Bourdieu’s understanding of policy revolves around the inequalities caused by capital. He believed that certain institutional structures prevent the masses from accessing capital. Therefore, he advocated for policy intervention as a method of enabling people to live dignified lives through capital access. According to this theorist, the market is an inefficient way of distributing capital, so external parties like the government should be involved (Bourdieu 2001). Furthermore, policy interventions need to target the underprivileged. In this case, carbon tax policy is one such intervention.
The carbon tax policy under analysis is the Australian carbon tax that was introduced in 2012. It is a fixed price carbon tax of $ 23 per tonne (Siriwardana et. al. 2012).
According to Bourdieu’s school of thought, economic capital is the total sum of material objects that a person possesses. These may range from assets in business, money, and property. However, Bourdieu’s conception of economic capital differs from other theorists because it is related to other forms of capital (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1999).
Those who have greater cultural and social capital will access more economic opportunities and hence greater economic capital; therefore, the different forms of capital are interrelated (Bourdieu 2001). Economic capital gives its owner immediate access to goods or services. It also allows the individuals to acquire certain cultural or social knowledge that give him an advantage in economic transactions (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1999).
Persons with a lot of economic capital can mobilise other persons with similar sources of capital and this in turn perpetuates their ability to grow their economic capital. It is thus easy to see how economic capital is a prerequisite to greater accumulation of capital. Those who have little economic capital are also likely to possess minimal cultural and social capital. As a consequence, the idea of capital implemented with societal structures keeps perpetuating inequality. The government can intervene through policies that correct these gaps (Bourdieu 2001).
Carbon taxes are one such intervention. These are tolls that the government introduces in order to curb pollution. The logic behind it is that the environment is a communal good. Furthermore, all members of society have access to the environment. On the other hand, pollutants have the capacity to reduce the quality of the environment. Persons who cause pollution do not pay for it, yet the larger society still has to bear the costs of a deteriorating environment (National Treasury South Africa 2013).
One way in which the environment deteriorates is through climate change. Pollution emitters often do not account for the production of climate change as a cost of production. This becomes a market failure that stakeholders should correct (Park 2007). Bourdieu supported the restoration of human dimensions to the field of economic planning. He explained that policy makers need to include social effects of economic choices (Garrett 2007).
If an economic decision leads to sickness, loss of jobs or other undesirable social consequences, then those parameters should be included in policy (Lingard et. al. 2005). The largest proportion of carbon emitters consist of owners of economic capital; these persons command a lot of material resources, they are more likely to participate in large-scale business ventures and industrial processes, which emit many pollutants (Robinson 2005).
However, most of them do not think about the social effects of their activities. Pollution continues to occur because people with the greatest amount of economic capital keep pursuing greater production (Robinson 2005).They over allocate resources without weighing the social costs of their actions. It thus makes sense to tax them for their carbon emissions.
An economic rationale for carbon tax policy interventions exists in Bourdieu’s theory of economic capital. Services and goods, which lead to emission of greenhouse gases, can be adjusted to show the complete cost they exert on consumption and production (Park 2007). Carbon taxes indicate these costs, and they have the capacity to minimise inequalities from forms of capital. Businesses with a high impact on the environment would have an incentive to minimise their carbon emissions in order to avoid the tax.
They would also rethink their energy strategies as well as the technologies they use. Many of them would use production methods that reduce their effect on the atmosphere (National Treasury South Africa 2013). As a result, this policy intervention would minimise the effect of production activities on the environment.
According to Garrett (2007), Bourdieu did not specifically address climate change during his lectures. Bourdieu was largely concerned with matters of education and how forms of capital lead to the perpetuation of inequalities in this sector (Bourdieu 2001). However, his support for social changes in economic policy shows that carbon taxes are feasible in his thinking.
Bourdieu often explained that governments must be vigilant about surrendering to the forces of capital (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1999). Several owners of capital, who emit a lot of carbon emissions, possess cultural and social capital that assists them in protecting their industries. Many large-scale carbon emitters claim that efficiency and the need to improve the quality of life in their society can justify the social costs of their activities (Hudson 2013).
Through social networks as well as their control over cultural capital, economic players often influence policy makers to support their actions. For instance, an emerging school of thought claims that climate change is not a cause for alarm because it is cyclical in nature (Hudson 2013). Persons with a lot of economic capital will use this knowledge as a form of cultural capital. Eventually, they will affect government representatives by employing this knowledge, and policies will be made in their favour.
For evidence of this result, one can examine the push to end carbon taxes by businesses in Australia (Coorey and Daley 2013). If the latter situation arises, then they will keep accumulating more economic capital while the masses keep living in a worse environment. Carbon taxes would put a stop to this inequality by making entrepreneurs pay for the cost of production (Siriwardana et. al. 2013).
It is simply unfair for capitalists to engage in massive production and dump their wastes on the environment without thinking about the repercussions (Sze & London, 2008). For decades, many owners of capital have enjoyed the benefits of successful investment alone. However, as the environmental effects of their activities have grown, many of them now expect the rest of society to participate in the clean up. Bourdieu anticipated such behaviour in his explanation of economic capital.
He asserted that owners of capital often had ways of perpetuating their interests through societal structures (Bourdieu 2001). They justify their actions using the prevailing social order, and this keeps them rich (Garrett 2007). Through cultural capital, the privileged can use sociological and economic theory to justify their actions. For instance, they may emphasise the fact that all people contribute to their carbon emissions since the masses consume the products they make.
However, the masses do not enjoy the profits and privilege that they have, so it would be unjust to make them pay for others’ misdeeds. Furthermore, the public already pays for their part in production by buying the item. Bourdieu would thus condemn the universalism of carbon taxes but he would support the principle behind them.
Perhaps another way in which one can examine the issue of carbon tax is through the distribution of economic capital. As stated earlier, inequality is perpetuated through institutional structures like cultural and social capital that make it easier for owners of economic capital to get ahead while those without to live a life of poverty.
Carbon taxes may be regarded as another method of revenue generation for the government (Siriwardana et. al. 2012). One should note that this is not the intention in the first place. In fact, if too much revenue comes from the taxes, then the policy is not achieving the objective it intended. The logic behind carbon taxes is to cause individuals to use more efficient production methods in order to minimise the effects they have on the environment.
Therefore, if a lot of businesses are remitting high amounts of tax, then this indicates that their emissions are still high. Consequently, the social problem of climate change that they were meant to control is still present. If the government collects a reasonable amount of carbon tax, it can use it as a mechanism for distributing economic capital. Bourdieu often supported policy interventions that closed the gap between the have and the have-nots.
In his theory, the thinker affirmed that governments should play the role of facilitating access to capital. Carbon taxes may be viewed as a source of revenue for government projects (Robinson 2005). If used properly, these taxes may redistribute wealth by funding development projects. It should be noted that this would only be true if contributors of the taxes represent individuals with vast amounts of capital.
A number of critics affirm that carbon taxes will not generate desirable outcomes. Some businesspersons in Australia claim that the country will suffer from job losses as well as declining profits (Hudson 2013). These carbon-tax sceptics claim that the policy is detrimental to the economy because it stifles entrepreneurship. They explain that several large businesses are taking a flight from the country and heading east to China (Wolff 2013). Therefore, they believe that carbon taxes will not affect such polluters. However, their reasoning is not well founded as explained by Bourdieu.
Bourdieu’s understanding of economic capital can provide an insight on why carbon tax should target these individuals. Controllers of large businesses have plenty of economic capital. This allows them to use their cultural and social capital to find the most efficient ways of doing business.
These individuals will relocate to different countries, like China, where wages are cheap and production costs are minimal because they can afford it. Smaller businesses, on the other hand, do not have the money or networks needed to facilitate these relocations (Lingard et. al. 2005). Therefore, if the cost of doing business, as a result of government interventions, becomes overbearing for small businesses, then they will merely close shop.
However, large businesses have the social and economic capital to sustain their enterprises by looking for the most efficient locations. Large multinationals in Australia have relocated to the East in order to minimise costs of production. In these locations, they have spread carbon emissions and continued to harm the environment.
Bourdieu advocates for a distribution of resources to favour the disadvantaged (Noble & Watkins 2003). If policy makers implement carbon taxes that penalise large Australian multinationals for their emissions, irrespective of whether they produce in China or not, then they could make those companies pay for their social ills.
In conclusion, Bourdieu did not address the matter of carbon taxes explicitly in his theory of economic capital. The theorist explained that economic capital perpetuated a class system that makes it difficult for the disadvantaged to access different forms of capital. Therefore, he did advocate for policy interventions that bridge the gap between the privileged and the disadvantaged. Carbon taxes may be perceived as such an intervention because they allow economic capital owners to reduce the impact of their actions on the masses.
Furthermore, the carbon taxes could narrow the poverty gap by funding government-initiated development projects. Bourdieu’s theory may explain why carbon taxes will work in instating social justice. The rich have the capacity to circumvent laws by looking for the most efficient locations of production. This may sometimes involve moving production to the East. Since Australia is home to some of these multinationals, a carbon tax would curb their unmitigated spread of carbon emissions to the rest of the world.
References
Bourdieu, P 2001, Political Interventions: Social science and political action, Sage, London.
Bourdieu, P & Wacquant, L 1999, ‘On the cunning of imperialist reason’, Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 16 no. 1, pp. 41-59.
Coorey, P & Daley, G 2013, Push to end carbon tax early. Web.
Garrett, P 2007, ‘Bourdeusian: Why the social professionals should critically engage with the work of Pierre Bourdieu’, European Journal of Social Work, vol. 10 no. 2, pp. 225-243.
Hudson, P 2013, Australia’s carbon tax called ‘ridiculous’ by business leaders. Web.
Lingard, B, Rawolle, S & Taylor, S 2005, ‘Globalising policy sociology in education: Working with Bourdieu’, Journal of Education Policy, vol. 20 no. 6, pp. 759-777.
National Treasury South Africa 2013, Carbon tax policy paper. Web.
Noble, G & Watkins, M 2003, ‘So, how did Bourdieu learn to play tennis? Habitus, consciousness and habitation’, Cultural Studies, vol. 17, no. 3/4, pp. 520-538.
Park, J 2007, Uncertainty and climate change intervention: An introduction to the economics of climate change. Web.
Robinson, D 2005, ‘Air pollution in Australia: Review of costs, sources and potential solutions’, Health Promotion Journal of Australia, vol. 16 no. 2, pp. 213-20.
Siriwardana, M, Meng, S & McNeil, J 2012, The impact of a carbon tax on the Australian economy: Results from a CGE model. Web.
Sze, J & London, J 2008, ‘Environmental justice at the crossroads’, Sociology Compass, vol. 2 no. 8, pp. 1331-54.
Wolff, R 2013, ‘Capitalism efficient? We can do so much better’, The Guardian, p. 15.