Violence as Capital: an Analytical Brief

Abstract I develop the notion of capital of violence, arguing that targeted physical force is the fifth, “forgotten capital” in Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the four species of capital (economic, cultural, social and symbolic). Violence is a form of capital because it allows its perpetrators to capture streams of material and symbolic profit and because it is a constituent of social life irreducible to the other four species. It exists under three guises, embodied (aggressiveness, physical force), objectified (e.g., weapons, barracks) and institutionalized (gangs, militias, the police, the army, etc.). It can be accumulated, delegated and converted into other species of capital. Placed in the broader portfolio of efficient resources, it shapes social structure, strategy and experience. It also has three unique properties: it is most efficient when it is held in reserve, threatened but not enacted; it has the capacity to destroy other forms of capital; and it sits at the basis of economic capital. The capital of violence finds its subjective counterpart in the brutalized and brutalizing habitus with cognitive, emotive and conative components that incline one to deploy and withstand physical force. The violent habitus can be learned through osmosis in a violent milieu or through didactic teaching and intensive practice. I illustrate these propositions by examining the so-called Jewish “ghetto” of the occupied territories of Eastern Europe under Nazi rule as a closed ecology of domination in which violent capital accumulated and violent habituses thrived, resulting in the suffusive infliction of reticular and terroristic force. I close by drawing out the implications of this conceptual move for the study of violence and for Bourdieu’s theory of practice and power.