Meghna Mathur

Abstract Symbolic powers govern societies in subtle ways. Pierre Bourdieu defines symbolic power in Language and Symbolic Power as the power ‘to ‘consecrate and constitute groups’. Such symbolic powers perpetrate symbolic violence wherein one class reinforces its distinctive powers contributing to the ‘domestication of the dominated. Symbolic violence and power exist across different axes of intersecting social stratification such as gender, religion, ethnicity, class, race and caste.