Sacraments and Gift Exchange in Bourdieu

What is it about?

The relationship between God and humans has been described through the symbol of gift exchange like in the recent work Louis Marie Chauvet. However, the same structuralist paradigm has been critiqued by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. This article argues that "gift exchange" could not fully explain God-human relations as gifts are also mired with symbolic violence and domination. What it points to is not so much a life of "gracious existence" but a world "contrast experience".

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