Dominant actors in a society must consciously accept that such an ideological order exists for unequal social relationships to take place.
Louis Althusser further developed it in his writing on what he called Ideological State Apparatuses, arguing that the latter's power is partly based on symbolic repression.
Bourdieu suggested that cultural roles are more dominant than economic forces in determining how hierarchies of power are situated and reproduced across societies.
For example, in the process of reciprocal gift exchange in the Kabyle society of Algeria, when there is an asymmetry in wealth between the two parties, the better-endowed giver "can impose a strict relation of hierarchy and debt upon the receiver.
[5] Symbolic power differs from physical violence in that it is embedded in the modes of action and structures of cognition of individuals, and imposes the specter of legitimacy of the social order.