illusio

Illusio is a concept in Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of social fields. The term, drawn from Latin illusio meaning illusion or play, is used to describe the sense that there are real stakes in the competition of a given field and that participation is worthwhile. It refers to the subjective investment and commitment of actors who perceive the rules, rewards, and risks of a field as consequential.

In practice, illusio binds agents to the logic of a field. Through habitus and socialization, individuals come to value the forms of capital—economic, social, cultural, and symbolic—perceived as legitimate within that field. This perception motivates behavior, such as strategy selection, risk tolerance, and persistence, even amid uncertainty or inequality. Illusio helps explain why people invest time, resources, and effort to pursue status, recognition, or power within a domain like art, academia, business, or sport.

Illusio is not uniform; it varies across fields and individuals. It can align with the field’s objective structure or be a source of misrecognition, masking power relations and inequalities that shape who has access to rewards. Critics note that the concept can mask exploitation or be difficult to measure empirically, but it remains a central tool for analyzing why actors participate in and reproduce social hierarchies.

See also: Bourdieu, field, habitus, capital, symbolic capital.