Order 1185395: Culture and Consumption

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First published in 1992 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall Inc. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 O 1992 Richard Jenkins Typeset in 10 on 11 Times by Intype, London Printed in England by Clays Ltd, Sr Ives plc

A11 rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, withoul permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in publication Data Jenkins, Richard, 1952- Pierre Bourdieu/Richard Jenkins.p. cm. -(Key socioiogists)Includes bibiiographicai references and index. 1. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2. Sociology- France. 3. Sociology- Methodology. I. Titie. IL Series. HM2?.F81461992 301 ' .01 -dc20 ISBN 0-415-05798_1

92-?720 CIP

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136 Pierre Bourdieu

projects, and matters of taste and aesthetic judgement, even the moit individual or personal, contain within them a necessary reference to 'a common meaning already established'.

Which is where what Bourdieu calls the 'cultural unconscious' comes in: 'attitudes, aptitudes, knowledge, themes and problems, in short the whole system of categories of perception and thought acquired by the systematic apprenticeshiq y{ch the school organizes or makes it possible to organize'.[25] In other words, the habitus as it is produced by the pedagogic work of the education system. This expresses itself in a range of effects: from 'unconscious borrowings and imitations' to the inspiration which derives from 'the common source of themes and forms which define the cultural tradition of a society and an age'.1261 But it is dorle unknowingly, and this masks the importance of society and culture, allowing the celebration * the misrecognition - of individual, autonomous creativity and the glorification of Cul- ture. In the same way, the school can only do its work by denying the determinisms of social origins and culture and valorising ability and Education. In this, both - Culture and Education - are aiso legitimising the existing social relations of domination.

The canons of legitimacy - shared understandings of the nature of Art and Culture and of how they are classified - divide the cultural field and its vassal, the intellectual field, into the familiar three zones: universal legitimacy, contested legitimacy (where genres are in the process of legitimisation, or not) and the non- legitimacy of arbitrary personal taste. As we have already seen, thise classificatory caiegories organise cultural consumption. Bourdieu is insisting that cultural production is thus classified also. These criteria of legitimacy are the constraints within which creativity works.

What he does not do is account for cultural production - and indeed consumption - which successfully challenges the bound- aries or contenis of these categories. How is the imperialism of legitimate Art broken or undermined? In Bourdieu's scheme of things it is difficult to understand the relatively modest innovation of Seurat, let alone the subsequent pace and profundity of change represented, say, by C€zanne or Picasso, To shift fields alto- geiher, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring revolutionised the music of Ihe concert hall; Elvis Presley's Sun sessions or Dylan's first electric performances did the same for popular music. But where do such impulses come from and how do they happen? There is something profoundly social going on here - explained by neither

Culture, Status and Distinction 137

the critical marketplace nor the 'intrinsic' power of individual 'genius' (although in all of my examples there is that, whatever 'that' is, too) - but Bourdieu never quite gets round to broaching the topic. There is rebellion in his model but, alas, no revolution.

DISTINCTION When La Distinction was first published in France in 1979, not only did it sell in surprisingly large numbers for a densely written, technically intimidating and lengthy sociological study, but it also became the focus of a lively public debate. The clue to understanding this unusual celebrity may be found in the fact that the people who bought and argued over the book were largely those about whom it was written, French bourgeois intel- lectuals for whom cultural distinction is not a trivial matter:

French readers either rejected its findings in horror at the thought that they might be revealed as something other than the individualists they take pride in consider- ing themselves to be, or embraced it as a major contri- bution to understanding modern society.[27]

Something more than individualism was at stake, however. This is Bourdieu's major assault on the notion of pure or innate cultural taste, and the whipping boy is, once again, Kant (not for nothing is the sub-title A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste). Bourdieu's project is the 'barbarous reintegration of aesthetic consumption into the world of ordinary consumption (against which it endlessly defines itself)'[28]: Culture is dissolved into culture. Now at this point, some of you may be asking whether our hero is not, in fact, tilting at windmills; do people really believe, these days, in an ahistorical aesthetic sense which is independent of its social context? Well, sociologists and anthro- pologists may not, but some art historians and critics - and many more of their readers ,(not to mention those who do not read, but know what is art and what isn't) - certainly do. Here, fot example, is Norman Bryson speaking: 'Painting and viewing are ultimately self-regulating activities this is a serene system'.[29] Bourdieu's target here, is not quite a straw man' He has in his sights the consistent use of notions of 'taste' - as a sort of naturally occurring phenomenon - to mark and maintain (in part by masking the marking) social boundaries, whether these be between the dominant and dominated classes or within

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classes. Cultural classiflcation systems, Bourdieu argues, are rooted in the class system.

The other task which Bourdieu sets himself in Distinction is the reconceptualisation of Weber's model of social stratification, in particular the relationship between class and Srand (status group). The concepts which he adopts to mediate between these are the class fractiol and the life-style. Drawing upon two major surveys, undertaken in 1963 and 1967-8, of 1217 subjects from Paris, Lille and a small provincial town, supplemented by a wide range of data from other surveys concerned with a range of tcpics, the ernpirical rneat of the book is concerned with the detailed explication of the life-style differences of differing class fractions.

It is a difficult and complex work to summarise. Presentation- ally, it is an intriguing pastiche of different blocks of text, photo- graphs and diagrams, in the best traditions of Acles de la recher- che en sciences sociales. L,inguistically, it is at least as dense and unforgiving of a moment's lapse in concentration as any of its predecessors. As with his other studies of aspects of French society, Bourdieu is explicit that this is not iasr a study of France. The model he presents is 'valid beyond the particular French case and, no doubt, for every stratified society'.[30]

He begins on familiar ground: the link between cultural prac- tices and social origins, mediated in large part through formal education. People learn to consume culture and this education is differentiated by social class. The further away one moves from the authorised hierarchy of preferences which is governed by legitimate Culture, the more one is concerned with 'non- legitimate' cultural domains, the greater becomes - in the absence of the legislation of orthodoxy - the influence of social origins upon practices and preferences.

At this point, Bourdieu presents us with a 'three-zone' model of cultural tastes: 'legitimate' taste, 'middle-brow' taste and 'popular taste'. Although at first sight this also is familiar, it is a little different to the model presented previously. That was a map of cultural products according to their legitimacy' This is a map of tastes and preferences which correspond to education level and social class; in short, it is the beginnings of a model of class life-styles.

Within this model of life-styles and cultural taste, the working- class aesthetic is a dominated aesthetic, constantly obliged to define itself by reference to the dominant aesthetic (the cultural

Culture, Status and Distinction 139

arbitrary). In fact, the working class is, according to Bourdieu, less able than the middle or upper classes to adopt a specifically aesthetic point of view upon objects whose constitution and defi- nition involves an aesthetic judgement; such an object might be anything from a Qar to a compact disc player to a photograph. The upper classes, distanced from necessity, are allowed a 'play- ful seriousness';[31] this aesthetic sense is part of an assured relation to the world, a sense of distinction:

Like every sort of taste, it unites and separates. Being the product of the conditioning associated with a particu- lar class of conditions of existence, it unites all those who are the product of similar conditions while distin- guishing them from all others. And it distinguishes in an essential way, since taste is the basis of all that one has - people and things - and all that one is for others, whereby one classifies oneself and is classifled by others.[32]

Apart from reminding us of the general social theory which underlies his analysis, this nicely gets to the heart of the matter: taste is one of the key signifiers and elements of social identity. It is one of the primary interactional determinants of class endogamy: individuals tend to meet and marry, or so Bourdieu argues, within rather than between life-styles (and, hence, within rather than between social classes).

The petite bourgeoisie fall, as one might imagine, rather badly between two stools. Condemned to differentiate themselves sharply from those immediately below them in the class system, they have essentially two problems concerning those above them. First, they may lack the education which is the basis for the mobilisation of legitimate taste. Second, and perhaps more important, they lack 'ease or cultivated naturalness', the familial habitus which enables the upper classes to disguise what they haye learned as what they are born with. So even with appropri- ate schooling, the primary school teacher or the clerk is unlikely to be able to'bring it off': another case of 'manners maketh the man',

The structure of class life-styles is not, at first sight, obvious; its unity is 'hidden under the diversity and multiplicity of the set of praclices performed in flelds governed by different logics and therefore inducing different forms of realization'.[33] First, one must constitute the 'objective class' of people whose similar

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conditions of existence produce similar habituses and similar ;;;-;&;ds and po*i'' This Bourdieu does by reference to ;""rp";iJ";t "; i"'it"i"t of social

class' Having done this' prodlcing occupationally defined class fractions' he then exam- ines national survey .iititti"t for the economic capital (using indicators such ut f,ornt ownership' luxury car - ownership' ;;;;;,-;ti uno "urt"iuicapital (newspaper

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thedominantclass.-ft'"-t*oformsofcaoitalareinversely related: the more of oni itt" t"t' of the otht'' ' general rule which also holds good in the middle classes' This produces a rather more comptex model of 'the space of social positiolt' - as structured by the'Jili"'"'tiut disiribution of two kinds of caoital - than i, .o*ooniy allowed fo1 ln simple up-down hier-iiSnil; ;;;h ,i ,ii"tinfrtion.[34] rhis is rhe inreracrion, in Weberian terms, of class and status'

within this social spa.e thete are more-kinds of mobility possi- ble than simply up*LiOt and downwarcls' In PTI:Yl1t^'rgl:- ,"tt" -oUifity is, iuggests Bourdieu' of great importance' tnts is the result of coni"ersion and reconveision strateBjes-, .whgn il;;t" ;pital is:.;;h;J in, to obtain cultural capital T 11" ;;;;;;t;,ion, and 'i""l"ttu (although the former

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more common than the latter)"These strategies can accelerate iii"'".-p"ii,ion over u.""tt to etite education' for example' lead- ;; ;';[,pi;;; lnflation" It is central to Bourdieu's argument at this Point that:

Reproduction strategies,-lh:.ttl of outwardly very differ-

""t!iutti""s whereb"y individuats or families tend' uncon-

sciously unO .o"ttlJusly, to ma.inta.in or increase their assets and consequintty'to maintain or improve their oosilion ln tt,e ctasi structure' constitute a system which' ffi; ;;'p..do"l or a single. unifying' generative prin- "ipi"]

i"rol to function and.change in a systematic- way' Through ttre meJiation of the disposition towards the future, which is itself cletermined by the group's objective chances of reproduction, these strategies 0tp:lg'-ltl! on the volume and composition of the capttar to ue reproArrc"d; and secondly, on.the state of the instruments ti'r"proO,r"tion (inneritance law and custom' the labour market,theeducationalsystem,etc.),whichitself

Culture, Status and Distinction 141

depends on the state of the power relations between the classes. [35]

This quotation is offered at such length as another reminder of the consistency of Bourdieu's overall theoretical framework. Explicitly or implicitly, it is all here: strategies, the habitus with its dispositions, subjective expectations of objective probabilities and social reproduction. Whether he is talking about the Kabyle struggle for honour, B6arnais marriage strategies or the symbolic violence of French education or cultural consumption, Bourdieu is concerned with the same issues: the manner in which the routine practices of individual actors are determined, at least in large part, by the history and objective structure of their existing social world, and how, inasmuch as the nature of that social world is taken to be axiomatic, those practices contribute - with- out this being their intention - to the maintenance of its existing hierarchical structure. To appropriate a distinction originally for- mulated by Raymond Firth, social organisation may change but social structure remains relatively constant.[36] This is the key to understanding Bourdieu's notion of 'competitive struggle':

the form of class struggle which the dominated classes allow to be imposed on them when they accept the stakes offered by the dominant classes. It is an integrative strug- gle and, by virtue of the initial handicaps, a reproductive struggle, since those who enter this chase, in which they are beaten before they start. . .implicitly recognize the legitimacy of the goals pursued by those whom they pursue, by the mere fact of taking part.[37]

Having constituted 'objective classes' by occupation, and related these to 'constructed classes' which are positioned in social space by the volume and composition of their mixture of economic and cultural capital, Bourdieu adds to this the relation- ship between class habitus and life-style(s). Here the body and its hexis are of great importance, particularly in areas such as cuisine, sport, clothes and non-verbal communication. Schematic- ally, the underlying model is as follows: (a) objective conditions of existence combine with position in social structure to produce (b) the habitus,'a structured and structuring structure', which consists of (c) a 'system of schemes generating classifiable prac- tices and works' and (d) a 'system of schemes of perception and appreciation' or taste, which between them produce (e) 'classifi-

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able practices and works', resulting in (f) a life-style, '.a sys191 of clissified and classifying practices, i.e' distinctive signs'.[38] While there may be quite a distance between the first and last instances, the determinism of this scheme is unmistakable"

There are as many fields of preferences as there are {ields of stylistic possibilities. It is taste which mediates the correspon- dence between classes of products and classes of consumers, in a relationship of 'elective afflnity'. Each field of possibilities - be it populai music or gardening - offers a sufficient range of relationships of similarity and dissimilarity with respect to its products to constitute a 'system of differences' which allows the bomprehensive expression of basic social differences (class) and 'weli-nigh inexhaustible possibilities for the pursuit of distinc- tion'.[39]

Using-a model of social space such as that constructed by Bourdieu - a multidimensional arena in which economic and cultural capital are both the objects and the weapons of a com- petitive struggle between classes * allows or holds out the possi- Lifity of a reconciliation between competing theories of modern society, between 'theories which describe the social world in the languige of stratification and those which speak the language of the-clais struggle'.[40] This attempt at theoretical synthesis, or, more accuratLly perhaps, the bringing of two theoretical tra- ditions into creative conflict with each other, may account for the apparent contradicti on in Distinction between a tight, circular model-of social and cultural reproduction, on the one hand, and the fluidity over time of the system of 'competitive struggle', on the other.

This fluidity is nowhere more apparent than in the middle reaches of the system, the petite bourgeoisie' It is, however, within the dominant class, the bourgeoisie, that symbolic strug- gles are most apparent and most severe. It is here that the definition of Culiural legitimacy is fought over' It is also within the dominant class, according to Bourdieu, that the struggle occurs'to define the legitimate principles of domination, between economic, educational or social capital'.[41] Here the point is that the dominant class is, in fact, more an uneasy coalition, from the point of view of its members, or a statistical artifact, viewed wiih the objective gaze of the social survey, than it is a homogeneous social group. Each class fraction has a different combination of economic and cultural capital and a different life- style. Within the overall social space of the dominant class - the

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bourgeoisie - more of one kind of capital tends to mean less of the other.

The centrepiece of Bourdieu's analysis of the structure of life- styles of the various class fractions is a correspondence analysis of the relationship between various survey items relating to legit imate Culture, 'middlebrow' culture and ethical diipositions (views, for example, on the nature of friendship), on bne side of the calculation, and father's occupation, educational qualifi- cations, income and age, on the other. For legitimate Cultural tastes within the dominant class, for example, this yields a con- tinuum of differentiation with cultural producers and higher edu- cation teachers at one end, executives and engineers intermedi- ately classified, and commercial employers at the other. The closer together class fractions are, the sharper is likely to be the boundary between them in terms of its symbolisation. Not least of all, this reflects the different social trajectories that lie behind present social locations:

The classification struggle which is waged initially within firms, a struggle for supremacy between production and publicity, between engineering and marketing. . .and all the similar struggles which are fought out within the dominant fraction of the dominant class, are inseparable from conflicts of values which involve the participant's whole world views and arts of living, because they oppose not only different sectional interests but different scholastic and occupational careers and, through them, different social recruitment areas and therefore ultimate differences in habitus. [42]

Different class fractions, in addition to their engagement in the struggles of the moment ('sectional interests'), also have different collective histories: their social and historical roots are different. The old and the new, the established and the arriviste, competein the struggle over the possession of, and the relationihip between,'temporal and spiritual powers'.[43]

The notion of social trajectories - ideal typical in the case of collectivities and categories, to some extent empirical for indi- viduals - is of importance to Bourdieu's understanding of class. Time and its passage is located at the heart of the analysis, in the form of individual and collective histories. However, equally important is the implication of the past and the present in the likelihood of a future: an 'objective probability'. The notion of

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a trajectory involves description and prediction: each might be thought to determine the other.

ThTs aspect of Bourdieu's model of social class is perhaps at its clearest in his discussion of the petite bourgeoisie. They are i" tt " intermediate location reserved

for social categories - class fractions - which are either rising or falling in the field of class relations. In this area of unceriainty the key to the game is;"-oiirrut goodwill' and what is at stake is their knowledge of Culture rfth"r than their acknowledgement of it. It goes without *Vrng, for the petit bourgeois, that Culture - however it might be defined - is a 'good thing':

The whole relationship of the petite bourgeoisie to cul- ture can in a sense be deduced from the considerable gap between knowledgg 1nd- recognition, the source of ihe cultural goodwill which takes different forms depend- ing on the d'egree of familiarity with legitimate culture, thit is, on soial origin and the associated mode of cul- tural acquisition. [44]

This cultural goodwill manifests itself as a 'cultural docility" a sense of ,unwdrthiness', a 'reverence' for Culture. It is an 'avidity combined with anxiety', the product of 'undifferentiated rever- ;;;;;, *ni"n teads th'e petit bourgeois to mistake Gilbert and Sullivan for ,serious, music, or educational television programmes ioi ,ci"nc". In their relation to Culture, the petite bourgeoisie transforms whatever it latches onto into 'middle-brow' culture: Ggiii*ut" culture is not made for him (and is often made. against [i-rij, ro that he is not made for it . ' it ceases to be what it is u, #on as he appropriates it''[45] If the legitimate gaze of the Uourgeoisie Uestbws legitimacy,-the middle-brow_ gaze of the petit bour[eois imparts a chirmingmediocrity to all that it recognises.

Thi petite bourgeoisie is, however, if anything. even more internaliy differentiited than the dominant bourgeoisie: there are tt" u"toaioacts, the anti-intellectual small shopkeepers and the upwardly mobiie managers who defer their own social and cul- iriral gritincation in ariinvestment strategy aim.g$- at securing.a bourgEois future for their children. Each has a different place in Bouidieu,s social map of the varieties of petit bourgeois taste.

He also offers a solution to the minor p:uzzle, posed in Chapter fir", uUo"t what happened to those for whom the expansion of ilgh;. education in fG tg6Os created a disjuncture between their ,rfi""ti* expectations and their objective probabilities. The

Culture, Status and Distinction 145

answer seems to be that they become social workers. Those who are unable to find appropriately bourgeois employment, and for whom family and educational background encourage a view of themselves as an 'ethical vanguard', move into the occupational niches between the teaching and medical professions. A range of 'cultural reconversion' strategies result in a 'profession of faith' ending up as a profession. This is allied to a rejection or inversion of the 'ascetic morality of the established petite bourgeoisie', an embracement of alternatives which becomes a celebration of what it appears to reject:

Classified, d6class6s, aspiring to a higher class, they see themselves as unclassifiable, 'excluded', 'dropped out', 'marginal', anything rather than categorized, assigned to a class, a determinate place in social space. And yet all of their practices . . . speak of classification - but in themode of denial . . . [They are] thinly disguised expressions of a sort of dream of social flying, a desper- ate attempt to defy the gravity of the social field . . . these new intellectuals are inventing an art of living which provides them with the gratifications and prestige of the intellectual at the least cost . . .[46]

And there is much more in this delightful vein. It may simply be that Bourdieu is appealing to my own prejudices in this case, but his analysis of the new 'caring' professions is a timely reminder of his undoubted capacity, despite the serious problems which exist with respect to his general theory, to hit the nail on the head as an empirical sociologist. The more enthusiasm with which an alternative way is espoused, the more securely is the mainstream deflned and signposted, and the principles upon which it is founded reproduced.

From the resentment of the displaced intellectuals of the stran- ded, counter-cultural petite bourgeoisie, Bourdieu moves on to the 'choice of the necessary' which he characterises as the work- ing-class relation to culture. His argument here can be briefly put. Economic constraints and the dispositions of the working- class habitus produce an adaptive response which is distinguished by the relatiye absence of aesthetic choice-making: 'nothing is more alien to working-class women than the typically bourgeois idea of making each object in the home the occasion for an aesthetic choice.'[47] This is not just because they cannot afford aesthetic sensitivites. Bourdieu is emphatic that income only pro-

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duces choices - or their refusal - in conjunction with a habitus that is already in harmony with the economic limitations within which it functions (and of which, historically, it is a product). The last refuge of working-class cultural autonomy, he goes on to argue, lies in the 'values of virility', the 'decisive point of relation to the body' which is rooted in a history of manual labour and is under threat from social and economic change, The dominated class, in danger of coming to see themselves completely through the mediation of the dominant definition of the body, are in a poor position to resist inasmuch as hexis, 'the most fundamental principle of class unity and identity', is located in the unconscious and, hence, not easily available for mobilis- ation in organised and knowing resistance.[48]

Within the working class there is, of course, also differen- tiation. Bourdieu calls the cultural and political differences between skilled workers and foremen, who remain typical of their class, and office workers, already in the race for mobility, a 'real frontier'. Where the former watch sports and the circus on television, the latter view educational programmes. More generally, however, it is in culture - a way of life that is charac- terised by a 'realistic (but not resigned) hedonism' and 'sceptical (but not cynical) materialism' - rather than politics that whatever working-class unity and solidarity ls to be found can be found. The working-class habitus is both an adaptation to the realities of working-class life and a defence against them.[49]

The cultural dispossession which Bourdieu attributes to the working class is also manifest in their attitude towards politics. In an argument which harks back to his earliest days in Algeria (see Chapter Two), he argues that abstentionism and the large number of people who answer 'don't know' in political opinion polls are to be found disproportionately among the working class. As such they are vital to the reproduction of the established order and the maintenance of the illusion of liberal democracy (which is, of course, the political equivalent of meritocracy and equal oppor- tunity). The possession of a 'personal opinion' on matters political is related to class and is constructed by class relations. 'Indiffer- ence', says Bourdieu, 'is only a manifestation of impotence.'[50] The readiness to speak or act politically - even only to the limited extent of casting a vote - reflects the sense of having the right to speak or act. This sense of right - an analogue, no doubt of the sense of distinction - is related to a sense of competence:

Culture, Status and Distinction 147

The authorized speech of status-generated competence,a powerful_speech which helps to create what'it says,is answered by the silence o1 an equally statusJinked lncompetence, which is experienced as technical inca- pacity and leaves no choice but delegation . . .[51]

Political competence - self-defined - is related to class positionand the trajectory of probabilities attached to it. This ,status competence' both entitles and requires the bearer to engage inpolitical action, however modest. It only exists, fr"*eu?r] foi those wlose trajectories permit its perception as 'realistic,. For the working class, realism dictates a-drawing back from p".ronui opinion, a polite.equivocation or concessioir to what is'thoughtto be expected in response to the pollster,s questions: it" is'nothing to do with me' or .won,t mak-e any diffeience anyway,. Thus do the middle and upper reaches of the class system'ooml- nate the production of 'general opinion, (which, in its turn, feeds back into the discoursg and opinion of actors, the working class being disproportionately vulnerable to such influence).

Bourdieu's central. argument in Distinctiorz is that struggres about the meaning of things, and specifically the meaning oi"tt "social world, are an aspect of class struggle. In this respict it is essentially the same a-rgument as Reprodiaion: the sociil repro- duction of the established order is largely secured by symbolic violence,. a process of cultural reproduition. Although ii is less deterministic in its depiction of ihe workings of thi system _fluidity and .change are documented - the -underlying generaltheory remains the same and so do the problems. S6clal andcultural reproduction models.of society se-em, of necessity per- haps, to involve the importation of deierminism , M.ore. speciflcally, the analysis remains weak, for example, atthe institutional level. The discussion of the rise of the .iuring,

professions, while incisive and thoughtful, says nothing aboritthe manner in which this has occuried within an instiiutional framework of state welfare provision, nor about the relationship of many.such professions to institutional social control. Similarly, as Garnham has pointed out, the institutions of cultural pro- duction - the 'culture industry,-- are more or less compleiely neglected by Bourdieu.[52] And so on: all of the criticai com_ ments rvhich may have wearied the reader bv their reiteration could be made here,, albeit perhaps less forcefully.

There are also, however, particular problems with Disrinction.

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In terms of method, the analysis of the relationship between life- styles and class fractions is flawed - and it is a flaw which lies at the heart of the study. Class fractions are defined in terms of occupation and employment status, Life-styles, however, are not immediately self-evident. Their constituent practices are scat- tered across a variety of different fields. As a consequence, their coherence, the 'reality' of their existence, is concealed. How then is their hidden unity to be discovered? Some sort of extraneous classificatory device is needed to sort out the population in order that the clusters of practices and tastes which cohere as the life- styles of categories of the population may reveal themselves. Simply using class fraction - occupation - to sort out the sample would be likely to render the argument somewhat circular. Bour- dieu appears to be aware of this problem; instead of class fraction he uses a combination of father's occupation, education, income and age. However, the first three of these, in particular, are likely to be related to occupation (class fraction) in a systematic and positive fashion. It is, therefore, not surprising that different class fractions exhibit distinct life-styles inasmuch as the basis for the analytical classiflcation of research subjects as members of either life-styles or class fractions is similar.[53]

The problem could perhaps have been avoided by allocating life-style identities to subjects on the basis of either patterns of social interaction[S4] or self-identification.[55] The reader is left uncertain about the social meaning of the bundles of practices and attributes identified as 'life-styles', and the relationships they have with each other. The question of the relationship between class and life-style (status group) also remains unresolved. Is it 'real' or an artifact of the analysis?

On a different tack, I am less convinced than Bourdieu - andI am similarly sceptical about Homo Academicus - that the use of French data does not undermine the general relevance of the argument. It may be that there is, for example, something highly specific about the relationship of the French metropolitan elite to Culture. America or Britain may be very different,

Next, the superficiality of his treatment of the working class is matched only by its condescension. Does Bourdieu really believe that it is alien to working-class women to furnish and decorate their homes on the basis of aesthetic choices? As Mary Douglas has pointed out, his own evidence suggests that working- class people seem no less concerned to make distinctions than anyone else.[56] Perhaps it is time he dusted off his anthropol-

Culture, Status and Distinction 149

ogist's hat and went out and spent some time among the people about whom he writes. In this, as in many other aspects of the book, he betrays his membership of French bourgeois cultural networks. Despite his good intentions, this elevated point of view taints the entire discussion with the sub-text of the author's own distinction (and that of its intended audience).

Finally, and it is also an issue which has been raised by other commentators,[57] although Bourdieu is obviously correct in his rejection of a Kantian transcendent aesthetic, it may be less obvious that his own approach is, in its own way, no less reductionist. Culture and taste are, for Bourdieu, wholly arbi- trary: history and social construction are all. Leaving aside the matter of whether aesthetic response may in some way be innate, the question of the role of individual psychology in the creation of taste and aesthetic preference has some significance, if only insofar as it may help to account for the non-conformist aesthetic impulse. So too does the sense of history as the longue durde: how in Bourdieu's scheme are we to understand, for example, the rise of modernism? As in the rest of Bourdieu's work, con- formism is of the essence. There is little room for innovation or deviance except insofar as they represent limited manoeuvres within an overall framework of stability.

Despite the generally critical tone of the discussion so far, and despite the difficulty of the language Bourdieu employs and the complexity of the presentation, Distinction is a truly impressive piece of sociology. As an exploration of the place of Culture (and culture) in modern industrial society, what it has to say is indispensable. The pursuit of distinction is also one of the themes of Homo Academicus, particularly the role of language use in the status-seeking strategies of academics. We shall examine this theme further in the next chapter.

NOTES AND RBFERENCES [1] P. Bourdien, Distinction: A Social Critique of the ludgement

o.f Taste, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul (1984), p. 5. [2] P. Bourdieu, In Other Words, Cambridge, Polity (1990),

p.22. [3] B.S. Turner, Status, Milton Keynes, Open University Press

(1988), p. 66.