Social capital in the field of power: the case of Norway

This paper analyses social capital structures in the field of power, based on data from the Norwegian Power and Democracy Survey on elites. Separating between objectified, institutionalised, embodied, and inherited social capital, and inspired by Bourdieu's approach, we analyse the relations between social capital and the other forms of capital by way of specific multiple correspondence analysis and ascending hierarchical cluster analysis. First, we find that the level of institutionalised social capital varies from one fraction of the Norwegian elite to another. Secondly, the range of networks established through previous work experiences is related to field seniority. Thirdly, the positions of highest endogamy are situated in the religious field, and to a lesser extent, in the scientific field, and in the juridical field. Finally, the ‘core of the core’ is defined by actors who are strongly interconnected inside what is called ‘the tripartite system’, with a high level of multipositionality and intersectorial connections.     

Response: Not so fast: a comment on Atkinson and Deeming's ‘Class and cuisine in contemporary Britain: the social space,the space of food and their homology’

In a recent paper in The Sociological Review, Atkinson and Deeming argue that tastes in food are homologous to the social space, exactly as it was in Bourdieu's Distinction. This would involve differences in food tastes not only along the class hierarchy, but also a clear‐cut divide by the relative weight of cultural and economic capital. However, Atkinson and Deeming base their claims on insufficient data analysis: They misinterpret their own correspondence analysis and the additional tables, which they in turn fail to subject to even the most basic statistical analysis. We show that the results they present are actually at odds with their own interpretations and main conclusions. It is not just that Atkinson and Deeming's arguments lack support; their proposition about a culinary division between cultural and economic class fractions is contradicted by their own data.