Social capital is one of the most widely used (in both scholarly and non-scholarly contexts) and one of the least critically examined concepts in Bourdieu’s framework. This article aims at questioning the objectivist standpoint from which the concept of social capital has been developed, by looking into the interpretative processes which shape it. In doing so, it proposes a new understanding of the notion of imagined social capital, which has gained prominence in the literature of the last several years. The contribution of the current paper lays in elaborating on the ways in which the existing notion of imagined social capital can be put in dialogue with Bourdieu’s work and in introducing the overlooked, yet fundamental question of otherness into the debate on imagined social capital.
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