Symbolic Violence

Symbolic Violence 

Definition: ideas and values of ruling a cultural class.

Example: Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant explain many examples in their research about symbolic violence. One example that is overlooked is a boy turning into a man and asserting his dominance. It is said that a man must be able to catch the eye of a woman. They explain that if a male is not the "domination of the dominate, by his domination" (Bourdieu & Wacquant 273), then he will be seen as pathetic in the female gaze.

From the text: It took thousands of peaceful protestors to get noticed but it only took a few hundreds anarchists to receive attention. Because of the anarchists violence, it drowned out the message of the peaceful protestors. The media focused on the violence and activist Cathy Ahern said, "It was supposed to be peaceful... It's been completely destroyed. Our message is not going to get out and I'm so mad" (Postman, Broom and Davila, 1999, pA13). The relation to symbolic violence in this situation is that actual violence was what caught the eye of the media, and not the peaceful protestors that wanted their message to become known. The way the media will portray this situation to the public screen is that by violence, you will be noticed. So in the future, effective protesting will be encouraged to have violence.

Works Cited: Bourdieu, Pierre & Wacquant, Loic. "Symbolic Violence". University of Minnesota: Center for German and European Studies. 272-273. Web. 4 Jan 2016.