1.1 PA is, objectively, symbolic violence first insofar as the power relations between the groups or classes making up a social formation are the basis of the arbitrary power which is the precondition for the establishment of a relation of pedagogic communication, i.e. for the imposition and inculcation of a cultural arbitrary by an arbitrary mode of imposition and inculcation (education).

this passage is indexed in the French version of the book as a "définition" of education. It should be read in context with the passages of the "irreversibility" of the effects of pedagogical work.

1.1.1. Insofar as it is a symbolic power which, by definition, is never reducible to the imposition of force, PA can produce its own specifically symbolic effect only to the extent that it is exerted within a relation of pedagogic communication.

1.1.2 Insofar as it is symbolic violence, PA can produce its own specifically symbolic effect only when provided with the social conditions for imposition and inculcation, i.e. the power relations that are not implied in a formal definition of communication.

1 1.3. In any given social formation, the PA which the power relations between the groups or classes making up that social formation put into the dominant position within the system of PAs is the one which most fully, though always indirectly, corresponds to the objective interests (material, symbolic and, in the respect considered here, pedagogic) of the dominant groups or classes, both by its mode of imposition and by its delimitation of what and on whom, it imposes.

1.2. PA is, objectively, symbolic violence in a second sense insofar as the delimitation objectively entailed by the fact of imposing and inculcating certain meanings, treated by selection and by the corresponding exclusion as worthy of being reproduced by PA, re-produces (in both senses) the arbitrary selection a group or class objectively makes in and through its cultural arbitrary.

1.2.1 The selection of meanings which objectively defines a group's or a class's culture as a symbolic system is arbitrary insofar as the structure and functions of that culture cannot be deduced from any universal principle, whether physical, biological or spiritual, not being linked by any sort of internal relation to `the nature of things' or any `human nature'.

1.2.2. The selection of meanings which objectively defines a group's or a class's culture as a symbolic system is socio-logically necessary insofar as that culture owes its existence to the social conditions of which it is the product and its intelligibility to the coherence and functions of the structure of the signifying relations which constitute it

1.2.3. In any given social formation the cultural arbitrary which the power relations between the groups or classes making up that social formation put into the dominant position within the system of cultural arbitraries is the one which most fully, though always indirectly, expresses the objective interests (material and symbolic) of the dominant groups or classes.

1.3. The objective degree of arbitrariness (in the sense of proposition 1.1. J of a PA's power of imposition rises with the degree of arbitrariness (in the sense of proposition 1.2) of the culture imposed.

1.3.1 The PA whose arbitrary power to impose a cultural arbitrary rests in the last analysis on the power relations between the groups or classes making up the social formation in which is carried on (by 1.1 and 1 2) contributes, by reproducing the cultural arbitrary which it inculcates towards reproducing the power relations which are the basis of its power of arbitrary imposition (the social reproduction function of cultural reproduction).

1.3.2. In any given social formation the different PAs, which can never be defined independently of their membership in a system of PAs subjected to the effect of domination by the dominant PA, tend to reproduce the system of cultural arbitraries characteristic of that social formation, thereby contributing to the reproduction of the power relations which put that cultural arbitrary into the dominant position.