Symbolic systems do real work that articulates the field of class relations.

Evidence

Bourdieu wants to treat the problem in terms of the mutual articulation of two discontinuous fields. Symbolic relations are not disguised metaphors for class relations: but nor are they “merely signifying.” It is because they do symbolic work of a certain kind that they can function as the articulation of another field—the field of class relations: and hence also do the work of power and domination. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 369

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Bourdieu’s mediating synthesis — symbolic fields are neither reducible to nor autonomous from class — is a genuinely paradigm-shifting formulation.
• XREF: The ‘mutual articulation of two discontinuous fields’ is central to Hall’s articulation theory developed elsewhere in this book and his later work.