Field, connection, and inequality. Towards a political economy of practices in the digital capitalism era

Abstract

This article talks about the potentialities of Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework for the social research on the digital. We start from three epistemological assumptions: structural continuity with the pre-digital society, the rejection of digital-analogical dualism and a conception of power and inequality that goes beyond the purely connective or informational. Throughout the text, we claim that Bourdieu’s theory can be a powerful tool for dealing with some of the central debates in digital sociology: the debates around non-human actors, cyborg-digital assemblage, or prosumer concept. We defend the potentiality of objectified cultural capital concept to integrate the digital in the universe of social practices. This concept accommodates elements like body, space, data, or infrastructure in the explanation of inequality.