► The life histories and musical tastes of 55 people in Bristol are examined. ► Omnivorousness is shown to be spurious. ► Symbolic mastery and musical apprenticeship are key to dominant tastes. ► ...Bodily movement and realist lyrics are key to dominated tastes. ► Cultural goodwill exists amongst the upper-dominated and upwardly mobile.
This paper contributes to the growing qualitative counter-attack against the statistics-based thesis that musical tastes are increasingly ‘omnivorous’ in character, at least amongst the privileged, and that this can be explained via the quasi-Bourdieusian notion of a new ‘open’ or ‘cosmopolitan disposition’. Drawing on a research project examining life histories and lifestyles in the UK city of Bristol, it argues that, when the nuances of Bourdieu's perspective and shifts in the musical field and social conditions are taken into account, not only the
genesis but also the
differentiation of musical tastes that, on the surface, seem omnivorous are wholly consistent with the original model laid out in
Distinction. Clear differences between preferred types of music and familiar aesthetic orientations are present, as are their origins in classed resources and experiences. That they have not been detected hitherto is, it notes, due more to the methodological decisions and categories of extant research than anything else.
This paper expresses serious reservations regarding the increasingly popular Bourdieu-inspired notions of 'institutional habitus' and 'family habitus' in education research. Although sympathetic to ...the overall theoretical approach and persuaded of the veracity and importance of the empirical findings they are used to illuminate, it argues that, from a Bourdieusian point of view, they actually present several difficulties that threaten not only to overstretch and reduce the explanatory power of the French thinker's concepts but to stifle analysis of the kinds of struggles and complexities that both he and, somewhat contradictorily, the researchers in question spotlight. Bourdieu had his own ways of making sense of the themes raised, and although there is indeed a need to push him further than he went, to say what he did not and to emphasise what he would not, this has to be guided by consistent logic and not simply pragmatic empiricism.
This first volume of The Class Structure of Capitalist Societies offers a bold and wide-ranging assessment of the shape and effects of class systems across a diverse range of capitalist nations. ...Plumbing a trove of data and deploying cutting-edge techniques, it carefully maps the distribution of the key sources of power and documents the major convergences and divergences between market societies old and new. Establishing that the multidimensional vision of class proposed decades ago by Pierre Bourdieu appears to hold good throughout Europe, parts of the wider Western world and Eastern Asia, the book goes on to examine a number of significant themes: the relationship between class and occupation; the intersection of class with gender, religion, geography and age; the correspondences between social position and political attitudes; self-positioning in the class structure; and the extent of belief in meritocracy. For all the striking cross-national commonalities, however, the book unearths consistent variations seemingly linked to distinct politico-economic regimes.
This title will appeal to scholars and advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in sociology, politics and demography, and is essential reading for all those interested in social class across the globe.
This book puts to the test the prominent claim that social class has declined in importance in an era of affluence, choice and the waning of tradition. Arguing against this view, this study vividly ...uncovers the multiple ways in which class stubbornly persists.
This paper engages with Manuel DeLanda’s Deleuze-inspired ‘assemblage theory’ from a perspective sympathetic to Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory. It first outlines DeLanda’s proposed new ‘philosophy of ...society’, focusing on his major works in this vein, and registers some scepticism as to its originality for sociology. It then introduces and responds to DeLanda’s critique of Bourdieu. Rather than simply reject assemblage theory outright, however, I draw on selected insights from DeLanda to push field theory in new directions. More specifically, I conceptualise the interplay of fields and assemblages and use notions of ‘exteriority’ and ‘possibility space’ to help conceive individual plurality of social positioning and its effects for subjectivity and practice.
Older people have been overlooked in recent debates over the relationship between age, class and culture despite their prevalence and the conceptual questions they raise. Seeking to bridge mainstream ...class analysis with debates in social gerontology, especially via a shared turn to Pierre Bourdieu's relational sociology, this paper draws on survey data from the US to examine not only the class position of older people but their internal social and cultural differentiation. I use geometric data analysis to construct a model of the class system, locate older people within it and then explore differences among older people. I then proceed to compare the cultural symbolisations of social positions among older people to those of the larger sample. The core structures of social and cultural differentiation among older people are roughly homologous with those of the broader sample, but there are also notable differences and even inversions pointing toward the specificity - and autonomy - of ageing as a principle of difference and practice.
This article offers an elaboration and reconstruction of Pierre Bourdieu’s brief account of interpersonal love in Masculine Domination. Although Bourdieu presented love as a possibility of escape ...from relations of domination, he also understood that love was a product of labour, inserted within an economy of exchanges, and liable to become infused with domination. I build on these remarks to make the case that it is possible to conceive of love becoming a form of ‘capital’ operative within fields of intimate relations. Two substantial consequences flow from this move. First, it gives specificity to a species of field that has a threefold primacy over all others. Second, it throws into sharp relief the fact that what a person does in one field is contextualised by their location in many fields. Both moves widen the scope of Bourdieusian research considerably by pushing it into new intellectual territory and deepening its explanatory capacity.
Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual framework offers a productive means of making sense of statistical regularities and correspondences. When it comes to explaining the intricacies of individual ...biographies, however, including something as seemingly personal as one’s choice of occupation, Bourdieu offers only a starting point in need of elaboration. Above all, there is a need to pay greater attention to the multiplicity of fields in which individuals are situated and the interplay between them in shaping desires and strategies. These include class, family relations and, in some cases, employment-based fields such as art, religion or specific organisations. To demonstrate the argument, this article takes as a case study the trajectory of Vincent van Gogh, highlighting the ongoing interaction between class, family and other fields in generating his eventual decision to become an artist.
This paper engages with the theme of disgrace from a Bourdieusian point of view. Starting out from a specific definition of ‘grace’ in terms of misrecognition, it goes on to consider some of the ways ...in which disgrace can be generated and some of the ways it can be handled by the disgraced party. While there are certainly many intra-field modalities of the genesis of disgrace, including violation of the rules of the game, the paper also emphasizes that disgrace can be generated by cross-field events, necessitating a switch of perspective from individuals in one field to individuals in multiple fields. This is also true of strategies for coping with disgrace.
This paper explores the role of time in Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory with a view to highlighting, and plugging, some of its conceptual gaps. It proceeds by identifying four elements of the social ...structuring of temporal experience: the temporal structure of consciousness; field rhythms and pace; imposed timings; and time binds. The first two of these Bourdieu brought to the fore, even if there are some aspects of his account in need of further development. The third he posited without tracing through the full conceptual consequences, while the fourth requires some reorientation and additional work to accommodate it. The latter I undertake by elaborating on a few concepts drawn from both Bourdieu’s corpus and phenomenology.
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