Symbolic Capital and Privilege in the Ottoman Provinces: The Case of Seydişehir

Abstract

This article uses Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the “social field” to analyze the production and contestation of hierarchy in a premodern imperial province. It argues that symbolic capital—derived from sacred lineage or state-sanctioned service—functioned as a productive and convertible asset, not merely as a static honorific. Using the pre-modern Ottoman town of Seydişehir as a case study, the analysis moves beyond the traditional askerî (ruler)-reaya (ruled) dichotomy to examine the strategies of the intermediate strata. Based on archival sources, the study maps the local social field, tracing how groups such as sayyids and zawiya sheikhs converted symbolic capital into economic capital and how the value of this capital was negotiated and challenged. The findings demonstrate that privilege was not a fixed state grant but a relational status, contingent on continuous struggles for recognition and vulnerable to devaluation by central authorities or nullification by coercive force. The study’s primary contribution is a sociological reconceptualization of the Ottoman provincial order as a dynamic field of symbolic power, offering a methodological model for applying sociological theory to historical archives.

Keywords

• Symbolic Capital
• Privileged Groups
• Tax Exemption
• Seydişehir
• Ottoman Empire

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