About Symbolic Capital(ism)
When sociologists talk about “capitalists,” we are not typically referring to regular people who support capitalism or engage in trade. Capitalists, in the sociological sense, are people who own the means of production, and use this wealth (capital) to extract "surplus value" from workers — allowing themselves (the capitalists) to acquire income and wealth without providing physical goods and services for people (like the workers do). Capitalists, in the sociological sense, are defined by ownership and wealth. Their primary currency is actual money.
Symbolic capitalists, on the other hand, trade primarily in legitimation and administration. Their primary currency is status. They're folks who exert significant control over institutions of cultural and intellectual production, which they use to enhance themselves and their allies and patrons, and undermine their rivals. They "make a living" by trading symbolic capital for others’ financial capital — largely by serving the interests of the wealthy and the powerful in exchange for a share of the “surplus value” they extract for workers — allowing symbolic capitalists to likewise enjoy comfortable lives without needing to provide physical goods or services to people either.
Another way of putting it: symbolic capitalists are professionals who traffic in symbols and rhetoric, images and narratives, data and analysis, ideas and abstraction (as opposed to workers engaged in manual forms of labor tied to physical goods and services). Their work involves the production and manipulation of information, rhetoric, social perceptions and relations, organizational structures and relations, traditions and innovations, and so on. Those who work in fields like education, science and technology, finance and accounting, arts and entertainment, media, law, consulting, administration or public policy are typically symbolic capitalists.
Symbolic capitalists have been known by other names, by other scholars. They’ve also been known, for instance, as the Professional Managerial Class, the New Class, the Creative Class, and so on. I refer to this constellation of elites as “symbolic capitalists” because they make a living primarily based on what they know, who they know, and how they’re known — that is, by cultivating and leveraging symbolic capital on behalf of themselves and others (a quick and accessible overview of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of “symbolic capital” is available here).
Symbolic capitalist is a type of person. Symbolic capitalism is a type of practice.
People engage in symbolic capitalism when they leverage their association with particular institutions, groups and ideas in order to advance their interests and further their goals. Most people engage in symbolic capitalism at various points in their lives. For symbolic capitalists, their lives and livelihoods are oriented around symbolic capital(ism). Or rather, I should say “our” lives and livelihoods.
I’m a symbolic capitalist. And if you’re reading this, there’s a strong chance that you’re a symbolic capitalist too.
My recently published book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, is all about “us.” The “we” in “we have never been woke” is symbolic capitalists.
The book highlights how explicit commitments to social justice have always defined symbolic capitalists. From the beginning of most of our professions, the high pay, autonomy and prestige we enjoy relative to other workers have been justified by our purportedly deep commitment to helping everyone in society, especially the least among us. To give us more power, resources and status is to better empower us to help others. Many of our professions are literally defined by altruism and serving the common good (e.g. journalists are supposed to “speak truth to power,” and serve as “a voice for the voiceless”; academics are supposed to “follow the truth wherever it leads” and “speak the truth” without regard financial or political interests).
In the contemporary context, symbolic capitalists are the Americans most likely to self-identify as feminists, antiracists or allies to LGBTQ people. Politically, we’re overwhelmingly aligned with America’s primary ‘left’ party.
So far, so good.
Even better: over the last half-century, the global economy has been reoriented around people like “us.” Symbolic capitalists have more affluence and influence than ever before. In light of these facts, one might assume that society must be growing rapidly more egalitarian as a result of our rising clout. In some ways has. In most respects, however, the trendlines go the opposite direction.
Inequalities in the U.S. have grown increasingly pronounced even as symbolic capitalists have risen in prominence and power. Symbolic capitalists are, themselves, among the primary beneficiaries and perpetuators of these inequalities — and social justice discourse is increasingly mobilized to justify them. The ‘losers’ in the symbolic economy are portrayed as deserving their lot because they think, feel or say the ‘wrong’ things about race, gender and sexuality. Elites’ bids for more power and status, meanwhile, are increasingly bound up with their egalitarian bona fides.
Understanding this state of affairs is the project of my first book, published October 8, 2024 by Princeton University Press.
Symbolic Capital(ism) will not be cover the same ground as We Have Never Been Woke (folks interested in those arguments and findings should just pick up a copy of the book!). Instead, this Substack will serve as a forum for exploring adjacent themes and ideas — touching on issues that were not covered in the text, extending the themes of We Have Never Been Woke to additional cases, further developing implications and applications of that book’s arguments, and responding to questions and criticisms. The newsletter will also serve as a laboratory for testing key themes, arguments and findings for the follow-up text, currently in development.
We Have Never Been Woke focuses on symbolic capitalists. The follow up book will turn the analytic lens away from the “winners” in the knowledge economy towards those who perceive themselves to be the “losers.” It’ll demonstrate that the “crisis of expertise,” the rise of Trump, contemporary tensions around “identity” issues — these are all fronts in the same basic struggle. The “diploma divide,” the “gender divide,” and the “urban / rural divide,” in politics are likewise proxies for the same core struggle, being waged between mainstream symbolic capitalists and people who feel increasingly alienated from “us” and our institutions.
We Have Never Been Woke explores the history and political economy of the symbolic professions. The follow up book will explore the origins and consequences of the growing sociological distance between “us” and most others in society. This Substack will be a place where I pilot ideas, findings and arguments for that project as it develops.
Bottom line: if you’re a fan of my public-facing essays exploring social justice, inequality or the symbolic economy, if you enjoyed We Have Never Been Woke, or if you’re interested to see where things go next — you should definitely subscribe to Symbolic Capital(ism).
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**The image from this Substack was produced by Shane Conway in a journal article applying Bourdieu’s ideas about symbolic capital and symbolic violence to understand challenges faced by family farmers — published in the Journal of Rural Studies. You can check out the paper here.
