Here is an example of the boundaries of boundaries and categories that appear to be one of the characteristics of socially dominant environments. The different forms of capital are closely intermingled and one passes imperceptibly from a symbolic aspect to an economic dimension, without abandoning the cultural tonality. Power is also power over categories. The ordinary social agent is classified, listed, accounted, recorded. The aristocrat or the haut bourgeois is much harder to categorize: for proof, one might emphasize the fact that official figures, the socio-professional categories of INSEE [1], are inadequate to define them. And more: social rankings, according to careers or professions, are misleading. One can never reduce an haut bourgeois person to the definition of his professional activity. First of all, he often has several of them. But whether he is a marketing executive in an enterprise, a general in the army, CEO, farmer or academician, it goes without saying that his real social standing results from his profession, certainly, but also from all the closely maintained ties with his counterparts in other socially dominant positions. In other words, a grand bourgeois is a grand bourgeois by virtue of the systems of relationships that involve him in the networks proper to his own background. A worker, even a misanthrope living withdrawn by himself, will remain a worker. A grand bourgeois can not be a grand bourgeois by himself. His power is not individual but collective. It is his social class that assures him his dominant position. There is no need to belong to a club if you want to be a housewife. But one cannot be grand bourgeois without intense socializing.
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1.The National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (French: Institut national de la