The French Atom and Bourdieu’s Symbolic Capital

Abstract

This article proposes interpreting the process of France’s nuclearisation between 1945 and 1980 through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic capital. The first part of the text describes the origins of the French nuclear project and explains its prestigious nature. It highlights the dual military and civilian uses of nuclear technology, as well as its relationship to the colonial political order. The second part of the text identifies and analyses the discursive strategies used to legitimise the symbolic capital of nuclear projects. The text points to the cognitive mechanisms that construct the recognition of the nuclear industry. In the next step, the juxtaposition of Martin Denoun’s research findings with Bourdieu’s theory allows to explain the relationship between visions of the future and the process of legitimising action. The summary proposed in the last part of the article allows commenting on Bourdieu’s theory itself.