Symbolic violence

Violence committed indirectly through symbols, values and beliefs that justify and legitimize structural violence. It is carried out depending on the social position of each member of the hierarchy and is enshrined in unconscious or tacit acts and modes. Symbolic violence is represented by discriminatory actions that justify and legitimize the ethnic, cultural, gender or religious superiority of the dominant figure or group. Symbolic violence is an instrument of social control that serves to maintain the current social order, but it can also accelerate and legitimize direct violence. The term was coined by Pierre Bourdieu and has progressively replaced the term ‘cultural violence’, first formulated by the Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung in 1969.