This article will show how the terminology used in diverse professional conflicts in contemporary Brazil reveals a new structure for the distribution of symbolic capital in the country. This new structure is reflected in the conditions of possibility for governments that lean towards the left of the political spectrum to practice economic and social policies that are deemed 'heterodox'. To this end, the article focuses on the use of expressions such as "upper and lower clergy" and "homework" to show the cross-effects of these terms and reactions to them. More specifically, it makes use of certain cultural markers and significant events in the ten years that follow the first presidential victory of Lula, trying to explain them and to extract some of the consequences of their elapse for the cultural analysis of the period.
"Mensalão"; "PiG"; Cultural Conflict; Durkheimian political sociology; Cultural warfare
