In short, if it wishes to understand the most fundamental social phenomena, which occur as much in pre-capitalist societies as in our own world (degrees are just as much a part of magic as are amulets), social science must take account of the symbolic efficacy of rites of institution, that is, the power they possess to act on reality by acting on its representation. The process of investiture, for example, exercises a symbolic efficacy that is quite real in that it really transforms the person consecrated: first, because it transforms the representations others have of him and above all the behaviour they adopt towards him (the most visible changes being the fact that he is given titles of respect and the respect actually associated with these enunciations); and second, because it simultaneously transforms the representation that the invested person has of himself, and the behaviour he feels obliged to adopt in order to conform to that representation. By the same logic, one can understand the effect of all social titles of credit and credence - of credentials - which, like aristocratic titles and academic qualifications, increase in a durable way the value of their bearer by increasing the extent and the intensity of the belief in their value.
The act of institution is an act of social magic that can create
difference ex nihilo. or else (as is more often the case) by exploiting as it were pre-existing differences, like the biological differences between the sexes or, as in the case of the institution of an heir on the basis of primogeniture, the difference in age. In this sense, as with religion according to Durkheim, it is a 'well-founded delusion', a symbolic imposition but cum fundamento in re. The distinctions that are the most efficacious socially are those which give the appearance of being based on objective differences (I think, for example, of the notion of 'natural boundary’ in geography). None the less, as is very clear in the case of social classes, we are always dealing with continua, with continuous distributions, due to the fact that different principles of differentiation produce different divisions that are never completely congruent. However, social magic always manages to produce discontinuity out of continuity. The paradigmatic example of this, and my starting point, is the competitive academic examination (concours): between the last person to pass and the first person to fail, the competitive examination creates differences of all or nothing that can last a lifetime. The former will graduate from an elite institution like the Ecole Polytechnique and enjoy all the associated advantages and perks, while the latter will become a nobody.
None of the criteria that one can use to justify technically the distinction (understood as legitimate difference) of the nobility fits perfectly. For example, the poorest nobleman-fencer remains noble (even if his image is subsequently tarnished, to a degree that varies according to national traditions and historical periods); conversely, the best commoner-fencer remains common (even if he is able to draw a form of ‘nobility’ from his excellence at a typically noble practice). And the same holds for every criterion defining the nobility at any given moment in time: bearing, elegance and so on. The institution of an identity, which can be a title of nobility or a stigma ('you’re nothing but a . . .’), is the imposition of a name, i.e. of a social essence. To institute, to assign an essence, a competence, is to impose a right to be that is an obligation of being so (or to be so). It is to signify to someone what he is and how he should conduct himself as a consequence. In this case, the indicative is an imperative. The code of honour is only a developed form of the expression that says of a man: ‘he’s a man’s man’. To institute, to give a social definition, an identity, is also to impose boundaries. Thus noblesse oblige might translate Plato’s la heautou pratiein, acting in keeping with one’s essence and nothing else, which, in the case of a nobleman, means acting in keeping with one’s rank and refusing to
