formulation implies a

descriptive rather than a substantive, normative use of the term ‘ethical’: what makes an

idea ‘ethical’ is the fact that for particular people it represents a way of living or being

that they consider higher as opposed to being simply more desirable. The advantage of

this descriptive definition is that allows for the empirical analysis of very different

normative stances -- even of those that the analyst might happen to disagree with. Also

note that unlike some theories of ethics that treat agency as the prerequisite of ethical

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action,2 the conception of ethics used here does not require agency, but also includes the

unreflexive adherence to existing moral traditions.

Bourdieu’s shifting views on ethics

Bourdieu dedicated a large part of his work to the analysis of normative evaluations

people pass: he studied the basis on which honour is granted in Algeria (Bourdieu 1977;

1990b), the qualities that the French education system values (Bourdieu 1988), the

evolution of the criteria that define good art (Bourdieu 1996) and the normative

distinctions people make in their everyday life under the heading of ‘taste’ (Bourdieu

1984). His position on these normative stances -- although containing some

contradictions that will be discussed shortly -- can be classified as social constructivist.3

Social constructivism sees ethics as a matter of social agreement. This distinguishes it

on the one hand from objectivist theories that argue that the definition of the ‘good’ and

what is valuable can be grounded in something objective: in human nature and needs, or

in the intrinsic qualities of goods and practices (Sayer 2011). On the other hand, social

constructivism differs from subjectivist or emotivist theories that suggest that the

definition of the good is subjective, simply a matter of individual likes and dislikes

(Taylor 1989). First, social constructivism suggests that ethical standards are beyond

individuals; as Taylor argues ‘Each young person may take up a stance which is

authentically his or her own; but the very possibility of this is enframed in a social

understanding of great temporal depth, in fact “tradition”’ (Taylor 1989, p.39). Second,

unlike emotivism, most social constructivist theories do not see ethics as preferences,

but as ‘strong evaluations’ (Taylor 1989, p74.) in the sense described above: as qualities

and principles that people experience as higher, external standards by which their own

conduct is to judged. Yet, unlike objectivist theories, they locate the source of these

external standards in society and culture rather than in human nature.

Social constructivism can be further divided into two camps, based on how the

content of the ethics reached through such a social agreement is explained: with

reference to interests of the dominant group, or to cultural traditions that are

independent from socio-economic relations (see second part for further discussion). In

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this debate the largest part of Bourdieu’s work falls into the former camp: he interpreted

evaluative stances first and foremost as means by which struggles over power are

fought. This position, however, shifted and carried a number of contradictions. The

major shift took place in the early 1990s (Sintomer 1996; Fáber 2007; Fowler 2011)

when Bourdieu took a more explicit stance on political matters, which was related to the

revaluation of his relativist views on science and to a limited extent, on ethics. In this

section I look at his views on ethics before and after the shift in turns.

Ethics as ideology

Bourdieu’s explicit position on ethics until the early nineties was informed by two

related points. First, he suggested that people incorporate different conditions of

existence as well as existing moral frameworks through the habitus. The habitus is a

largely unconscious, internalized, even bodily sense of the social world acquired

through upbringing. It delimits tastes, bodily gestures, ways of eating, sitting and

talking; in short, everything we think and do, including our normative ideas (Bourdieu

1984; 1995). This argument lends itself to the interpretation proposed by Andrew Sayer

(2011), according to which our ethical stances are developed as part of our habitus. For

example, Bourdieu’s Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977) includes vivid descriptions

on how the sense of honour, a deeply ethical sense of how a man of virtue should

behave, and more broadly, what it means to be a proper man is ‘inculcated in the earliest

years of life’ until it becomes a ‘permanent disposition, embedded in the agents’ very

bodies in the form of mental dispositions, schemes of perception and thought, extremely

general in application’ (1977, p.15). Similarly, in Distinction he describes how ‘world

views’, ‘philosophies of life’ (Bourdieu 1984, p.292) and ‘a sense of belonging to a

more polished, more polite, better policed world’ (1984, p.76) are learnt and transmitted

through practice. This argument, in itself, does not say that normative stances are

ideological, unconsciously aimed at legitimizing power; simply that personal ethics are

partly developed through acquiring a practical and symbolic sense of a historically,

socially and culturally located position through upbringing. The habitus, understood this

way, offers grounds for understandings ethics not only as abstract ideas but as an

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embodied and practical sense of the good (see for example, Shove 2003; Lakoff and

Collier 2004; Skeggs 2004; Sayer 2005; Ignatow 2008; Introna 2009; Pellandini-

Simanyi 2009; Slater 2009; Sayer 2011). 4

The second point, on which I wish to focus on in this article, explains ethics as

unconscious competitive strategies to maintain and advance one’s position and to

acquire and legitimate power. Bourdieu calls legitimate power ‘symbolic power’ by

which he means the kind of power that is reinforced by authority (as opposed to, say,

sheer force). He suggests that symbolic power is the prime target of social life, which is

therefore depicted as a struggle ‘to win everything which, in the social world, is of the

order of belief, credit and discredit, perception and appreciation, knowledge and

recognition -- name, renown, prestige, honour, glory, authority, everything which

constitutes symbolic power as recognized power’ (Bourdieu 1984, p. 251).

The struggle for symbolic power unfolds between groups, defined by specific

sets of capitals and their relations to one another (Bourdieu 1984). Groups try to acquire

symbolic power on the one hand by playing according to the existing rules, that is, by

maximizing the ‘symbolic profit’ (1984, p. 270) on their existing assets, without putting

into question the basis on which symbolic power is granted. This unconscious drive to

maximize symbolic profit -- dictating different strategies in the light of specific

composition of capitals -- explains for example evaluative, normative stances to art.

‘The preference of intellectuals -- characterized by low economic and high cultural

capital -- for cheaper, avant-garde art theatre is governed by the pursuit of maximum

“cultural profit” for minimum economic cost’, expecting ‘the symbolic profit of their

practice from the work itself, from its rarity and from the discourse about it (after the

show, over a drink, or in their lectures, their articles or their books) through which they

will endeavour to appropriate part of its distinctive value’ (1984, p. 270). Note that what

Bourdieu describes here may well be experienced by the agent as genuine intellectual

curiosity; yet his point is that objectively it is merely a strategy that leads to the highest

symbolic profit that can be acquired given a specific set of capitals.

On the other hand, groups also try to change the rules in their own favour: they

struggle over the basis on which symbolic capital is granted so as to increase the value

of their existing assets. Every group tries ‘to impose the taxonomy most favourable to

its characteristics, or at least to give to the dominant taxonomy the content most

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flattering to what it has and what it is’ (Bourdieu 1984, p.475-6). In other words, every

group has an interest in promoting its own qualities as the most valuable ones, as this

would give grounds for legitimate power over other groups (Bourdieu 1991b). For

example, if an intellectual manages to impose her value system on others -- who are not

from intellectual families, therefore come with a different habitus and a lower level of

‘cultural capital’ -- and hence others adopt and measure their own worth according to

how culturally sophisticated they are, she created a situation where she comes out

winning. Others will look up at her and accept her superiority. She gained symbolic

power. ‘Adapting to a dominated position implies a form of acceptance of domination...

the sense of incompetence, failure or cultural unworthiness imply a form of recognition

of dominant values’ (Bourdieu 1984, p.389).5 This is why Bourdieu suggests that what a

French intellectual proclaims to be the ethical value of cultural sophistication is --

objectively -- nothing else than an unconscious competitive strategy: it is about

attaching higher evaluation to qualities that one gained through one’s upbringing in

order to establish one’s legitimate claim to power.

Bourdieu makes this argument with respect to social groups (see for example,

Bourdieu, 1984), as well as to the struggles within and between specific fields (see for

example, Bourdieu 1996; 2000). Fields are organized around specific stakes that all

participants of the given field pursue. These stakes are always a form of symbolic

power, which is granted on different grounds in each field. For example, in the scientific

field scientific expertise and new, truer results grant symbolic power, whereas in the

autonomous artistic field artistic achievement does. The qualities and achievements that

are valued within a given field could be read as their central values or founding ethics.

However, Bourdieu argues that these seemingly disinterested ethics are guided

objectively by the same logic of competition for symbolic power between groups of

different capital compositions described above: each tries to give a definition of what

counts as a valuable achievement and who can be considered a genuine member of the

field that is most favourable to it: ‘Each is trying to impose the boundaries of the field

most favourable to its interests or -- which amounts to the same thing -- the best

definition of conditions of true membership of the field (or of titles conferring the right

to the status of writer, artist or scholar) for justifying its existence as it stands.’

(Bourdieu 1996, p.223). This is why the prime form of antagonism is always ‘between

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orthodoxy and heresy… the struggle between those who espouse conservatism because

of the dominant position they temporarily occupy in the field (by virtue of their specific

capital)… and those who are inclined to a heretical rupture, to the critique of established

forms, to the subversion of the prevailing models’ (Bourdieu 1996, p.234). For example,

novel normative visions of good art by an artist, or a new morality preached by a

prophet can be understood objectively as best strategies of groups whose capital

composition is not valuable enough according to the existing rules, who therefore try to

get new valuations accepted. Bourdieu’s point, in other words, is that stances that seem

and are experienced as disinterested and ethical correspond, objectively, to the best

strategies that particular capital composition permit in the struggle over power within a

given field.

How are people’s normative stances synced with those required by these

struggles? People enter -- unconsciously, guided by their habitus -- those fields and

within them those positions where they can expect the ‘highest profit’ (in terms of

power) on the kinds of capitals and habitus that they possess (Bourdieu 1990a; 1996).

For example, the habitus and cultural capital of someone from a French intellectual

family will grant her a higher position in the academic field than in, let’s say, football or

the church (Calhoun 2003), so she is more likely to enter that field. Her habitus and

capital portfolio will also define which position within the chosen field she will enter:

that of the conservator or the rebel, depending on which position promises her higher

symbolic profits.

Once having entered a position in a given field, its occupant is moved by the

requirements of the position: ‘the institutional space, in which all social agents (…)

have their places assigned to them, produces so to speak the properties of those who

occupy them, and the relations of competition and conflict which set them against each

other’ (Bourdieu 1990a, p.193-4, emphasis in the original), as a result of which

occupants of these positions ‘unless they exclude themselves from the game, have no

other choice than to struggle to maintain or improve their position in the field’

(Bourdieu 1990a, p.193). In this sense it is not so much the agents, but the positions that

they occupy that are competitive and power-driven and that move the people occupying

them according to their logic.

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In this scheme, ‘all actions, even those understood as disinterested or non-

purposive, and thus freed from economic motives, are to be conceived economically’

(Bourdieu 1977, p.235) as means to maximize symbolic profit. Albeit this view of

social life may seem close to rational action theory, Bourdieu clearly distinguishes his

position from that school by emphasizing that the struggle for power does not take place

through conscious strategies, but intuitively (Bourdieu 1990b). On the one hand it is

guided by the habitus that provides an unconscious sense of the social world; on the

other hand it is moved by the requirements that a specific position in any given field

exerts on its occupant (Bourdieu 1990a).

Based on this depiction, Bourdieu suggests that even though people may

subjectively experience their actions as value-driven, objectively these normative stances

can be shown to be conducive to acquiring power. As Sayer (2005, p.42) argues:

‘At one level, Bourdieu recognized the deeply evaluative character of social

behaviour in terms of how people value themselves and members of other

groups, and the practices and objects associated with them. However his

interests in this regard lay primarily in the valuation of these things in

strategic, functional and aesthetic terms. This is partly a consequence of his

interest- and power-based model of social life, and his adoption of a

„hermeneutics of suspicion” that is reluctant to acknowledge disinterested

action, including ethical responses. Any ideas that certain actions may be

disinterested are quickly deflated by deriving them from their habitus and

interests (e.g. Bourdieu, 1984).’

Bourdieu applied this theory to a wide array of fields from religion to art and science,

arguing that normative views within these fields are to be understood as a product of the

competing positions within and between them. However, as Sayer points out, alongside

these explicit arguments, he seemed to hold an implicit, ‘crypto-normative’ (Sayer

2005, p.99) stance that condemned social inequalities and injustice (see also Evens

1999; 2008). This stance informs his work, for example, on the education system and

taste, which expose the hidden mechanisms through which inequalities are reproduced

and naturalized. Applying his theory to analyse this stance would mean that his own

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view of inequality being a bad thing is merely the best means, in the light of his capital-

composition, of advancing his position within the scientific field. Yet Bourdieu surely

did not see his indignation over injustice in these terms, but as an ethical stance that is --

at least in part -- beyond the struggle for power. In fact, his very concept of mis-

recognition suggests that the ‘good’ can be established with reference to objective

standards outside power-struggles (Sayer 2001; 2003; 2005).

Sayer suggests that these objectivist stances represent a contradiction to

Bourdieu’s avowed relativist position, according to which the definition of the good is a

matter of power-struggles. This point is correct if we read Bourdieu’s theory as a

general one, applying to all human actions. In my reading (explained in the next

section), however, he sought to provide descriptions of particular empirical cases, and

did not exclude in principle the existence of other cases when ethics are not driven by

interests. If my reading is correct, the objectivist stances signal not a contradiction, but a

gap in Bourdieu’s theory: whereas he gives abundant descriptions of cases when ethics

are unconscious means by which people advance their own power position, he did not

explore any instances when normative views are not ideological -- including his own

case, which he, as his implicit crypto-normative language suggests, presumably

considered as such.

The normative shift of the 1990s

The late eighties, early nineties marked a change in Bourdieu’s views on ethics, which

is related to his ‘political turn’ and to a partial revision of his original relativist position

(Sintomer 1996; Fáber 2007; Fowler 2011).6 From the early nineties Bourdieu

increasingly took part in political action -- for example, have gave a talk at the railway

workers’ demonstration in 1995 (Wolfreys 2000) -- and took a more explicit normative

stance in his writings on current social and political matters. For example, in his

political essays collected in Political Interventions he attacks neoliberal regimes that

produce an ‘extraordinary mass of suffering’ (Bourdieu 2008a, p.102) and in an

interview with Terry Eagleton (Bourdieu and Eagleton 1992) he is explicit about the

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elimination of human suffering as the ultimate benchmark of the ‘good’. This more

objectivist approach to ethics is clearly articulated in the Pascalian Meditations, where

he argues that

‘sceptical or cynical rejection of any form of belief in the universal, in the

values of truth, emancipation, in a word, Enlightenment, and of any

affirmation of universal truths and values, in the name of an elementary

form of relativism which regards all universalistic manifestos as pharisaical

tricks intended to perpetuate a hegemony, is another way, in a sense a more

dangerous one, because it can give itself an air of radicalism, of accepting

things as they are.

There is, appearances notwithstanding, no contradiction in fighting at the

same time against the mystificatory hypocrisy of abstract universalism and for

universal access to the conditions of access to the universal, the primordial

objective of all genuine humanism which both universalistic preaching and

nihilistic (pseudo-) subversion forget.’ (Bourdieu 2000, p.71)

These arguments are clearly at odds with his ‘standard’ theory, outlined above, that

posits hidden power-interest behind ethical stances. In order to reconcile these

arguments, he needed either to complement his work with a description of the

conditions under which the ethics as ideology argument does not apply; or, if it was

meant to be a general description, to revise the theory altogether. He did indeed make

steps to both directions to accommodate this now explicit non-relativist position; yet

these changes, I will argue, remained partial, resulting in a somewhat contradictory

theory.

First, major modifications of his original position focused on his arguments on

the scientific field, which after the early 1990s appears to be the exceptional area where

people are able to break free from the power-driven logic. Whereas in The Specificity of

the Scientific Field (Bourdieu 1999a), published originally in 1976, he provided a

‘standard’ analysis of science -- where scientific arguments are described as matters of

power struggles -- , in Science of Science and Reflexivity (Bourdieu 2004), published in

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2001, the scientific field is posited as a field where a transhistoric, universal truth can be

arrived at. Reflexivity -- of sociologists in particular -- seems to be the key to apprehend

and overcome social determinism and the power-driven logic characterising other fields,

as ‘sociologists can find weapons against social determinism in the very science which

brings them to light’ (Bourdieu 1990a, p.178). It is this knowledge that enables, and in

fact, obliges them to take part in political matters (Bourdieu 1989).

The special status of the scientific field means that it could be the empirical case,

missing from his earlier work, where ethics qua ethics could be analysed.

Unfortunately, Bourdieu does not provide such an analysis. Rather, he limits his

arguments to the possibility of achieving Truth, rather than Ethics. Although he urges

intellectuals to engage in political issues (‘Our dream, as social scientists, might be for

part of our research to be useful to a social movement’ (Bourdieu 2008b, p.58)), he

warns them that they ‘should not fall into the trap of offering a program’ (Bourdieu

2008b, p.56): their role should be limited to providing statements of facts rather than

value-judgements. Bourdieu resolves the apparent contradiction between this argument

and his explicit normative position by suggesting that good sociological descriptions

talk for themselves, automatically leading to the ‘good’, that is, to the eliminations of

suffering and freedom. For example, they have a liberating effect as they give voice to

people (Bourdieu 1999b), helping them ‘express what they suffer’ (Bourdieu and

Eagleton, 1992, p.121), and they pinpoint the ways in which social determinism can be

overcome, allowing people to ‘equip themselves with specific weapons of resistance’

(Bourdieu 1996) p. 340). In this light, what I called his explicit normative position can

be interpreted as not even a normative position, but simply a set of statements of facts of

suffering, exploitation and unfreedom. However, in itself the statement of these facts

should not have any normative implications: unless one holds the normative position

that exploitation is a bad and freedom is a good thing, one should feel no moral

indignation. This is clearly not the case with Bourdieu, which suggests again an implicit

ethical stance in his work. Yet his writings fail to provide grounds for such a normative

position even in this period, as the question of how ethics qua ethics is possible, if at all,

is evaded by the above argument that only discusses the possibility of interest-free

factual statements.

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The second, much less developed, yet more fruitful modification of Bourdieu’s

original theory can be found in traces in the Pascalian Meditations (Bourdieu 2000),

where he offers a somewhat different interpretation of recognition, which is the essence

of symbolic capital. Whereas in earlier writings he described recognition and symbolic

capital largely in terms of their effect of legitimizing power, here he suggests that they

are central to human ontology and a meaningful life. He argues that as children grow up

in the domestic field they move from a stage of narcissistic self-love to a stage where

they discover themselves as an object of others and start to seek their approval. This

process, suggests Bourdieu, ‘relies [my emphasis] on one of the motors which will be

at the origin of all subsequent investments: the search for recognition [emphasis in the

original]’ (Bourdieu 2000, p.166). In this text he suggests that the search for recognition

is a universal human quality, the very basis of our human, social nature; though even

here he sees it as a form of self-love rather than ethics (‘Such might be the

anthropological root of the ambiguity of symbolic capital -- glory, honour, credit,

reputation, fame -- the principle of an egoistic quest for satisfactions of amour propre

which is, at the same time, a fascinated pursuit of the approval of others’ (Bourdieu

2000, p.166, emphasis in the original).)

Furthermore, the pursuit of symbolic capital in this text is equated with the

search for recognition, which appears here not simply as a means of acquiring power,

but as central to a meaningful life:

‘The social world gives what is rarest, recognition, consideration, in other

words, quite simply, reasons for being. It is capable of giving meaning to

life (…) One of the most unequal of all distributions, and probably, in any

case, the most cruel, is the distribution of symbolic capital, that is of social

importance and of reasons for living… Conversely, there is no worse

dispossession, no worse privation, perhaps, than that of the losers in the

symbolic struggle for recognition, for access to a socially recognized social

being, in a word, to humanity.’ (Bourdieu 2000, p.240-1)

This suggests that social games are moved by the quest for a meaningful life, a purpose,

a social mission without which, as he argues, people sink into indifference and

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depression (Bourdieu 2000, p.240). He uses the term ‘illusio’ for this belief that the

stakes of social games and fields in particular are worth pursuing. Although it is an

illusion in the sense of lacking an objective basis, it is still essential for the participation

in social games that provide the meaning of life.

These arguments are somewhat inconsistent with his standard depiction of ethics

as means of acquiring power. In fact, as we will see in the next sections, the very same

points form the basis of theories that argue, against Bourdieu, that ethics are not

reducible to power-struggles, but often stem from the human pursuit of meaning and

purpose. My own view, explained in the third part, is that the two positions are not

necessarily contradictory; in fact, normative evaluations are double-faceted in that they

simultaneously involve ethics and allow for the legitimization of power. The problem is,

however, that Bourdieu does nothing to explain how the two points can be reconciled,

but presents these arguments alongside his original theory, as seamless additions to,

rather than as a revision of it. In the very same text he writes that ‘it is competition for a

power that can only be won from others competing for the same power, a power over

others that derives its existence from others, from their perception and appreciation’

(Bourdieu 2000, p.241) and that ‘symbolic capital… is not a particular kind of capital

but what every kind of capital becomes when it is misrecognized as capital, that is, as

force, a power or capacity for (actual or potential) exploitation, and therefore recognized

as legitimate.’ (Bourdieu 2000, p.242). This way these arguments, although promising,

remain unconcluded. In the following sections of the article therefore I will focus on

the original argument that seeks to expose the ideological nature of ethics, which

despite these modifications represents his most well-elaborated position.

Critiques of Bourdieu’s view on ethics

Against the view that sees ethics as covert, unconscious means to acquire power, a

number of recent works have argued for treating ethics and normative evaluations as

autonomous phenomena that can be related, but not reduced to power motives. These

theories challenge the ethics as ideology argument on two grounds: ontological and

empirical. Albeit empirical data always requires interpretation that is in turn informed

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by ontological assumptions (see next part), the distinction is useful here to capture the

distinct focus of the critiques.

Ontological critiques

Authors proposing an ontological argument suggest that -- contrary to the power-driven

picture painted by Bourdieu -- holding normative, ethical stances is an inevitable,

intrinsic quality of being human. Sayer, for example, argues that we are ‘evaluative

beings’ (2005, p.139), not because it helps us to acquire power; rather it is ‘vulnerability

to suffering and capacity for flourishing that gives experience its normative character,

and from which „the force of the ought” as regards ethical matters derives.’ (Sayer

2009, p.12).

A related ontological point is put forward by Charles Taylor (1989), albeit on

different grounds. He also argues that people are inherently evaluative beings, yet not

because of their capacity to suffer and flourish, but because moral agency is the basis of

identity. Identity depends on taking a position with respect to strong evaluations, which

makes evaluative choices an imperative of being human:

‘Living within such strongly qualified horizons is constitutive of human

agency, that stepping outside these limits would be tantamount to stepping

outside what we would recognize as integral, that is, undamaged human

personhood… To know who you are is to be oriented in the moral space, a

space in which questions arise about good or bad, what is worth doing and

what is not, what has meaning for you, and what is trivial and secondary.’

(Taylor 1989, pp. 27-8, my emphasis)

This does not mean that people behave morally at all times; but that taking certain moral

positions is the very essence of being human, therefore an inescapable human

condition.

Axel Honneth (Honneth 1995; Fraser and Honneth 2003) puts forward a similar

idea in that he sees moral integrity and personhood as the core of human life. According

to him personhood is dependent on recognition by others (an idea also strongly present

16

in Taylor’s (1994) work), therefore he stresses the interdependence between respect and

self-respect. For him, normative evaluations are understood as part of the core human

pursuit of recognition: 7

‘[T]he reproduction of social life is governed by the imperative of mutual

recognition, because one can develop a practical relation-to-self only when

one has learned to view oneself, from the normative perspective of one’s

partners in interaction, as their social addressee.’ (Honneth 1995, p.92)

These critiques are important, as any project that seeks to acknowledge ethics qua ethics

is only made possible by an ontology that does not see humans as intrinsically power-

driven. Yet they are insufficient to disprove Bourdieu’s arguments because he did not

intend them as a description of human ontology, but of particular, historically-specific

empirical realities. For example, in an interview with Terry Eagleton he talked about the

possibility of other forms of actions:

‘Terry Eagleton: That is a true description of many fields of our experience,

but are there not other forms of discourse, other forms of action, which you

couldn’t conceptualize so easily in those agonistic terms?

Pierre Bourdieu: (...) [T]hat is an important question, and one that I ask

myself; I agree that it is a problem. I don’t know why I tend to think in those

terms -- I feel obliged to by reality. My sense is that the kind of exchange

we are now engaged in is unusual. Where this happens, it is the exception

based on what Aristotle called ‘philia’ -- or friendship, to use a more general

expression. ‘Philia’ is, according to Aristotle, an economic exchange or

symbolic exchange that you may have within the family, among parents or

with friends. I tend to think that the structure of most of the fields, most of

the social games, is such that competition -- a struggle for domination -- is

quasi-inevitable.’(Bourdieu and Eagleton 1992, p.116)

There are indeed parts of Bourdieu’s work, for example in the Outline (Bourdieu 1977),

that suggest that he saw this ‘logic of philia’ as informing the ‘good faith economy’ of

17

the Kabyle in Algeria, in contrast to profit-maximizing Western capitalism. In this

reading, the competitive, instrumental logic described above is a historical product that

emerged only with modern capitalism, rather than a universal human characteristic

(Fowler 2011).

Empirical critiques

If the reduction of ethics to power-struggles is not an ontological argument, it follows

that it can be questioned empirically rather than on ontological grounds. These

empirical critiques have been formulated along two major lines.8

The first suggests that Bourdieu ignored the normative operations and moral

distinctions that people make in everyday life. For example, Boltanski and Thévenot

(2006) suggested that traditional critical sociology, and Bourdieu in particular,

underestimated the critical capacity of agents and they argue that people do engage in

normative evaluations and judgements. Similar points are made by Lamont (1992), who

provides the empirical evidence of moral distinctions that people use to evaluate each

other, as well as by Sayer (2001; 2005; 2009; 2011).

The problem with these critiques is that showing that people take normative

stances and that they experience their motives as ethical does not suffice to falsify

Bourdieu’s ethics as ideology argument. The core of that argument is not that people do

not engage in normative operations, but that they do so in ways that help them to

advance their own position in the hierarchy. In fact, in Bourdieu’s account the

subjective experience of genuine, disinterested normative judgement is essential for the

legitimatization of hierarchy (Bourdieu 1984; 1991a; 1991c; 1993). This means that it is

not enough to show that people see themselves as evaluative beings, as it could fit into

the ethics as ideology account as well; but that these evaluations cannot be explained

simply in terms of power interests.

This is the focus of the second line of empirical criticism that argues that the

content of ethical ideas cannot be derived from power interests, but from sources that

18

are independent from these struggles. What are these other sources? One line of

critiques is based on an objectivist approach to values, mentioned in the previous part,

that suggests that what people value can be linked to relatively universal, objective

standards of human needs (Sayer 2005).9 The difficulty of this theory is that in order to

disprove Bourdieu, one would need to show that certain qualities are highly valued

independently of social and cultural settings. This is probably possible if we define

these valued qualities loosely enough to accommodate plurality, as Sayer (2011)

suggests; but then the theory becomes too vague and loses its explanatory power. If on

the other hand, we define them narrowly, such a universal applicability is impossible to

show: what people consider valuable, worthy of respect varies across fields, cultures

and goes through temporal change. The theory then is unable to account for what has

been the key question of Bourdieu: why these valuations differ (between and within

groups) and why they change (for instance in the field of art).

Another line of critique comes from social constructivist theories that agree with

Bourdieu in that the content of ethics is a matter of social agreement rather than

deducible from an objective standard, yet they contend that it is cultural tradition, rather

than mere power relations that explain them (Calhoun 1991).10 At one end are theories

that -- in line with the ‘strong program of cultural sociology’ advanced by Jeffrey

Alexander (Alexander and Smith 2001) -- explain ethics by the autonomous, internal

development of culture that is independent from socio-economic structure. Boltanski

and Thévenot’s (2006) work on systems of justifications, each of which is centred on a

particular ‘worth’ -- which, in my reading, correspond to particular ethics -- lends itself

to this interpretation, as they explain the emergence of each system of ‘worth’ by the

internal development of cultural traditions.11

Other theories within the same line take a more balanced approach, maintaining

that ethics are shaped both by cultural traditions and power-struggles. For example,

Lamont argues that ‘cultural repertoires’ -- that include ethics --, depend not only on

socio-economic factors, but also on cultural resources that are independent from them,

such as national traditions. Furthermore, she draws attention to the temporal dimension

that allows even those ethical stances that once reflected group interests to become

independent: ‘[cultural repertoires] need to be analyzed separately because, even if these

repertoires are shaped by a wide range of economic, political, and socio-historical

19

factors, they take on a life of their own once they are institutionalized. In other words,

they become part of the environment, of the structure…’ (Lamont, 1992, p.135).

Similarly, Honneth acknowledges that ‘economically powerful groups do have a

considerably greater chance of institutionally generalizing their own value conceptions

in society and thereby increasing the social recognition of their own conduct of life’

(Honneth 1986, p.65), yet he maintains that economic power alone is not enough.

Cultural traditions, treated here as interrelated yet autonomous explanatory factors play

a larger role: 12

‘[T]he recognition which an existing social order lends to the values and

norms embodied in the life-styles of a particular group does not depend on

the volume of knowledge or wealth, or the quantity of measurable goods the

group has managed to accumulate, rather it is determined according to the

traditions and value conceptions which could be socially generalized and

institutionalized in the society.’ (Honneth 1986, p.65)

The problem with this counterargument is that Bourdieu did not claim that it is always

the group possessing the highest economic and cultural capital that is able to set the

standards of values in its own favour. As it will be discussed in the next section in

detail, he held that capitals resulting in a dominant position are dependent on fields and

societies. This is why he would be able to refute the above counterargument by showing

that ‘traditions and value conceptions’ themselves reflect certain group interests.

The fact that all these empirical critiques seem to be reconcilable with

Bourdieu’s theory raises the question of whether it is possible even to envisage an

empirical instance that would contradict it. In the next section I argue that the answer to

this question is negative: the possibility of such an instance is foreclosed by a circularity

in Bourdieu’s argument. This is the reason why, rather than being ‘obliged by reality’,

that ethical actions in all the cases studied by him appear as ideological.

Circular definition of symbolic capital

20

Why is it that in nearly all the cases studied by Bourdieu seemingly ethical pursuits

turned out to be, at the end, hidden strategies to acquire power? Evens (1999; 2008)

suggests that answer lies in fact that albeit Bourdieu claimed that his description merely

reflects reality, his own taken-for-granted lens through which he interpreted reality was

ultimately biased towards power-driven interpretations. Indeed, as noted previously, the

clear separation between ontology and empirical data applied so far does not take

account of the epistemological point that data do not speak for themselves, but are

always filtered through interpretation. According to Evens, Bourdieu’s avowed

empiricist position implied a particular ontological assumption according to which

people are moved primarily by power, and it is this assumption that drove him to

interpret even ethical action in those terms.

Evens links ethics to agency, suggesting that ‘Because all of our decisions

ultimately rest on our decided agential capacity, in the end all must be a question of

ethics.’ (Evens 2008, p.xxii). This is why for him, Bourdieu’s inability to acknowledge

ethics qua ethics is ultimately rooted in his tendency to fall back to a deterministic,

objectivist view of human action despite his claim of overcoming the subject-object

dualism. The solution therefore, according to Evens, is an ontology that recognizes

agency and therefore ethics. Similarly to Sayer and Honneth discussed above he

maintains that ‘human practice is a question of value qua value, which is to say, a

question of ethics’ (Evens 1999, p.4); however, unlike them he does not propose a

fixed, singular ontology, but a heterodox one with crosscutting materialist and ethical

motives. As he points out, the existence of materialist motives does not contradict an

ethics-centred ontology: material gain and power need to be valued first in order to be

deemed worthy of pursuing hence their appreciation implies an initial ethical choice. As

he argues, ‘Though in a plain sense wealth and power sum up antivalue, they are

themselves products of moral selection, and thus they too presuppose the possibility of

value as such.’ (Evens 1999, p.20), therefore even these motives are ‘always already

ethically informed and determined’ (Evens 1999, p.7).

The implication of Evens’s critique is that viewed through Bourdieu’s

interpretative lens -- informed by materialist ontology -- all data will be interpreted as

demonstrating the existence of underlying power motives; in other words, the theory

becomes unfalsifiable. To trace this process we need to ask first what kind of empirical

21

material would be necessary to falsify Bourdieu’s theory of ethical stances as

unconscious means of the pursuit of power. It would need to be first, an ethical position

that is not conducive to acquiring and legitimizing power; and second, an instance

where ethics cannot be explained objectively by the interest of the more powerful group.

Can there be an empirical case of ethics that is not conducive to symbolic

power? Hardly. Bourdieu defines ‘symbolic power’ as power based on recognition:

‘renown, prestige, honour, glory, authority’ (Bourdieu 1984, p. 251). What he describes

here is what Honneth (Honneth 1995; Brink and Owen 2007) calls esteem, and what

Charles Taylor refers to as conditional recognition (Taylor 1994). The essence of these

-- and of Bourdieu’s notion of recognition -- is that they denote respect which is granted

based on one’s achievements and qualities that people recognize as valuable, as worthy

of their admiration.13 This means that all forms of symbolic power presuppose a

normative evaluation, an underlying ethics. This is not to say that everybody will

participate in particular fields out of pure dedication, but that symbolic power is only

possible if there exist field-specific ethics that participants accept regardless of how well

they stick to them in their actual conduct. Without them, achievements and qualities

would not yield esteem and any conception of symbolic power would be impossible.

However, all ethics automatically and inevitably create different degrees of

esteem and hence a hierarchy. This is because ethics denotes ‘strong evaluations’, that

is, normative distinctions between better and worse: being a dedicated mother or a

devoted scientist is not simply different from being a reckless one, but normatively

better. If I think that being a good mother or scientist is something worthy of my awe,

this belief will automatically create a hierarchy in the way I see people. This is why, as

Dumont argues, ‘to adopt a value is to introduce hierarchy, and certain consensus of

values, a certain hierarchy of ideas, things and people’ (Dumont 1970, p.20). In fact, as

Evens suggests ‘without value there can be no hierarchy’ (Evens 1999, p.20). Every

ethics produces a sense of legitimate hierarchy; and any legitimate hierarchy can only

be based on a shared system of valuation, on a shared ethics.

This means that ethics is always conducive to ‘symbolic power’; but not because

of an underlying, unconscious competitive logic that it masks, but due to its normative

nature, which always implies a hierarchy. As symbolic power is recognition granted

based on ethical qualities, it is an inevitable side-effect of any particular ethics.14

22

At points, Bourdieu himself noted this double-faceted nature of symbolic power.

For example, he argued that ‘[society] alone has the power to justify you, to liberate you

from facticity, contingency and absurdity; but -- and this is doubtless the fundamental

antimony -- only in a differential, distinctive way: every form of the sacred has its

profane complement, all distinction generates its own vulgarity’ (Bourdieu 1990a,

p.196). However, he failed to see that the consequence of this argument is that it is the

very nature of ethics that implies recognition and symbolic power rather than a hidden

competitive drive.

The main problem of this tautology is that it renders Bourdieu’s explanation

unable to distinguish between cause and effect in particular empirical cases. In some

cases the pursuit of power creates what look like values from the inside. In other cases,

however, the commitment to particular, historically specific ethics and the drive to be

better according to them is what creates a hierarchy -- and what induces actions that

may look like mere competition -- from the outside. In these cases, what provides the

energy that sets the field in motion is not simply an invisible underlying competitive

power motive, but the nature of ethics itself. It is the essence of ethics that it exerts a

binding force, and hence the very impetus that pushes one to be better according to its

principles. The motive to become a good scientist, a good artist, or a good mother can

be seen as aims worth pursuing irrespective of the power that their achievement grants

(see also Sayer 2003a on internal goods). Yet in Bourdieu’s tautological framework in

both cases ethics is interpreted as pretext for legitimizing power.

A related tautology provides the key to the second question, of whether it is

possible to find empirical instances where ethics cannot be explained objectively by the

interest of the most powerful group. To unravel the tautology we need to start by having

a look at what such an objective analysis means in practice. The most powerful group is

defined objectively in terms of its capital composition. Bourdieu’s concept of capital

retains some aspects of Marx’s use of the term (Calhoun 1993). It is an accumulated

product of effort, hence a means of transmission: parents can pass on their money,

connections and cultural capital to their children, who can therefore start from a better

position (Calhoun 2003). Yet Bourdieu also extends Marx’s notion; in Distinction

(Bourdieu 1984) he focuses on three sorts of capital: economic, social and cultural (I

treat symbolic capital separately).

23

There are two possible ways of interpreting the notion of capital and

correspondingly, the argument according to which the most powerful group, in terms of

capital composition, determines the dominant ethics. First, we can see these capital

forms as universally applicable, which I would like to call the stable view. This view

suggests that these capital compositions denote objective relations that will universally

determine subjectivities in predictable ways regardless of social setting. In this

interpretation, Bourdieu uses France in Distinction as an example of an argument that

could be made anywhere else in the world. Lamont (1992), for example, treats capitals

as stable, when based on empirical evidence gathered in the US she suggests that

Bourdieu overestimated the importance of cultural capital and generalized a

characteristically Parisian situation. The argument in this form can be falsified by

studies like Lamont’s.

The second interpretation treats capitals as field-dependent. I think this reading

is more correct, as Bourdieu writes that capitals are ‘species of power… whose

possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field’

(Bourdieu and Wacquant 1989, p. 39). According to this definition, capital denotes the

power by which the stakes -- which, let’s not forget, are always forms of legitimate

power -- of a specific field can be acquired. This means that capital is not absolute but

dependent on the field; different features and possessions serve as a capital in different

fields. We can talk about religious, scientific, cultural or fashion capital (Bourdieu

1991c; 1999a; Rocamora 2002; Entwistle and Rocamora 2006), because these terms

stand for qualities by which legitimate power can be acquired in particular fields. In this

reading, Distinction shows that in contemporary French society legitimate power can be

achieved by three sorts of capital: economic, social and cultural. In France these are

capitals because stakes can be acquired by them; if in another society other qualities

would grant power, they would not be capitals.

At this point it is important to make a distinction between what I would like to

call ‘instrumental’ and ‘ethical’ capitals. ‘Instrumental capitals’ are those that allow one

to enter and progress in a given field, yet in themselves do not provide symbolic capital,

legitimate power. For example, becoming an academic requires long years of study that

is easier to sustain if one is well endowed with money; certain positions are easier to get

if one has connections, and so on. Yet money and connections alone do not result in

24

symbolic power. An academic with no scientific qualities, who only got a position

because she is the main financial donor of the university, will have power, but not

symbolic power.

To acquire symbolic power, then, one needs more than instrumental capitals:

qualities that yield esteem. I will call these qualities ‘ethical capital’. Ethical because

those achievements and qualities yield esteem that others in the given group or field

recognize as normatively higher, of ethical value.15 Note, again, that I am using ethical

in a broad and relativist sense. Among intellectuals, intelligence and knowledge --

which Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital’ -- are the values that grant esteem, whereas in the

religious field piety yields respect and functions as ‘religious capital’; simply because

participants acknowledge the importance of these qualities as ethical values.

The reason why distinguishing ‘ethical capital’ is important is that it sheds light

to the circularity of the argument by which Bourdieu proves that ethics reflects the

qualities of, and therefore are more favourable to most powerful group. He defined

capitals as qualities that allow one to acquire the stakes, which are always a form of

symbolic power, of a particular field. However, it is only the ‘ethical capitals’ that truly

fit the definition; ‘instrumental capitals’ do not grant symbolic power, merely facilitate

the achievement of ‘ethical capitals’ in some cases. This means that ‘powerfulness’ is

defined as the possession of the sufficient amount and type of ethical capitals; which

are, turn, defined by their ability to grant symbolic power, in other words, respect and

recognition. This is why the ‘powerful’ group is by definition the one that is looked up

at and whose qualities are deemed as worthy of respect. Along the same logic, a

position is ‘dominated’ if it lacks ethical capitals, which in other words means that the

qualities that belong to it are not acknowledged as worthy in a given field or culture.

This is why, again, by definition, it will always be the case that the qualities of the

‘dominated’ are not given enough recognition. It is due to this tautology that Bourdieu

is always able to prove that the accepted values belong to the most ‘powerful’ group;

and this is the reason why all empirical counterarguments trying to find instances when

ethics are not dictated by the dominant group -- just like the one proposed by Honneth

at the end of the previous section --, can be dismissed by him.

25

Conclusion

The aim of this analysis was to open up the analytical space for taking ethics qua ethics

seriously by exposing the flaws in Bourdieu’s arguments that discount ethics as covert

means of the competitive pursuit of power. The point that I proposed here is not that

people act ethically and out of pure devotion at all times; simply that sometimes they

do, yet in Bourdieu’s framework these occasions are indistinguishable from those when

they -- consciously or unconsciously -- pursue power.16 What I hoped to show is that it

is not empirical evidence that justifies Bourdieu’s scepticism; but a tautology that labels

all qualities worthy of esteem as capitals and hence mistakenly sees all instances of

legitimate power as the hidden aim rather than a side effect of normative stances. In

contrast to this depiction, I argued that the existence of hierarchy and its acceptance as

legitimate, symbolic power does not necessarily indicate an underlying power-motive;

ethics also creates inadvertently a sense of legitimate hierarchy and hence symbolic

power.

If the tautology is resolved, a modified version of Bourdieu’s theory can be

fruitfully incorporated into the sociological study of ethics. I have already mentioned

the usefulness of the habitus in understanding the way ethics are acquired and operate in

practice. Beyond that, his concept of the field helps understanding that ethics are not a

matter of individual, acultural preferences, but exist in historically evolving, culturally

specific areas where their value is recognized and institutionalized. Fields understood

this way are the primary arenas where ethics and the cultural traditions are ‘located’, as

opposed to abstract notions of ‘values’ that float somewhere outside society. The notion

of illusio provides the useful insight that it is the field that presupposes and creates

devotion to its field-specific ethics (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1989). It is through

participating in fields that these ethics can be made ‘alive’, be engaged, reproduced or

transformed by people of different ethical dispositions acquired as part of their habitus.

Bourdieu’s analysis of the ‘complicity’ between the habitus and the fields is invaluable

in understanding the ways in which these personal and field-specific ethical

commitments meet and transform one another.

26

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Notes

1 Some authors (Bauman 1993; Habermas 1993; Miller 1998) use the terms ethics and morality to

distinguish questions of good life from questions of justice. For the purposes of the present article the

distinction is irrelevant. 2 Foucault, for instance, used the term ethics to refer to ‘the conscious practice of freedom’ (Foucault

1997, p.285), that is, to the conscious process of working on the self through practice. For a similar

discussion of ethics as bound up with agency see also Evens (1999; 2008) and Zigon (2007; 2008). 3 The debate in which I describe Bourdieu’s position here refers to how ethics actually works in everyday

life. There exists a related philosophical debate on how it should work, that is, on the benchmark of the

good and the right that can serve as a tenable normative position. These two debates use the same labels

for the schools they describe, which may give grounds for confusion. Sayer (2011) provides an excellent

discussion of this debate and of the objectivist normative position that he advances; for a social

constructivist critique of the objectivist normative position see Slater (1997; 1998) and Honneth (2007). 4 At times Bourdieu proposes a materialist reductionist version of this argument. For example, in

Distinction he explains normative stances by the different degrees of distance from necessity. When

proposed that way the argument, as Jeffrey Alexander points out, seeks to ‘submerge cultural norms, to

demonstrate that they are determined by forces of a… material kind’ (Alexander 1995, p.135).

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5 In this sense not all groups try to attach a positive evaluation to the qualities in which they excel, but

only the dominant group, as one of the hallmarks of being ‘dominated’ is the acceptance of the existing,

unfavourable valuation system. 6 Bourdieu’s early work in Algeria also exhibits a clear political commitment against the suffering caused

by colonial rule and the Algerian war (see, for example, Bourdieu 2013). In this sense the political turn in

his later work can be seen as a return to this earlier stance. 7 Whereas Taylor uses largely philosophical arguments, Honneth also builds on anthropology and social

psychology to support this alternative ontology. In this sense, Honneth’s point is closer to the ethical

naturalism promoted by Sayer. 8 A third line challenges Bourdieu for not giving enough attention to agency, which is seen by this line as

the precondition of ethics. I do not discuss these theories here because, as I mentioned in the introduction,

my use of ethics does not imply agency. For a critique along these lines see Evens (1999; 2008) and Sayer

(2011); for a discussion of the possibility of agency as ‘regulated liberties’ in Bourdieu’s work see

McNay (1999). 9 Sayer develops arguments both about how ethics actually works and how it should work. Here I only

refer to the former, as the latter falls into the philosophical debate on ethics, which is beyond the scope of

the current article. 10According to Taylor (1989) moral traditions can be traced back to religious and philosophical moral

sources that we forgot about and therefore we see them as ahistorically universal and beyond debate. A

somewhat similar argument is developed by McIntyre (1981), in that he suggests that our ethical values

come from earlier traditions that we are no longer aware of. 11 For earlier formulations see Mills (1940); for a detailed discussion on the similarities and differences

between different branches of repertoire theory and their relation to cultural sociology see Silber (2006). 12 Along similar lines, LiPuma (1993) argues that not just any symbol and valuation principle will be

accepted just because it is promoted by the dominant group, but ‘cultural forms exert power over agents

through their meaningfulness’ (1993, p.33). 13 Power in itself can also generate admiration, yet in order to be recognized as legitimate power, it needs

to be based on qualities deemed as valuable in the given field. This point may be less evident in certain

fields, for example in one where esteem is paid to people who earn the most. Yet certain ethical values lay

at the very foundation of even these fields. In the business word, respect paid to high-earners is based on

the implicit ethical idea that money -- similarly to academic titles -- is a sign of appreciated qualities: an

entrepreneurial spirit, hard work and even aggressive business style (Jackall 1988; Lamont 1992). As

soon as that assumption does not hold -- for example, money turns out have been acquired through

cheating or robbery -- money no longer yields esteem, which suggests that only these legitimate ethical

qualities allows money to function as a marker of one’s worth in this field. Max Weber’s (2003) classic

analysis of the ethos of capitalism can also be read along these lines. 14 See also Lemieux (1999), Dreyfus and Rabinow (1993) and Evens (1999).

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15 In this sense the notion is close to, yet broader than what Swartz (2009; 2010) calls ‘moral capital’ to

refer to ‘those qualities, capacities, intelligences, strategies, and dispositions that young people acquire,

possess, and can “grow’” in the pursuit of moral maturity, and where moral maturity (with its goal of

“being a good person”) is related to educational, career, and financial success.’ (Swartz 2009, p.148). 16 Sayer (2003) uses the distinction between internal and external goods to capture the difference.