For an explanatory route of the university movement in Colombia: an approximation to Pierre Bourdieu

Abstract

The purpose of this text is to clarify the interpretive proposition of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, in order to begin a dialog with university life and with the dynamics of student movements in Colombia. This analysis allows understanding that universities all entities constituted by multiple capitals (such as the social, cultural, symbolic, economic, and political capitals), whose challenges include a variety of fields that are relatively autonomous with regards to the social space as a whole, and in which a few persons hold their particular own capitals, and fight against others capitals in order to strengthen their network, a net that controls all the fields. Some aspects of the concept of habitus will afterwards be approached, explaining the interactions among the different fields and their contribution to the reproduction and transformations of the social structure.