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Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture pp 101–111Cite as

Choose Your Driver: How Super Mario Kart Helps Explain Bourdieusian Sociology

Part of the Critical Studies of Education book series (CSOE,volume 15)

Abstract

Playing Super Mario Kart, driving around the Mushroom Kingdom, I suspect that sociologist Pierre Bourdieu must have been a consultant at Nintendo. Bourdieu’s theorising of fields of power and social distinction inform contemporary understandings of institutional structures, the accumulation of different forms of capital, and hierarchical social status. Mario’s iconic and influential video game replicates some of the fundamental points in Bourdieu’s literature, via the common factors of life goals, challenging environments, gathering resources and group ranking.

The theoretical framework derived from Bourdieu has been applied to understandings in education and politics, occupational therapy, health and nutrition, and beyond. Notably, while video games would have been classed as an illegitimate or ‘low’ form of culture by Bourdieu, his framework is one of the most cited in sociological understandings of the relationship between cultural consumption and social groups.

Keywords

  • Nintendo
  • Gaming
  • Bourdieu
  • Field
  • Mario Kart
  • Class
  • Capital
  • Habitus

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK

    Karl Johnson

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  1. Karl Johnson
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Correspondence to Karl Johnson .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Teacher Education and Leadership, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, QLD, Australia

    Dr. Naomi Barnes

  2. University of Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia

    Alison Bedford

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Johnson, K. (2021). Choose Your Driver: How Super Mario Kart Helps Explain Bourdieusian Sociology. In: Barnes, N., Bedford, A. (eds) Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture. Critical Studies of Education, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77011-2_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-77010-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-77011-2

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