نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی
عنوان مقاله English
نویسنده English
Pierre Bourdieu, the French sociologist, conceives power as the product of social relations and maintains that society continually reproduces unequal structures of power. The application of his theory to classical texts—including the Golestan of Saadi Shirazi—demonstrates that such works are not merely reflections of moral teachings; rather, they constitute arenas of struggle over the definition of legitimacy and the distribution of cultural and symbolic capital. With the aim of uncovering the latent layers of power embedded in classical literature, this article analyzes the tale “Saʿdi’s Dispute with a Claimant Concerning Wealth and Poverty” from the Golestan as a scene of symbolic contestation within the theoretical framework of Bourdieu. Employing a qualitative and analytical method, the study first explicates the key concepts of Bourdieu’s political sociology and subsequently examines the tale in light of these concepts. The findings indicate that the gathering (majlis), as a “symbolic field,” constitutes an arena of unequal struggle. The claimant, by feigning possession of “symbolic capital” and deploying “symbolic violence,” seeks to legitimize the discourse of poverty. In contrast, Saʿdi, drawing upon his accumulated “cultural capital,” defends the dominant order by converting economic capital into moral capital. The outcome is the defeat of an agent lacking legitimate forms of capital. This study demonstrates that the Golestan, beyond its overt ethical instruction, serves as a site for the consolidation of the legitimacy of “symbolic violence” and the reproduction of the hegemony of the dominant discourse.
کلیدواژهها English
