Thanks for this one Maarten!

At the risk of annoying you with my repetitive insistence that you read Bourdieu…

You should read Bourdieu—especially because one of the most important questions he spent 30+ years tackling is the very question featured in the title of your article.

If you’re not already familiar with them, the concepts of habitus and field (and the related concepts of capital, doxa, and objective regularities and of dispositions and positions) could very well drastically change how you think about a plethora of issues pertaining to human agency—they certainly have for me!

:p