10.1177/0038038514535862
https://zenodo.org/records/894539
oai:zenodo.org:894539
Julien, C.
C.
Julien
Bourdieu, Social Capital and Online Interaction
Zenodo
2014
2014-06-30
Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International
While there has been much discussion in recent decades on the nature of social capital and its
importance in online interactions, it is my contention that these discussions have been dominated
by the American Communitarian tradition. In this article, I begin with an overview of American
Communitarianism to identify the key elements therein that are found in contemporary theories
of social capital. Following this, I expose some of the weaknesses of this tradition and apply
Bourdieu's distinctive theoretical framework to online interactions to demonstrate the fecundity
of Bourdieu's sociological perspective when applied to contemporary online interactions. To do
this, I examine interactions online that involve 'internet memes', as digital inhabitants themselves
colloquially define them. It is my contention that an agonistic model, rather than a communitarian
one, best describes the online interactions of digital inhabitants.