While he didn't consider himself a Marxist sociologist, the theories of Karl Marx heavily influenced Bourdieu's thinking. Marx's influence is perhaps most evident in Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital. ... But Bourdieu also points out that cultural capital is a major source of social inequality.

Was Pierre Bourdieu a Marxist?

While some have labeled Bourdieu a Marxist (Ferry and Renaut [1985] 1990; Frank 1980; Rasmussen 1981), others have emphasized his distance from Marxism (Brubaker 1985; DiMaggio 1979; Wacquant 1993). This ambiguity has its basis in Bourdieu's own writings.

Is Bourdieu a functionalist?

However, Bourdieu critically diverged from Durkheim in emphasizing the role of the social agent in enacting, through the embodiment of social structures, symbolic orders. He furthermore emphasized that the reproduction of social structures does not operate according to a functionalist logic.