John Thompson explains Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic violence in his introduction to Language and Symbolic Power : “Instead of analyzing the exchange of gifts in terms of a formal structure of reciprocity, in the manner of Lévi–Strauss, Bourdieu views it as a mechanism through which power is exercised and simultaneously disguised. In a society like Kabylia, where there are relatively few institutions in which relations of domination can be given a stable and objective form, individuals must resort to more personalized means of exercising power over others. One such means is debt: an individual can bring another under his or her sway by enforcing the obligations deriving from usury. But there are other, ‘softer’ and more subtle means of exercising power, like the giving of gifts. By giving a gift—especially a generous one that cannot be met by a counter–gift of comparable quality— the giver creates a lasting obligation and binds the recipient in a relation of personal indebtedness. Giving is also a way of possessing: it is a way of binding another while shrouding the bond in a gesture of generosity. This is what Bourdieu describes as ‘symbolic violence,’ in contrast to overt violence of the usurer or the ruthless master; it is ‘gentle, invisible, unrecognized as such, chosen as much as undergone, that of trust, obligation, personal loyalty, hospitality, gifts, debts, piety, in a word, of all the virtues honoured by the ethic of honour.’ In a society like Kabylia, where domination has to be sustained primarily through interpersonal relations rather than institutions, symbolic violence is a necessary and effective means of exercising power. For it enables relations of domination to be established and maintained through strategies which are softened and disguised, and which conceal domination beneath the veil of an enchanted relation.”

This leaves me wondering if biblical scholars have wrongly read “debt cancellation” in the Torah as involving financial or monetary debt. It might just as well mean release from the obligation for a return on a favor, and thus release from the mastery and domination of a benefactor.