Bourdieu and Postcommunist Class Formation

Abstract

This article suggests that Bourdieu's model of class, framed in terms of cultural capital and habitus, is particularly valuable in understanding the restoration of capitalism under postcommunist conditions. Following the analyses of Szelényi and his collaborators, it is suggested that post-communist managerialism is still strikingly more pronounced than in the West. This and the notion of habitus in particular are perhaps the main elements of Bourdieu's thinking on which we can draw in theorizing postcommunist transition.