A struggle on two fronts: boundary drawing in the lower region of the social space and the symbolic market for ‘down‐to‐earthness’

In this article we use qualitative interviews to examine how Norwegians possessing low volumes of cultural and economic capital demarcate themselves symbolically from the lifestyles of those above and below them in social space. In downward boundary drawing, a range of types of people are regarded as inferior because of perceived moral and aesthetic deficiencies. In upward boundary drawing, anti‐elitist sentiments are strong: people practising resource‐demanding lifestyles are viewed as harbouring ‘snobbish’ and ‘elitist’ attitudes. However, our analysis suggests that contemporary forms of anti‐elitism are far from absolute, as symbolic expressions of privilege are markedly less challenged if they are parcelled in a ‘down‐to‐earth’ attitude. Previous studies have shown attempts by the privileged to downplay differences in cross‐class encounters, accompanied by displays of openness and down‐to‐earthness. Our findings suggest that there is in fact a symbolic ‘market’ for such performances in the lower region of social space. This cross‐class sympathy, we argue, helps naturalize, and thereby legitimize, class inequalities. The implications of this finding are outlined with reference to current scholarly debates about politics and populism, status and recognition and intersections between class and gender in the structuring of social inequalities. The article also contributes key methodological insights into the mapping of symbolic boundaries. Challenging Lamont's influential framework, we demonstrate that there is a need for a more complex analytical strategy rather than simply measuring the ‘relative salience’ of various boundaries in terms of their occurrence in qualitative interview data. In distinguishing analytically between usurpationary and exclusionary boundary strategies, we show that moral boundaries in particular can take on qualitatively different forms and that subtypes of boundaries are sometimes so tightly intertwined that separating them to measure their relative salience would neglect the complex ways in which they combine to engender both aversion to and sympathies for others.     

Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Consumption: A Critical Assessment of Recent Developments

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has been an extraordinarily influential figure in the sociology of music. For over three decades, his concepts have helped to generate both empirical and theoretical interventions in the field of study. His impact on the sociology of music taste, in particular, has been profound, his ideas directly informing our understandings of how musical preferences reflect and reproduce inequalities between social classes. But, recently his legacy has been under question and newer approaches to the music/society problematic have emerged. These have made important claims about the nature of the sociological enterprise when confronted with the specificity of cultural works, as well as how social change impacts on our relations with musical forms. This paper takes stock of the impact of Bourdieu’s ideas on the sociology of music, the debates sparked in their wake and the attempt at something like a “post‐Bourdieusian” sociology more faithful to music’s material properties. It will ask to what extent Bourdieu’s claims about social stratification and music consumption are still relevant and whether they are sophisticated enough to deal with the specific ways that we interact with musical forms.     

Pierre Bourdieu: theorizing the digital

ABSTRACT

Pierre Bourdieu is known for his research in the areas of education and cultural stratification that led to a number of theoretical contributions informing the social sciences. Bourdieu’s interrelated concepts of field, capital, and habitus have become central in many approaches to inequality and stratification across the social sciences. In addition, we argue that Bourdieu’s ideas also feature in what is increasingly known as ‘digital sociology.’ To underscore this claim, we explore the ways in which Bourdieu’s ideas continue to have a major impact on social science research both on and with digital and Internet-based technologies. To do so, we offer a review of both Bourdieusian theorizing of the digital vis-à-vis both research on the social impacts of digital communication technologies and the application of digital technologies to social science research methods. We contend that three interconnected features of Bourdieu’s sociology have allowed his approach to flourish in the digital age: (1) his theories’ inseparability from the practice of empirical research; (2) his ontological stance combining realism and social constructionism; and (3) his familiarity with concepts developed in other disciplines and participation in interdisciplinary collaborative projects. We not only reason that these three factors go some way in accounting for Bourdieu’s influence in many sociological subfields, but we also suggest that they have been especially successful in positioning Bourdieusian sociology to take advantage of opportunities associated with digital communication technologies.     

Making It in a Cover Music Scene: Negotiating Artistic Identities in a “Kmart‐Level Market”

This research examines how musicians understand art and commerce in a music scene dominated by cover bands. Drawing on thirty semi‐structured interviews and one hundred hours of ethnographic observation, I find that most musicians self‐identify as artists yet perceive social status to be rooted in commercial success. This research details what it means to “make it” in an art world that offers little institutional support or remunerative reward for artistry. Musicians employ three approaches to negotiate the disconnect between artistic identities and commercially defined status: segregating their artistic and commercial pursuits, locating artistry in their commercial work, and justifying their commercially viable activities as a means to attaining a comfortable lifestyle. This on‐the‐ground account of commercial influences’ effects on musicians informs post‐Bourdieusian research on fields of cultural production. I suggest that future research on culture producers must distinguish between social status—a position in a social hierarchy—and interpersonal respect. When esthetics are marginalized as a basis for status, musicians’ status becomes bound to employment opportunities and expansible relative to the extent of the scene.     

Negotiating employability: migrant capitals and networking strategies for Zimbabwean highly skilled migrants in the UK

In this paper we focus on highly skilled migration from Zimbabwe to the UK, exploring these migrants’ social capital sources/structures and content. In doing so we pay attention to routes of migration and how they shape migrants’ networking capabilities and patterns. We further take a Bourdieusian perspective and explore the intersection between social capital and cultural capital in the process of migrants’ negotiation of employment opportunities, giving closer attention to how the distinctive habitus associated with being highly skilled migrants from Zimbabwe shape migrants’ attitudes towards work. By exploring the interplay between external processes and internalised structures, we bring to the fore the multiple positioning of our participants, who we see not as simply depending on social networks, but as complex actors whose negotiation of employability in the UK is shaped by various factors including intersecting aspects of differentiation.     

Sociological discourse of the relational: the cases of Bourdieu & Latour1

Pierre Bourdieu's approach to sociology has been so widely recognized as being innovative that his innovations can be said to have been academically incorporated to the degree of having‐been‐innovative. On the other hand, the more recent work of Bruno Latour seems to offer a fresh innovative impetus to sociology. Over against Bourdieu's relational sociology, Latour's relationist sociology overcomes the subject‐object dichotomy, and abandons the notions of ‘society’ and ‘the social’. In this contribution, a comparison is made between the ideas of Bourdieu and Latour on the question of what sociology should look like, specifically focusing on their respective ideas on what can be called the relational. A Latourian critique of Bourdieu is provided, as well as a Bourdieusian analysis of Latourian sociology. Rather than ending up with two different ‘paradigms’, an attempt is made on the basis of Foucault's archaeology of discourse to view Bourdieusian and Latourian sociology as distinct positions within a discourse on the relational.     

The discreet charm of the children of the bourgeoisie: economic capital and its symbolic expressions at an elite business school

We address a largely neglected issue in contemporary research on cultural class divisions: economic capital and its associated lifestyles and symbolic expressions. Using qualitative interviews, we explore how adolescents from wealthy elite backgrounds, namely students at Oslo Commerce School (OCS), traditionally one of the most prestigious upper‐secondary schools in Norway, demarcate themselves symbolically from others. They draw symbolic boundaries against students at other elite schools in Oslo, more characterized by backgrounds with high cultural capital, accusing them of mimicking a ‘hipster’ style. Within the OCS student body, we describe identity work centring on styles of material consumption and bodily distinctions. The most salient dividing line is between those who manage to master a ‘natural’ style, where expensive clothes and the desired bodily attributes are displayed discreetly, and those who are ‘trying too hard’ and thus marked by the stigma of effort. We also show some interesting intersections between class and gender: girls aspiring to the economic elite obey the ‘rules of the game’ by exercising extensive control over their bodies and adhering to demanding bodily norms for their weight and slimness. Such rules are less evident among the boys, where a lack of discipline, unruliness, hard partying and even fighting constitute parts of the lifestyle valued. This article contributes to the field of cultural stratification, highlighting the importance of the ‘hows’ of material consumption when expressing elite distinction. It also adds new insight to the research field of elite education by showing how a mastery of ‘high‐end’ consumer culture is involved in fostering favourable dispositions at elite schools.     

Understanding the mobility chances of children from working-class backgrounds in Britain: How important are cognitive ability and locus of control?

Research in social stratification has shown that children from working-class backgrounds tend to obtain substantially lower levels of educational attainment and lower labor market positions than children from higher social class backgrounds. However, we still know relatively little about the micro-level processes that account for this empirical regularity. Our study examines the roles of two individual-level characteristics—cognitive ability and locus of control—in mediating the effect of individuals’ parental class background on their educational attainment and social class position in Britain. We find that cognitive ability mediates only about 35% of the total parental class effect on educational attainment and only about 20% of the total parental class effect on respondents’ social class position, net of their educational attainment. These findings contradict existing claims that differences in the life chances of children from different social class backgrounds are largely due to differences in cognitive ability. Moreover, we find that although individuals’ locus of control plays some role in mediating the parental class effect, its role is substantially smaller than the mediating role of cognitive ability. We measure individuals’ social class positions at different points in their careers—at labor market entry and at occupational maturity—and find that the mediating roles of cognitive ability and locus of control are remarkably stable across individuals’ working lives.     

Industrialization and Social Stratification*

This paper reviews the current state of knowledge about the effects of industrialization upon systems of social stratification. Taking societies as the unit of observation, we consider the relationships between level of industrialization and (1) the distribution of status characteristics in the population (the structure of stratification); (2) the pattern of interrelations among status characteristics (the process of stratification); and (3) the form of linkages between status characteristics and other aspects of social behavior (the consequences of stratification). A set of propositions is specified, a few of which are empirically well established but most of which yet require empirical testing.     

A new political economy of youth reprised: rejoinder to France and Threadgold

In a previous issue of this journal, France and Threadgold [2015. “Youth and Political Economy: Towards a Bourdieusian Approach.” Journal of Youth Studies doi:10.1080/13676261.2015.1098779] claim that they ‘strongly believe that a political economy perspective remains vital for understanding macro-structural power’ (8), yet they reject key aspects of the version I recommended in an earlier issue of this journal [Côté. J. E. 2014a.“Towards a New Political Economy of Youth.” Journal of Youth Studies 17 (4): 527–543]. They also present a Bourdieusian framework, asserting that it provides a better understanding of the effects of political and the economic forces on the lives of young people. In this article, I show how their rejection of the political-economy-of-youth perspective is based on their misunderstandings of some of the fundamental concepts of that perspective, as well as their misrepresentations of what I recommend to the youth studies community concerning that perspective. Consequently, although their Bourdieusian framework may be useful in illuminating certain aspects of the problem, their attempt to promote their framework as a better approach to the political economy of youth is based on unfounded claims. I use their errors to illustrate several metatheoretical principles that can help researchers to be less imperialistic in their claims, and I offer an analysis of how this dispute reflects the current fragmented nature of the field of youth studies.     

Differential Status Evaluations and Racial Bias in the Chilean Segregated School System

Although there is growing interest in studying the long‐ignored relationship between stratification and race in Chile, racial bias in person perception remains unknown. We hypothesize that the segregation of the Chilean school system generated a prestige order in which pupils are differentiated by status characteristics according to the type of school they attend, and that these evaluations are based on racial traits. To test this hypothesis, we study whether facial appearance is sufficient to impute the type of school a pupil is attending, and whether these categorizations evoke different status evaluations of wealth and morality based on race. Results confirm that participants’ perceptions of facial appearance allow them to situate pupils in the Chilean social structure. Faces categorized as studying at different types of schools varied in their perceived wealth. However, the relationship between moral traits and types of schools was weak. We also found evidence of racial bias in the participants’ perceptions of pupils’ faces: faces categorized as enrolled in municipal schools (low status) were judged with Amerindian or mestizo racial traits, while faces categorized as attending private fee‐paying schools (high status) were judged with white racial traits. We did not find a relationship between race and morality.     

Racism,class ethos and place: the value of context in narratives about asylum‐seekers

The British public view asylum‐seekers in generally negative terms. Yet whilst there are an abundance of reports and opinion polls that measure levels of hostility in order to fuel political ‘debate’ very little is known about how asylum seekers are spoken about in more quotidian contexts. Based on an ethnographic study of racism in Southend‐on‐Sea, Essex this paper identifies two kinds of narrative (abstract truths and context‐dependent stories) commonly used by established members of the community to speak about asylum‐seekers. The paper then seeks to explain why more affluent, suburban residents of the town tend to draw upon the abstract narrative while less wealthy, centrally located residents are more likely to regale context‐dependent stories about asylum seekers. An explanation for this socio‐spatial phenomenon is constructed around a Bourdieusian theory of practice that unravels local class relations and maps out a field for local symbolic prestige. Finally this microanalysis is used as a springboard to consider the wider relationship between racist narratives and social and cultural reproduction.     

Russia's social upper class: from ostentation to culturedness

This article discusses examples of strategies employed by representatives of Russia's new social upper class to acquire social distinction. By the late 2000s many of the upper‐class Russians included in this study distanced themselves from the conspicuous ostentation ascribed to the brutish 1990s. Instead, they strove to gain legitimacy for their social position by no longer aggressively displaying their wealth, but instead elaborating more refined and individualized tastes and manners and reviving a more cultured image and self‐image. These changes found their expression in various modes of social distinction ranging from external signs, such as fashion and cars, to ostentation vicariously exercised through the people these upper‐class Russians surrounded themselves with. The article will trace these interviewees' strategies for distinction in the late 2000s by discussing tastes in lifestyle and consumption as well as adornment through sartorial signs and through vicarious ostentation, as exemplified by their choice of female company. Changing attitudes towards vehicles and modes of transport, with special regards to the Moscow Metro, will serve as a further illustration of modes of distinction. Crucial for this discussion is the role of the Russian/Soviet intelligentsia, both for vicarious status assertion and elite distinction anchored in the interviewees' social backgrounds.     

Class, Culture, and Participation in the Collegiate Extra-Curriculum

With larger percentages of high school students entering higher education, it becomes increasingly important to look at how processes occurring on college campuses contribute to social stratification. Using in‐depth interviews with 61 students, I ask: How does social class structure students’ participation in the collegiate extra‐curriculum? I argue that the collegiate extra‐curriculum is an important site for stratification because it is there that students gain access to social and cultural resources valued by the privileged classes. I find that upper‐middle‐class students arrive on campus with cultural resources that motivate their participation and social resources that facilitate their involvement. Among working‐class students, limited financial factors constrain their involvement, while social and cultural resources further curtail their interest in such activities. These findings contribute to theories of social and cultural reproduction by showing that those who have more valued social and cultural resources at the outset are in a better position to gain additional such resources throughout their college careers. Moreover, these analyses show that symbolic and cultural hierarchies are sustained by the interdependent relationship between social and cultural capital.     

Social interaction distance and stratification

There have been calls from several sources recently for a renewal of class analysis that would encompass social and cultural, as well as economic elements. This paper explores a tradition in stratification that is founded on this idea: relational or social distance approaches to mapping hierarchy and inequality which theorize stratification as a social space. The idea of 'social space' is not treated as a metaphor of hierarchy nor is the nature of the structure determined a priori. Rather, the space is identified by mapping social interactions. Exploring the nature of social space involves mapping the network of social interaction--patterns of friendship, partnership and cultural similarity--which gives rise to relations of social closeness and distance. Differential association has long been seen as the basis of hierarchy, but the usual approach is first to define a structure composed of a set of groups and then to investigate social interaction between them. Social distance approaches reverse this, using patterns of interaction to determine the nature of the structure. Differential association can be seen as a way of defining proximity within a social space, from the distances between social groups, or between social groups and social objects (such as lifestyle items). The paper demonstrates how the very different starting point of social distance approaches also leads to strikingly different theoretical conclusions about the nature of stratification and inequality.     

Bourdieu and psychoanalysis: an empirical and textual study of a pas de deux

This paper aims to elucidate some of the similarities between the Bourdieusian and a psychoanalytical approach to understand the individual and the social, and to describe Bourdieu's relation to psychoanalysis. The paper begins by reflecting upon the way a research on anorexia was received and perceived by some psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. Such a case study puts into light several analogies between Bourdieu's theoretical position, his epistemological style and psychoanalysis. Then, some texts by Bourdieu, especially a discussion with the psychoanalyst and sociologist Jacques Maître, are analysed in order to further explore Bourdieu's position vis‐à‐vis psychoanalysis and to assess the influence of psychoanalysis on his conception of the individual habitus. Finally, the paper discusses the possible contradictions arising between these borrowings and the principles of Bourdieusian epistemology. The paper thus suggests that the Bourdieusian approach is better analysed as a ‘sociologization'of psychoanalysis rather than as an approach complementing or integrating psychoanalysis.     

The Stratification of Emotions: Some Preliminary Generalizations*

Like all valued resources, positive and negative emotions are unequally distributed in a society and constitute an important basis of social stratification. In this article, a general conceptual scheme and a more specific theory of emotions are employed to offer a preliminary explanation of the dynamics of emotional stratification. This theory attempts to explain which specific positive and negative emotions will be aroused and distributed across the social class system as well as among members of differentially evaluated social categories. The theory emphasizes the importance of repression and subsequent attribution processes as central to understanding the nature, intensity, and distribution of negative emotions among individuals in lower social classes and devalued social categories. By viewing emotions as not just reactions to the unequal distribution of other resources but, rather, as a valued or punishing resource in their own right, it becomes possible to better understand how micro‐level dynamics occurring in face‐to‐face encounters are affected by, and have effects on, meso‐level and macro‐level social structures and their respective cultures. In particular, the distribution of emotions can help account for both the processes of legitimatization of macrostructures and, at the same time, de‐legitimization of, and collective action against, macrostructures. This analysis of emotions questions much recent theorizing and commentary, often within postmodern analysis, about the authenticity of people’s emotions in contemporary society. The stratification of emotions is as real as inequality in money and power, and it has significant effects on the dynamics of human societies.     

Ethnolinguistic repertoire: Shifting the analytic focus in language and ethnicity1

This paper addresses a contradiction in research on language and ethnicity: how can we discuss distinctively ethnic ways of speaking and still account for the variation and fluidity that characterize them? The theoretical construct introduced in this paper enables researchers to avoid this contradiction. ‘Ethnolinguistic repertoire’ is defined as a fluid set of linguistic resources that members of an ethnic group may use variably as they index their ethnic identities. This construct shifts the analytic focus from ethnic ‘language varieties’ to individuals, ethnic groups, and their distinctive linguistic features. It addresses problems of inter‐group, inter‐speaker, and intra‐speaker variation, as well as debates about who should be considered a speaker of a dialect. This approach, which can also be applied to social groupings beyond ethnicity, is discussed in relation to other approaches and is supported with data on language use in African American, Latino, and Jewish communities in the United States.