Proper recognition: Personhood and symbolic capital in contemporary sociology

Abstract

Sociologists maintain an ambivalent relationship to the category of the person, even more so at a time when the category is deemed insufficient for analysis yet appears increasingly significant within the world it purports to capture. This article begins with this ascending significance of the person in the neoliberal world of work, where the personal accumulation of skills and devolution of responsibility to individuals are privileged. Theoretical approaches to personhood attempt to respond to these changed conditions, with the work of Pierre Bourdieu often thought incapable of properly explaining such contemporary phenomena. In response, this article approaches personhood through the frame..