Reflecting on Habitus, Field and Capital Towards a Culturally Sensitive Social Work

• Summary: This article argues that the notion of the knowledge base as a central aspect of professional activity is flawed, and that it is more useful to see social work as in a continuous process of constructing and reconstructing professional knowledge. • Findings: Culture is an area that has attracted widespread attention in academia and the social professions. However, there has been little examination of culturally sensitive social work practice from a realist perspective, or one that starts from the view that oppressive structures, as encoded within social class, are essential determinants of cultural experience. Following a critique of postmodern perspectives on culture, the work of Pierre Bourdieu on culture and power is explored. • Applications: Three of Bourdieu’s key constructs – habitus, field and capital – are utilized to develop a model for culturally sensitive social work practice that attends to the interplay of agency and structure in reproducing inequalities within the social world. Keywords culture model cultural sensitivity power realism There is broad consensus for the view that culture is one of the most discussed and debated concepts in the popular and academic worlds today. Historically, this interest has followed a unique trajectory. From its early antiquarian roots, where it was linked with tilling of the land (O’Hagan, 1999), the concept has diversified to include people’s creative expression in the arts. Within this modal-ity further differentiation resulted in high and low forms of artistic endeavour: the former the preserve of grandiose elites, the latter encrypted within populist discourse. More recently, however, the concept has been mainstreamed throughout society, finding expression in politics (where nascent governments highlight the need for cultural change as part of a ‘spin offensive’); in corporate governance (where organizations link their success with cultural ambience o