Field, Habitus and Capitals from Narratives of Unemployed Men with Families

Abstract

This article proposes as a transversal axis the analysis of masculinity in unemployed men with families. The aim of this article is to analyse the connotations of field, habitus and capitals based on the narratives of unemployed men with families. In order to answer this question, an interpretative paradigm research with an exploratory multiple qualitative case study design with seven lower middle-class men from Bogotá, Colombia, is proposed. By means of a semi-structured biographical interview in which categorical analysis was carried out after axial coding. In the results, the hegemonic expectations of the male gender are recognised as explicit, which are linked to the ideal of well-being that cannot be fulfilled. Social class is dynamic, maintaining constructed fields and hegemonic gender habitus apprehended and stripped of symbolic capital. These conditions together reveal that masculinity is constructed on the basis of hegemonic expectations of what is expected of men within the social structure. It generates tension to assume the change of the field, habitus and capitals at the moment of unemployment.