Pierre Bourdieu

Cultural capital includes valued knowledge, tastes, credentials, and ways of speaking or behaving. Bourdieu distinguishes embodied, objectified, and institutionalized forms, such as dispositions, artworks, and academic qualifications.

Habitus is a durable set of dispositions formed through a person's social history and conditions of life. It guides perception and action without operating as a rigid rulebook or a fully conscious plan.

A field is a relatively structured arena, such as art, education, or politics, in which participants compete over specific resources and authority. The value of economic, social, cultural, or symbolic capital depends partly on the field.

Distinction connected preferences in food, music, art, and lifestyle with class position in French society. Bourdieu argued that taste helps reproduce hierarchy because privileged preferences are often treated as naturally superior.