Title: Bourdieusian capital of Nigerian bank financial condition

Authors: Jonathan Njoku

Addresses: Kuwait-Maastricht Business School, P.O. Box 9678, Salmiya, 22097, Kuwait

Abstract: This paper aims to examine the relevance of capital in constructing the reality of Nigerian bank financial condition. Cast within the Bourdeusian theory of fields, habitus and capital, this paper examines the anatomic implications of the CAMEL model that bank regulators in Nigeria use to assess the financial condition of banking firms. The result shows that symbolic capital is critical in distressed banking where habitus is costly and social and cultural capital is weak. Nonetheless, during normal banking where habitus fusion with the field of financial intermediation is healthy, the efficiency of bank cultural capital assumes more importance than the adequacy of bank symbolic capital in securing sound banking. The result suggests a strong policy lesson to regulators that big bank financial capital (symbolic capital) in the face of weaknesses in the field, habitus and cultural capital may result in big bags with holes.

Keywords: bank anatomy; bank financial condition; Bourdieus; habitus; fields; distressed banking; cultural capital; symbolic capital; sound banking; financial capital; Nigeria.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCA.2014.060137

International Journal of Critical Accounting, 2014 Vol.6 No.1, pp.55 - 78

Published online: 13 May 2014 *

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