Practice and Domination: Toward a Theory of Political Micro-economy

Abstract

Older siblings play a role in their younger siblings’ language socialization by ratifying or rejecting linguistic behavior. In addition, older siblings may engage in a struggle to maintain their dominant position in the family hierarchy. This struggle is seen through the lens of language and political economy as a struggle for symbolic capital. Bilingual adolescent sibling interactions are analyzed as both acts of identity and expressions of symbolic power. This paper draws a theory of political micro-economy, which relates face-to-face interaction to larger structures of political economy through a process of fractal recursivity.