Pierre Bourdieu and The Godfather: An Analysis of Symbolic Power you can't refuse

Over the past decade, Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts have been increasingly applied within International Political Sociology to enable a more nuanced analysis of cross-border power relations. The vast extent of Bourdieu’s works, however, makes it difficult to find a point of entry into his arguments. In order to introduce students of International Relations to a sociological analysis of power, this paper aims to provide this entry point by presenting Bourdieu’s central notion of symbolic power through an analysis of the film The Godfather by Francis Ford Coppola. A central concern of Bourdieu is the reproduction of relations of domination in modern societies. The relative stability of social orders, he argues, is not based on coercion or force, but on the consent to this order on the part of the dominated. The concept of symbolic power refers to a correspondence between the objective social structures and the ways in which we perceive the world, and is therefore Bourdieu’s central contribution to a post-Marxist class analysis. The film The Godfather allows us to illustrate three key aspects of symbolic power by following the metamorphosis of Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino). First, and based on the importance of rituals for the progression of the plot, rituals will be examined as a key practice to transmit dispositions, that is, the principles of perceiving and acting within a given context. The transformative effect of those rituals will be illustrated, second, by tracing the adjustments in Michael’s hexis. With this notion, Bourdieu aims to grasp the observable and bodily dimensions of the habitus, i.e., the internalized dispositions. Thanks to Al Pacino’s portrayal of Michael, we can trace the latter’s transformation from a Mafia outsider to its leader through its reflection in his physical posture, including gestures and facial expressions. Finally, this analysis of Michael’s transformation will then allow us to shed light on how the reproduction of social relations of power, in this case the Mafia, appears as natural and therefore legitimate to those whose dispositions have been shaped in such a way that they correspond to the external structures. This dialectic of socialization on the one hand and the reproduction of power relations on the other is a key theme within Bourdieu’s work. Its illustration with the help of The Godfather will facilitate the study of his further writings.