Just as the economic capital corresponds to a material gain determined in accordance with its position in a production system, social capital corresponds to the position and prestige achieved in the reproduction of the society. Even though they seem to be basically different, both forms of capitals are phenomena likely to transform into one another. The possibility of such a transformation reveals the social orientation of the capital, whether economic, cultural, symbolic or social. In this context, this study tries to reveal the relations of commodity that emerges with the idea of social capital acquisition, and focuses on the relationship between the perception of borrowing obligations and the domination created by the commodity.

According to Bourdieu, the “conversion strategies” that arise in an attempt to transform an owned capital form into another form of capital, point to the efforts of the individual who is situated to protect his position or to achieve another position in a social structure. Each class focuses on the goals of the other classes in order to gain new achievements and superiority to other classes. Inter-class struggles and efforts to obtain “goods or titles” previously identified in habitus and capital forms refer to an extension of such a conversion strategy. The goods or titles that are determinant in terms of social stratification give an important social position to the owners. In this case, groups that do not (cannot) have goods and titles enter into a struggle against the leading groups in the social hierarchy as they have these goods and titles. The struggle is related to the attempt to acquire goods and titles that give social status. However, the groups “above” the social hierarchy respond in a way that does not exclude the goods and titles which they possess in order to protect their position (Bourdieu, 2017, s. 237–242), because the positions outlined in the social structure are defined on the basis of the possessed goods, titles, liking, talents and skills. The values given in the content of consumption commodities are especially symbolic representations of the meanings that determine the social position. In this respect, the habitus determining the location and form of social capital surrounded by the habitat, are transformed into another habitus and another capital respectively, causing the change in the social position of the individual. This transformation can be achieved by consuming the products and experiences required by the desired habitus and the form of capital . Consumption needs to afford a certain social or economic value. For this reason, individuals who constitute social constructions are confronted with the reality of social and economic costs that they must have. Such an obligation necessitates the social construction of a wide variety of strategies and tools that Bourdieu calls conversion strategies. In today’s consumer society, in which the ideology of consumerism spreads rapidly, various tools and actors serving this purpose have been created by the system. The credit and debt situation, which is the basis of the conversion strategies of the consumer society, is one of such tools and actors.

Credit and debt practices legitimize people who want to get a social position and intend to make themselves a member of a specific habitus. However, this legitimization is achieved only by the fulfillment of an act expected from them at the level of discourse. For those who have products and experiences in this way, the positions they cannot reach due to the inadequacy of social capital is almost granted to them by the system. At the consumer society phase, commodities and experiences provide a strategic application for the tools of the system as well, since they create a sense of difference via the symbolic meanings that they have. Credit is one of these applications. The capitalist system attributes the meanings that add commodity values to the produced materials and also gives possible strategies for buying this product to the consumers. In this respect, credit has become a vehicle for lifting the barriers to consumption in the form of time and space shifts. Those, who has been conceived consumption by the symbolic meanings presented in products and experiences, but cannot be put in action, are made to be included by the system. But this sense of impenetrability and being a part of the system is just a tribute to a temporary and imaginary paradise. In due course, debt and credit, which have to be paid, turn into the yoke of the consuming class.

However, the sense of prestige that is believed to be reached is not real. The reality is the support that is for the continuity of the system with indebtedness. This state of support is again dominated by the vehicles and actors of the system and a power relation is established through indebtedness. In particular, the perception of social capital, which the people who cannot have the social capital expected by the ideology of consumerism think they have obtained by borrowing, is producing a domination based on indebtedness.