Power Relations in Black Lives: Reading African American Literature and Culture with Bourdieu and Elias

According to relational sociology, power imbalances are at the core of human conflicts. They shape subsequent physical and symbolic struggles between interdependent groups or individuals. The contributions to this volume highlight the role of power relations in the black experience. By applying key concepts of Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias--habitus, field, capital, symbolic violence, established-outsider relationships--to African American literature and culture, the authors offer new readings of power asymmetries as they are represented in the works of canonical and contemporary black writers, rap music, and figurations of political activism.