Law and Symbolic Power; Critical Sociology of Law in the Thought of Pierre Bourdieu

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 PhD, Faculty of Law, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

2 Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

The main issue of the current research is to investigate the sociology of law in thoughts and views of Pierre Bourdieu, a contemporary French philosopher. The research method was analytical-critical which results in Bourdieu's criticism of the law should be understood as a full-fledged criticism of a certain type of political domination and control through the law. Bourdieu's theory never enables us to understand the ambiguous issues via the legal power versus legal pluralism, having arisen in contemporary societies as a result of the intersection of national, local and transnational orders (symbolic interactionism). On the other hand, Bourdieu's thought provides a perspective from which regards with the relationship between the symbolic, violence and law. From Bourdieu's point of view, the law is always a part of a specific social context that has consequences both for its perception and explanation. Bourdieu thoroughly analyzes law from a symbolic power, as opposed to an instrumentalist cultural capital. For him, this idea not only has a constructive meaning (the world creates the social, although this world first creates the law itself as the symbolic power), but also primarily has a specific political physical analogy; Because creating and ordering social reality makes it last. According to Bourdieu, the law can work effectively only to the extent that the symbolic power of legitimacy (naturalization) reproduces and increases power. As a result, the political function of symbolic legitimacy is placed on the cognitive or simply creative dimension that law is framework of society. Bourdieu's main goal in analyzing law is to show how cultural and social class are related. Ideology, in turn, is called a tool serving to hide social reality and thus analyzing how social structures and institutions perpetuate inequality and hierarchy among individuals and maintain a status quo. Therefore, ideology is equal with symbolic violence including the capacity of a social and institutional power to impose legitimate concepts, as if the power relations implied the aforementioned power ingrain deeply as the symbolic power. Therefore, the law is the basic element of political domination and its nature is inevitably forceful and domineering.

Keywords

References

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Journal of Philosophy of Law
Volume 2, Issue 2
December 2023
Pages 29-46

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History

  • Receive Date: 05 August 2024
  • Revise Date: 11 September 2024
  • Accept Date: 22 November 2024

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