Cultural legitimacy and symbolic power in the contemporary Mexican theatrical field

An analysis of the regimes of legitimation

Abstract

This article examines the disputes over cultural legitimacy that cross-cut contemporary theatrical production in Mexico, understanding theatre as a social field where different agents compete for recognition, visibility, and symbolic authority. Beyond a simplified opposition between institutional and commercial theatre, the article argues that cultural legitimacy is constructed through economies of cultural value: systems of production, circulation, and recognition in which criteria such as academic training, heritage preservation, audience reception, economic sustainability, and scenic/stage innovation are transformed into symbolic capital. Using a qualitative, analytical–interpretive approach, this study draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of culture — in dialogue with contributions by Howard S. Becker, Tomás Ejea, and Néstor García Canclini — to examine different regimes of legitimation operating within the Mexican theatrical field. Through an analysis of institutional, university-based, commercial, and independent practices, this paper proposes an analytical model to understand how cultural legitimacy is distributed and how symbolic power is exercised in contemporary theatrical production. Ultimately, the study contributes to ongoing debates on cultural policy, stage production, and symbolic inequalities in Mexican theatre.