What Is Not Conserved: Bourdieu, the Conversion of Capitals, and a Principle That Was Never Defended

Bourdieu's "The Forms of Capital" (1983/1986) is the canonical reference for the conversion of capitals, and it rests on a principle stated as a law: a conservation of social energy "equivalent to the principle of the conservation of energy", with labour-time as universal equivalent. This paper shows that the principle cannot stand with what Bourdieu writes on the same pages: three times, he makes cost or value depend on the road taken and not on the state reached — and his theory of strategies exists only because roads are paid for differently. A universal equivalent is a state function; a state function makes every closed loop free of charge; the exclusion is one of principle, not a matter of missing data. The paper then names what is actually conserved — not a circulating substance, but the closing of a loop across generations — and traces the principle through five texts, from 1979 to 1997: laid down once, never defended, and quietly dropped by Bourdieu himself, while the discipline still works with the abandoned apparatus. Three testable consequences follow, each with its refuter.

This record contains the same paper in two versions: English (primary) and French (original). — Ce dépôt contient le même texte en deux versions : anglaise (principale) et française (originale).