class analysis and social differentiation: an approach to contemporary class divisions
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Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD.Summary:This thesis is concerned with the social differentiation of class relationships. Changes in the structure of capitalism over the last century or so paved the way for larger corporations with complex bureaucratised divisions of labour. In addition, modern societies undergo continuing struggles over the «relative autonomy» of various fields – for instance, the extent to which cultural production – the arts, science, etc. – should be governed by political leads or subject to market forces, or be free to establish their specific «rules». All of these processes imply that class relationships become more complex and differentiated – in sharp opposition to expectations fostered by the writings of Marx. The thesis addresses itself to the analysis of such differentiation of classes. Its principal approach lies in the application of the concepts of social space and forms of capital, drawn from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, to model and analyse the differentiation of the upper and middle class of Norway. In this, it operates in an intersection of the ideas of Bourdieu with the classical formulations of class in the Weberian and Marxian traditions – what I call European class theory The thesis consists of three articles and an introduction. In two of the articles, I study classes defined with explicit reference to European class theory. The upper class refers to a category of broadly two types of class situations: those making their living off of some form of property ownership, and those making their living as high-level employees partaking in the control and management of corporations. By constructing what Bourdieu called a social space of these classes, internal differences in terms of their type and amount of capital are uncovered. The upper class is found to be principally differentiated by the volume of inherited capital – that is to say, resources pertaining to their social class background – and by the source of economic capital, opposing property-owners from employees. The middle class is operationalised by using John H. Goldthorpe’s concept and categorisation of the service class – professional, administrative and managerial employees on higher and lower levels, distinguished from other employees by the amount of institutionalised trust placed on them by employers. The differentiation of the service class is investigated with reference to their political attitudes. The principal line of division in the service class is found to be by the form of capital they primarily possess – economic or cultural – and this correspond to some extent with their principal political division – socialist vs. laissez-faire attitudes on economic issues. The secondary divide by the amount of capital the service class members have correspond to a division between liberal and anti-liberal attitudes. These papers support a broadly Bourdieusian view of class differences, but connects it to the view that class divisions are based in the property and market relations of capitalist economies. In the third paper of the thesis, I shift attention to discuss recent contributions to «Bourdieusian class analysis». Several British authors have attempted to effect a serious reorientation of class analysis away from such an emphasis on production and markets and over to the distribution of capitals and the workings of fields. In the paper, I argue that, notwithstanding the power of the approaches these authors advocate, such a fundamental reorientation should be rejected. Instead, what is called for is a systematic connection of the «Bourdieusian» ideas with the fundamentals of class relationships. The three papers are prefaced by a long introduction which presents the research question of the thesis; gives a thorough exposition of the theoretical perspectives informing the work; introduces the particular method and methodology applied in the quantitative papers; presents brief summaries of alTRANSCRIPT
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Class Analysis and Social Differentiation
An Approach to Contemporary Class Divisions
This is an online version of the thesis. The file includes the introductory chapters and
hyperlinks to the published papers. Page numbers are identical to the submitted version of the
thesis.
Magne Flemmen
Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD
Department of Sociology and Human Geography
University of Oslo
Submitted June 2013
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my two supervisors for excellent mentoring. Their efforts have
doubtlessly improved the quality of the present work in innumerable ways. The weaknesses
and short-comings of the present work can probably be attributed to my own failing to follow
their sage advice and suggestions.
My main supervisor Marianne Nordli Hansen has taught me more about doing sociology
and class analysis than I can account for. She has also very promptly read and criticised
numerous drafts and consistently provided extremely insightful and helpful comments. Her
commitment to doing theoretically and empirically rigorous sociology on issues that really
matter is a continuing source of inspiration.
My co-supervisor Johs. Hjellbrekke has generously lent me his expertise in all things
related to Bourdieu, data analysis and a range of other issues. He has patiently replied to tons
of untimely e-mails, telephone calls, SMSes, Facebook chats and curious questions over a pint.
He also invited and arranged for me to participate in the SCUD network and facilitated my
stay in Bergen in 2009. For all this, and much more besides, I owe him my gratitude.
Vegard Jarness, my sociological brother in arms and dear friend, has shared selflessly of
his thoughts, knowledge and reflections with me in numerous long discussions, careful
readings of manuscripts as well as various telecommunications – functioning almost as a third
supervisor. Thank you!
Jørn Ljunggren has done well in interrupting my eremitic working habits to chat about
anything class, sociology, academia and – luckily – life on the outside. Patrick Lie Andersen
has been an excellent colleague and co-worker, not least in our collaborative teaching. All
mentioned thus far partook in the Elites an egalitarian society project, alongside Marte
Mangset, Janne C. Johansen and Tanja Askvik, under the leadership of Olav Korsnes. The
workshops and seminars of this project gave room for good discussions and company.
I would like thank all the participants of the SCUD network for a number of exciting
seminars and workshops, and especially Annick Prieur for making the whole network happen
and allowing me to participate. The meetings with the SCUD group meant a lot to me and
gave me important inspiration and a number of ideas, and introduced me to a range of great
sociologists and people.
iv
The Department of Sociology and Human Geography provided me with excellent
working conditions and extremely instructive teaching tasks. Doing lectures and seminars
proved a very welcome and stimulating variation from being hunched over statistical software
and a word processor behind piles of books in the solitude of my office. On that note, I want
to thank the whole “midvit” group and especially everyone who took it upon them to arrange
our monthly “midvit øl”. Thanks also to Geir O. Rønning for many interesting conversations,
and not least for the opportunity to write two excessively long book reviews for Agora, in
which it turns out that core ideas animating this thesis were first developed.
Last, but most, I want to thank my beautiful partner Ellen for everything. She has endured
more rumination and rants about social theory, methods, class analysis and sociology in
general than any ecotoxicologist could reasonably be expected to. She also put up with and
managed my absent-mindedness in the final weeks of finishing the dissertation remarkably
well – especially given the context of being close to nine months pregnant and having our
apartment totally damaged by fire. More than that, she has been a source of joy and support
through the existential roller-coaster the work behind this thesis proved to be. During its
production, we had a wonderful daughter together and our son is due the very day I am
writing this. I dedicate the thesis to Ellen and my two children, in the faint hope that the need
for class analysis should prove less pressing in their life-time.
Magne Flemmen
Oslo, June 18th
, 2013
v
Table of contents
Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. iii Table of contents .................................................................................................................. v
Summary ............................................................................................................................. vi
1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1 2. Theoretical perspective .................................................................................................... 8
2.1 Class analysis at a crossroads .................................................................................... 8
2.2 Class, capitalism and the inheritance of classical sociology ................................... 11 2.2.1. Marx’ theory of classes .................................................................................... 11 2.2.2 Max Weber on class and stratification .............................................................. 13 2.2.3 European class theory (ECT) ............................................................................ 17
2.4 Pierre Bourdieu on class .......................................................................................... 30 2.4.1 Bourdieu, Marx, Weber .................................................................................... 44
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 51
3. Methodological relationism and multiple correspondence analysis .............................. 52 3.1 Bourdieu and quantification .................................................................................... 53
3.1.1 The methodological rupture of Distinction ....................................................... 54 3.1.2 Correspondence analysis .................................................................................. 56
3.2 Multiple correspondence analysis: A brief introduction ......................................... 57 3.3 Correspondence analysis and methodological relationism ...................................... 61 3.4 Research strategy and the philosophy of data analysis ............................................ 65
3.5 Methodological bracketing ...................................................................................... 67 4. The three papers in summary ......................................................................................... 70
4.1 The Structure of the Upper Class: a Social Space Approach .................................. 70
4.2 The Politics of the Service Class: the Homology of Positions and Position-takings
.............................................................................................................................................. 72 4.3 Putting Bourdieu to work for class analysis: Reflections on some recent
contributions ......................................................................................................................... 74 5. Concluding discussion ................................................................................................... 76 References .......................................................................................................................... 85
Article 1: The Structure of the Upper Class: a Social Space Approach
(Available online from Sociology: goo.gl/OF8FQ4)
Article 2: The Politics of the Service Class: the Homology of Positions and Position-Takings
(Available online from European Societies: http://goo.gl/krJuyA)
Article 3: Putting Bourdieu to Work for Class Analysis: Reflections on Some Recent
Contributions
(Available from The British Journal of Sociology: http://goo.gl/fVBGc9)
vi
Summary
This thesis is concerned with the social differentiation of class relationships. Changes in
the structure of capitalism over the last century or so paved the way for larger corporations
with complex bureaucratised divisions of labour. In addition, modern societies undergo
continuing struggles over the «relative autonomy» of various fields – for instance, the extent
to which cultural production – the arts, science, etc. – should be governed by political leads or
subject to market forces, or be free to establish their specific «rules». All of these processes
imply that class relationships become more complex and differentiated – in sharp opposition
to expectations fostered by the writings of Marx.
The thesis addresses itself to the analysis of such differentiation of classes. Its principal
approach lies in the application of the concepts of social space and forms of capital, drawn
from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, to model and analyse the differentiation of the upper and
middle class of Norway. In this, it operates in an intersection of the ideas of Bourdieu with the
classical formulations of class in the Weberian and Marxian traditions – what I call European
class theory
The thesis consists of three articles and an introduction. In two of the articles, I study
classes defined with explicit reference to European class theory. The upper class refers to a
category of broadly two types of class situations: those making their living off of some form
of property ownership, and those making their living as high-level employees partaking in the
control and management of corporations. By constructing what Bourdieu called a social space
of these classes, internal differences in terms of their type and amount of capital are
uncovered. The upper class is found to be principally differentiated by the volume of inherited
capital – that is to say, resources pertaining to their social class background – and by the
source of economic capital, opposing property-owners from employees.
The middle class is operationalised by using John H. Goldthorpe’s concept and categorisation
of the service class – professional, administrative and managerial employees on higher and
lower levels, distinguished from other employees by the amount of institutionalised trust
placed on them by employers. The differentiation of the service class is investigated with
reference to their political attitudes. The principal line of division in the service class is found
to be by the form of capital they primarily possess – economic or cultural – and this
correspond to some extent with their principal political division – socialist vs. laissez-faire
vii
attitudes on economic issues. The secondary divide by the amount of capital the service class
members have correspond to a division between liberal and anti-liberal attitudes.
These papers support a broadly Bourdieusian view of class differences, but connects it to the
view that class divisions are based in the property and market relations of capitalist economies.
In the third paper of the thesis, I shift attention to discuss recent contributions to
«Bourdieusian class analysis». Several British authors have attempted to effect a serious
reorientation of class analysis away from such an emphasis on production and markets and
over to the distribution of capitals and the workings of fields. In the paper, I argue that,
notwithstanding the power of the approaches these authors advocate, such a fundamental
reorientation should be rejected. Instead, what is called for is a systematic connection of the
«Bourdieusian» ideas with the fundamentals of class relationships.
The three papers are prefaced by a long introduction which presents the research question of
the thesis; gives a thorough exposition of the theoretical perspectives informing the work;
introduce the particular method and methodology applied in the quantitative papers; present
brief summaries of all three papers; and offer a concluding discussions which sums up the
findings and also outline the main theoretical implications and arguments raised by the work
as a whole.
1
1. Introduction
There are other things that need to be taken into account here […]. You can't just lump everything into
these two categories and then just deny everything else.
–Donnie Darko (2001)
This thesis addresses itself to the problematic relationship between social differentiation
and class analysis, with special attention to the higher classes of contemporary Norway. In the
context of central changes in capitalism – connected to the rise of the joint-stock ownership
form and the growth and bureaucratisation of firms that this facilitated – how can the internal
class divisions of the upper and middle classes be approached? In the thesis, I explore the
potential of Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of multiple forms of capital and social space to model,
analyse and interpret internal class divisions. In one paper, I seek to identify some important
limitations of recent attempts at installing Bourdieu’s approach as a new foundation for class
analysis. The thesis advances the argument that, while capitalism as such is premised on basic,
«abstract» class divisions – in terms of property relations and market capacities – the
structuration of these into social classes is contingent and fragmented by (among other things)
the working of different social fields. The work of Bourdieu bequeaths us theoretical and
methodical tools to deal with these complexities.
It is widely recognised that the development of capitalism in the 20th
century served to
differentiate and complicate class divisions, both generating «new classes» as well as
diversifying the «old» ones. Certain problems arising from these developments, in tandem
with some more fundamental issues in class analysis, serve as backcloth for the empirical
work. At the outset, they can be stated as follows: processes creating social differentiation, to
be discussed below, generated both descriptive and analytical problems for class analysis in
comprehending the power, position and politics of upper and middle classes. These fed into
other fundamental issues, to do with the very conceptualisation of class and the nature of the
theoretical-methodological framework in which class analysis was conducted.
Much of sociological analyses of class have been carried out with a two-class model.
Within mainstream sociology, this was in the form of a distinction between manual and non-
manual work. In Marxism, the two-class model took the form of the famous bourgeoisie and
proletariat divide (see the excellent discussion of this in Parkin 1978). This necessarily
involves some degree of glossing over internal heterogeneity. Of course, that does not have to
2
be a problem, but at least according to one commentator, class analysis lacked proper
conceptual tools to deal with it. Sociological class analyses held that classes were constituted
by systemic principles, like ownership or authority relations, or the division of labour.
Divisions within classes on the other hand are not usually construed in terms of similar systemic
principles, and least of all are such divisions represented as an extension of the same principles that
govern inter-class relationships (Parkin 1979:29).
This resulted in the application of various ad hoc approaches to intra-class relations, and
furthermore a curious neglect of conflict within classes, while conflict was the order of the
day between classes (Parkin 1979:29-30). By adopting the concept of social space from
Bourdieu, intra-class relations can be constructed in exactly the same terms as the manifest
class structure itself (as in Bourdieu 1984).1 Just as the differential distribution of capitals, and
relationship between them, form both the point of departure, the weapon and the stake in the
struggles between classes, the internal schisms and struggles of the different classes can be
construed in the same terms (Bourdieu 1988a, 1996). This, I argue, is no small strength.
While much class analysis was based on the premise that either two or three classes
would suffice, the development of capitalism through the 20th
century severely undermined
that assumption. Of central importance is the emergence of the joint-stock ownership form.
The early sociological theories of class were formulated in a context of entrepreneurial
capitalism. The «bourgeoisie» that Marx wrote of was composed primarily of individuals or
family owners of the means of production. With the dominance of the joint stock company,
such ownership became more dispersed. This facilitated a considerable growth of firms and
corporations to sizes beyond anything found in the times of Karl Marx or Max Weber.
For present purposes, this had two consequences of particular relevance. One was the
transformation of the capitalist class from a class of entrepreneurs to a more differentiated and
heterogeneous class of rentiers, finance capitalists, chief executives and the remaining
entrepreneurs (Scott 1997). Thus, while the old-style entrepreneurial capitalists continued to
thrive, or at least survive, they co-exist in complex relationships with groups whose power
and privilege is based on a more mediate relationship to either profit or control (or both).
The second concerns changes in what constitutes the middle class or classes. What is
often referred to as «the old middle class», or «petite bourgeoisie» in Marx, consisted of the
1 Parkin held that this was resolvable by basing class theory on his own extended Weberian concept of social
closure.
3
self-employed – that is, groups who were neither exploited nor did exploit others. The «new
middle class(es)» consisted instead of employees whose role in the production process,
market and/or work situation differed markedly from the traditional manual working class
(see the classic account in Lockwood 1958). The growth of corporations facilitated by the
joint stock form spawned a more complex division of labour within the firm through
processes of bureaucratisation. This created the space for groups applying types of specialised
knowledge, and various managers that handled tasks of control and supervision on behalf of
owners (Goldthorpe 1982).
These two are, obviously, related changes to the class structures of capitalist societies: the
new middle class emerged out of the exigencies created by the ever larger organisations,
which itself was spawned by the expansion facilitated by the relative dispersion of ownership.
The managerial sections of the new middle class were, at least in part, a product of the same
processes that were transforming the upper class. Its professional sections had their basis in
many of the same developments, but in connection with increased demand for expertise in
fields like law, finance, accounting, technology and information. Furthermore, middle-class
expansion is promoted by the growth of the public sector and welfare-state services. To be
sure, there is considerable national variation in both the historical genesis and degree of these
changes, as well as the resultant system of corporate governance and class structures (Giddens
1981a:177-97; Scott 1997).
To complicate things further, there was little consensus in sociology about what the
relevant developments in fact were, and especially what to make of them. Many considered a
separation between ownership and control crucial, but again differed on what this would mean.
Were we witnessing a full-blown «managerial revolution» that ousted the capitalist class from
power, installing a new class of managers and experts in their place (Burnham 1941)? Was
this new class in power less susceptible to the pressures of short-term profit-making and more
attuned to broader social considerations (Berle 1959)? And would this ultimately constitute
the coming of «post-capitalist» social order (Dahrendorf 1959)? These «managerialist»
authors thought so. These views were embedded in a broader theory of industrial society – as
opposed to a theory of capitalism (Scott 1979:15-29).
The writings of Marxist authors constituted the main alternative description and
interpretation. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, their assessments were considerably less optimist.
Marx himself witnessed only the early days of the joint stock company, and provided no full
4
analysis of it (Marx 1981). Renner held that the joint-stock form implied problems of control,
since the day-to-day operation of these corporations were not overseen by the classical
capitalists, but to some extent left to managers (Renner 1949). According to Hilferding (1981),
this was coupled with a fusion of banking and industry into what he called «finance capital»,
which further removed shareholding capitalists from the actual production. In Lenin’s view
this amounted an empowering of the banks, in an alliance with industry through shareholdings,
credit relations and interlocking directorships (Lenin 1953).2 Of course, for Marxists, the
proper «post-capitalist» social order was a proletarian revolution away.
As Nichols pointed out, these debates have to a «noticeable extent» been «coloured by
[…] value preferences» (Nichols 1969:12). This would seem to be no less true of the debates
on the middle classes, of which a brief review is given in one of the papers of this thesis. I
will elaborate a bit on this in the following chapter.
It is important to note how all of this fly in the face of what Marx probably, and most
early Marxists certainly, expected. Marx and Engels famously held that class divisions were
becoming increasingly simplified, and this connected to important aspects of their view of
capitalism. While pre-capitalist societies were characterised by «a complicated arrangement
of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank», capitalism has
this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more
splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie
and Proletariat (Marx and Engels 2002 [1888]:219-20).
This, of course, was not what happened. What more, Marx and Engels’ views seem to
express a mode of understanding which has haunted class analysis since, namely the relative
neglect of sources of social divisions other than those constituted in the capitalist mode of
production – gender and ethnicity being conspicuous cases in point. Put in other terms,
Marxism tended to neglect other bases of power and domination than those which flowed
either directly or indirectly from the ownership of the means of production. This ranks among
its major inadequacies (Giddens 1981b:242) .
Weber is frequently held up as the promising alternative; with his logically infinite
number of class situations and the cultural and political dimensions of stratification – Stand
and party – he would be the obvious choice for any student of class concerned to avoid any
overemphasis on relations of production. In recent years, however, the leading exponent of a
2 The presentation here owes much to Scott’s discussion, especially in Scott 1997.
5
multidimensional approach to class that gives culture its due has rightfully been Pierre
Bourdieu.
While Bourdieu may be credited with recognising class inequality in «more than one
dimension» by introducing the multiple forms of capital, it is equally important to recognise
that one of Bourdieu’s major innovations is the introduction of the notion of field. In fact,
these are intrinsically connected in his sociology, since the different forms of capital rely on
different fields. The importance of the notion of field in this context is that it opens up for a
sociology of class stratification that fully recognises the importance of social differentiation.
Modern societies undergo continuing struggles over the «relative autonomy» of various
fields – for instance, the extent to which cultural production – the arts, science, etc. – should
be governed by political leads or subject to market forces, or be free to establish their specific
«rules». Not only do modern societies exhibit an empirically variant social differentiation in
which different activities are played out under distinct rules, but these fields are veritable
structures of power and arenas of struggle over scarce resources. In this, they make up
microcosms of stratification in their own right, but which also serves to differentiate the
«overall» structure of stratification. Furthermore, fields mediate the effects of class divisions
on social outcomes. The workings of capitalist economies impact life-chances, culture,
politics and state-formations through the workings of these relatively autonomous
microcosms of action.
A telling example is Bourdieu’s study of the field of cultural production, in which the
hierarchy of value becomes reversed, in what appears as a negation of the principles of market
economies. What confers power and status in this field is not sales or other indices of
economic success, but their negation in «art for art’s sake» (Bourdieu 1993b). Conversely, the
economic field evades rules from the religious, moral or political field by a similar tautology,
«business is business». On this logic, the privileges accruing to upper-class successors in the
field of cultural production may work through a «local» inversion of the hierarchy: sons and
daughters of wealthy families can afford to renounce the value of monetary success and
pursue the purity of culture. Hence, the effects of class are mediated by the field.
The differentiations of social fields thus intersect with the differentiation of class
relationships engendered by the changes in capitalism over the last decades to produce a
highly complex and differentiated structure of class stratification. Through the concept of
6
fields, Bourdieu could offer a class analysis of contemporary society which could deal with
this complexity and steer clear of class reductionism without abandoning the importance of
class altogether. This makes Bourdieu’s approach particularly suited to deal with the
complexities of contemporary patterns of power and stratification. In this thesis, I seek to
exploit aspects of this perspective to deal with intra-class relations, but also to argue that
contemporary class analysis needs to stay attuned to the fundamentals of class relations –
namely the forms of domination and stratification that is built into its production and market
relations. Theoretically, I propose to integrate these different points of view via a reworking
of the concept of class structuration (Giddens 1973)
This aim is endeavoured achieved through two strategies over three papers. On the one
hand, I take as my object of study two different classes constructed with explicit reference to
such production and market relations. On the other hand, I offer a theoretical or conceptual
critique of recent applications of Bourdieu to class analysis. These strategies are pursued in
the following three papers:
1) The structure of the upper class: a social space approach, published in Sociology,
vol. 46 no 6, 2012.
2) The politics of the service Class: the Homology of Positions and Position-Takings,
accepted for publication in European Societies (published online July 24th
).
3) Putting Bourdieu to Work for Class Analysis: Reflections on some recent
contributions, published in The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 64 no 2, 2013.
The rest of this introduction proceeds as follows. In chapter 2 I provide a thorough
presentation of the theoretical perspectives which inform the thesis. This concerns principally
the approaches to class advanced by Marx, Weber and Bourdieu, and secondarily other
contributions. In chapter 3, I discuss Bourdieu’s methodological approach, which I adopt;
present the technique of multiple correspondence analysis; discuss its relationship to the
methodology of Bourdieu; and conclude with some notes on research strategy. Chapter 4
gives brief summaries of the three papers. Chapter 5 provides a concluding discussion which
sums up empirical contributions and spell out theoretical and methodological implications.
Special attention is given to the question of how the «Bourdieusian» approach to class can
connect with European class theory. In that section, I pick up on the suggestion in the
7
«Politics…» paper to deal with this as a problem of class structuration (Giddens 1973). That
outlines a program for further theoretical work.
8
2. Theoretical perspective
The work in this thesis is done in what may be thought of as an intersection of a
«Bourdieusian» approach to class and stratification, and a more «conventional» approach to
class analysis. In the two empirical papers, I study the internal differentiation of classes
defined with explicit reference to what I call «European class theory» (ECT) – that is, the
body of class theory that stands in fairly direct connection to the founding statements of Marx
and Weber.3 Internal differentiation of classes is analysed by applying Bourdieu’s concept of
forms of capital and that of social space. This combines two different approaches to class and
stratification, arising out of my own conceptualisation of how they might be combined. I will
first give a general introduction to European class theory and specify in the ways in which I
draw on this tradition I also introduce Giddens’ concept of class structuration in this context.
then go on to present Bourdieu’s approach to class, which necessarily involves consideration
of more general aspects of his sociology. I conclude that section with some brief reflections
on Bourdieu’s relation to ECT.
2.1 Class analysis at a crossroads
There shall in that time be rumours of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as
to where things really are (…) At that time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer, and the young shall
not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night
before, about eight o'clock.
-Boring Prophet, in Life of Brian (1978)
The concept of class has a strange standing in sociology. It was a core concept for two of
its founding fathers, Marx and Weber, whose followers have insisted upon its centrality to the
discipline. Some argue that it was the emphasis on class relations that made sociology distinct
among the social sciences: class was the only independent variable in the discipline (Arthur
Stinchcombe, quoted in Wright 1979:3)4; and class and class conflict was «the question of
sociology» (Giddens 1973:19, italics in the original). Allowing for some hyperbole, all of this
sounds anachronistic today. Class was doubtlessly central to the founding fathers of sociology
– the most for Marx, but also for Weber and arguably less so for Durkheim – but it would
3 This, of course, implies that Bourdieu’s approach stand in a less direct relationship to Marx and Weber, which I
think to be the case. Bourdieu was of course quite heavily influenced by both, and by a wide range of other
figures. Compared to the work of, say, Wright or Goldthorpe, the differences in the nature of this influence is
quite pronounced. While Wright and Goldthorpe both develop their views in fairly direct dialogue with the two
founding fathers, Bourdieu is much less concerned with basing his own approach in some canonical figure. 4 Stinchcombe was being sarcastic, mocking his fellow sociologists’ lack of imagination, construing every social
phenomenon only in terms of stratification. Regardless of how the remark was meant, it tells us something about
the standing of these perspectives in the discipline, at least at that time.
9
seem that their descendants lost track of their heritage when confronted with the social
changes of the 20th
century.
Whatever degree of centrality the concept of class may have enjoyed, it has always been
surrounded by ambiguity and confusion. It would seem to be impossible to achieve anything
approaching agreement on what exactly the term itself referred to (Crompton 2008), let alone
its derivatives like class identity, class conflict, class power, class society, etc. This is surely
not wholly the fault of the latter-day analysts of class: Marx and Weber alike were either
unwilling or unable to offer concise definitions of the concept. Marx raises the question in the
third volume of Capital (Marx 1981:1025-6). But when he purports to answer what makes a
class, the manuscript breaks off after half a page – much like in a detective movie where an
informant dies just as the perpetrator is about to be revealed! Weber was better, on the face of
it, as he offered a direct conceptual discussion on two occasions in Economy and Society.
These two sections, however, exhibit somewhat contradictory definitions.
Simultaneously, doubts or even assaults on the relevance of the concept of class have
been in steady supply. Durkheim suggested that the maturing of the division of labour and the
rise of organic solidarity would serve to abolish the hereditary transmission of property, so
that social inequalities would come to «perfectly express natural inequalities», those of
individuals’ capacity and aptitude (Durkheim 1984 [1933]:313-16).5 This was amplified by
numerous later sociologists, particularly those who adopted what has been called the (liberal)
theory of industrial society. This emphasised that the distinctive trait of the modern age was
not its capitalist mode of organising the economy, but its reliance on industrial technology and
inanimate sources of energy. These authors – Parsons, Dahrendorf, Aron, and Kerr – heralded
an imminent and immanent decline of class:
The theory of industrial society recognises the phenomenon of class conflict but holds that it is
characteristic of the transitional phase in the emergence of industrialism out of traditional society and
that it becomes transcended (read ‘regulated’ or ‘institutionalised’) when the industrial order reaches
maturity. In some versions – including the original Saint-Simonian ones – it is held that the very
concept of «class» loses its relevance once the transition to industrialism has been achieved (Giddens
1982:57).
Whatever credence could be granted such beliefs in their heyday – the long boom of the
post-war period – their influence waned as the moment passed, if only to be succeeded by a
5 Durkheim is ambiguous on how this would happen: he seems to suggest both that this represents a development
that would be almost an unfolding of the inner logic of the social type itself; but also, some of his formulations
seems to suggest that this would be brought about by reforms deemed necessary by some agency in order to
protect the social type.
10
new wave of claims on the death of class. Several scholars emerged with grandiose claims
about a fundamental transformation of modernity that rendered class obsolete again. Much of
this struck a darker chord than the earlier theories of industrial society: there was no talk of
increased affluence and harmony between what used to be classes, but new social divisions,
fragmentation of the old ones, apocalyptic new risks and a shattering individualisation that
smothered belongings and collectives to accompany rising inequalities (Giddens 1990; Beck
1992; Pakulski and Waters 1996; Bauman 2000; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002). 6
Meanwhile, notwithstanding its disagreement with itself and the at times hostile climate,
class analysis developed and stacked evidence to show that the vintage class society was in
fact alive and well. Particularly during the 1980’s, the international comparative work of John
H. Goldthorpe (Goldthorpe et al. 1987; Goldthorpe and Marshall 1992; Erikson and
Goldthorpe 1993) and Erik Olin Wright (Wright 1979, 1985, 1997) had shown class analysis
to be a viable and fruitful endeavour. Conceptually sound and empirically robust, the work
lead by Goldthorpe and Wright (either directly or by example) demonstrated that class
divisions were not dissolving and continued to shape social life and political conflicts in the
advanced societies. This, felt the stalwarts of class analysis, should expose «death of class» as
data-free punditry (see the scathing attack in Goldthorpe 2007a:91-116).
The latter theories were indeed discredited among the ranks of the true believers in class
analysis, but the rest of sociology seemed less impressed. In the hands of Goldthorpe, Wright
and their respective co-workers and followers, class analysis obtained a considerable technical
sophistication and prosperity in terms of research output. A premise of this success was that
the grander claims of class analysis – whether of the philosophy of history kind or totalising
social theory – were dropped in favour of more modest proposals amenable to standard
research procedures (Goldthorpe and Marshall 1992; Wright 1997). Critics felt, however, that
this approach represented a serious attenuation of class analysis (Morris and Scott 1996).
Others took an even more critical stance and decried this approach as «minimalist»,
«economistic» and «reductionist», and lamented its restrictive focus on quantitative analyses.
All of this eclipsed or even excluded considerations of history, subjectivity, identity and
culture more generally, resulting in the marginalisation of questions of class, inequality and
6 This is in a way slightly misleading, since at least Giddens seems to anticipate certain new prospects for
freedom in this new phase of modernity. That being said, it is a clear difference in the general thrust of this wave
of «decline of class» as compared to the previous one.
11
domination to the discipline of sociology as a whole (Devine and Savage 2005; Atkinson
2011).
This is the context of the popularity of Pierre Bourdieu in the field of class analysis. His
was an approach to class that restored issues of culture and meaning to the core of what class
is all about. The multiple forms of capital, the notion of field, the sophisticated theory of
practice and the broad scope of themes Bourdieu himself investigated proved to be a valuable
source of inspiration. The theoretical ambition of this thesis is to address aspects of how
Bourdieu’s ideas can be put to use to tackle certain empirical and theoretical issues in class
analysis. This implies a retaining of certain elements of the framework of «pre-Bourdieu»
class analysis.
2.2 Class, capitalism and the inheritance of classical sociology
I use European class theory (ECT) to refer to the broad tradition of theorising class that is
in some crucial sense based on Marx, Weber or both. I will first present Marx and Weber’s
theorisations of class, with a view to spelling out the differences that have been seized upon
by later writers. These later writers are discussed somewhat more briefly and in a sense
illustratively in my delimitation of ECT – except for the concept of class structuration –
leading up to a specification of how I apply the concept of class.
2.2.1. Marx’ theory of classes
I noted above that the manuscript breaks off just as Marx announces he will answer the
question of what constitutes a class. Subsequent authors have worked to develop a concise
account of "class in Marx" based on his various comments on it. The absence of a concise and
definitive treatment on Marx' own part paved the way for series of interpretative controversies.
Some of these are caught up in more general disagreements on the nature of Marx'
"metatheoretical" views, or his social theory, which translates into questions of the mode of
existence of social classes. In what follows, however, I'll map out the most general aspects of
his class theory,
The point of departure for Marx' view of classes is the centrality accorded to economic
production in his overall theory. For Marx, the primary defining feature of a given social
order is how it organises its production, since meeting of material needs is of fundamental
importance to human existence. Since the way production is organised is of such central
importance, so are the particular divisions that originate within it (Marx 2000 [1932]).
12
For Marx, a characteristic feature of capitalism is that it organises this production through
private ownership of the means of production, and its corollary in the formally free labour-
power. The owners of these means of production make their living by way of the surplus
value created in production. This is facilitated by the simple fact that the work put in by the
labourers produce values that exceed what they receive in wages. This, in simple terms, is at
the heart of what Marx' calls exploitation (Marx 1976).
This is a subject surrounded by extensive debate (Steedman 1981), which I do not want to
visit here. The basics of Marx' position is relatively straight-forward. The source of value is
labour: The materials brought into, say, a factory could not be sold for the same amount as the
finished product. The transformation of materials into a finished product is what creates its
additional value. A book-shelf may be sold for more than the value of the required wood,
nails and screws because these materials have been worked upon to create the shelf (Marx
1976:127-31).
Labour under capitalism is treated like any other commodity, as a product to be bought
and sold on the market. More precisely, what the worker sells is hers or his capacity to labour,
or labour-power. It is this capacity which is assessed in quantitative and monetary terms, like
ordinary commodities – or product of labour. As a commodity, labour-power has a certain
«cost of production»: this corresponds to the cost of providing the worker with sufficient
returns to produce and reproduce her/himself – i.e., subsistence (Marx 1976:274).
Wages are thus meant to cover the workers subsistence, and hence the reproduction of
labour-power. The difference between the exchange value of the commodity produced – such
as a book-shelf – and wage is the source of surplus value. The surplus value covers other
expenses of the capitalist firms, such as distribution, and constitutes the source of the profits
of the firm. The legal arrangements surrounding private property entails that the surplus value,
and accordingly also profits, belongs to the owners of the firm.
Marx calls this exploitation primarily because it involves unpaid work by labourers. The
fruits of the labour do not fall to the labourer, but are instead appropriated by the capitalist by
virtue of their legally guaranteed possession of the means of production involved (and, of
course, the raw materials). This does not mean that the worker is cheated in the bargaining
encounter; the exploitation is built into the very constitution of capitalist wage labour.
13
All of this could be extended and laid out in more technical terms. Several important
points can be seen to follow from this, but two are particularly crucial for present purposes.
Firstly, on this account, classes can be seen as entirely relational phenomenon. What makes a
class is the exploitative relationship between groups. Classes are thus not to be identified in
terms of particular characteristics of its «members» – like income level – but strictly in terms
of the relationship. Secondly, in Marx scheme, classes, in the abstract, are tied to the core
features of what capitalism is. As a mode of organising economic life, capitalism necessary
involves class divisions. In fact, it is so almost by definition: to say that there are classes in
capitalism is not very much more than saying that capitalism is a system in which production
is organised through the private ownership of the means of production, and the employment
of formally free labour power.
This usage of class in Marx is clearly «abstract». It makes no sense, of course, to say that
actual social collectives exist by definition with reference to a certain institutional make-up.
This in turn connects with the familiar problem of whether this two-class model is in fact a
satisfactory description of class structures. It is commonly noted that in his own studies, Marx
recognised a plurality of classes and fractions. How does this fit with his instance on the basic
dichotomous model? As Giddens notes, «[m]ost of the problematic elements in Marx’s theory
of classes stem from the application of this abstract model to specific, historical forms of
society – that is to say, they turn upon the nature of the connections between the «abstract»
and the «’concrete’ models of class» (Giddens 1973:30).7
2.2.2 Max Weber on class and stratification
The literature dealing with the similarities and dissimilarities between Weber and Marx is
already vast. For present purposes, two important points, common enough in the literature, are
central: Weber’s definition of class as rooted in market relationships, as well as his famous
distinction between class, status and party. Both are presented in fairly brief segments in
Economy and Society (Weber 1978:302-10, 926-939).
The definition given of class is somewhat different in these two segments. In the segment
appearing first, «Status Groups and Classes», a somewhat loose and encompassing definition
opens the essay:
‘Class situation’ means the typical probability of:
7 This problem is precisely what Giddens coined his concept of class structuration to deal with (Giddens
1973:105)
14
1. procuring goods
2. gaining a position in life and
3. finding inner satisfaction,
a probability which derives from the relative control over goods and skills and from their income-
producing uses within a given economic order.
«Class» means all persons in the same class situation (Weber 1978:302).
On this account, a class is made up of people who are similar in the ways in which their
possibilities in life depend on using goods and skills to gain income. In this essay, Weber
contrasts this to status groups by defining status as «an effective claim to social esteem»,
«typically founded on» style of life, education, or hereditary or occupational prestige (Weber
1978:305-6). Class would thus refer to the economic determination of life-chances, seemingly
of whatever kind, whereas status concerns prestige, evaluations of honour.
His earlier formulation, appearing first in English as «Class, Status, Party» in the Gerth
and Mills collection (Weber 1946) and in the second volume of Economy and Society (Weber
1978:926-39), offers a clearer exposition, and is the general point of reference for discussions
on Weber’s conceptualisation of class. In what follows, I use the recent «Zeppelin University
translation», as this seems to bring out certain nuances of Weber’s views neglected in earlier
translations (Waters and Waters 2010).8
The point of departure in this essay is that classes, Stände and parties are phenomenon of
the social distribution of power. Weber states that we may speak of a class
1. when a large number of people have a specific causal component of their life chances in common,
and
2. when this causal component is represented exclusively by economic interests in the possession of
goods and the opportunities of income, and
3. when the causal component is represented under the conditions of the commodity or labor markets
(‘class situations’) (Weber 2010 [1922]:138).
This definition ties class specifically to market processes, so that class refers to similar
positions within commodity and labour markets. The general distinguishing traits of classes
are accordingly what types of «goods and opportunities of income» they can bring to the
market to secure their life chances. The most basic delineation is the possession of property:
«‘Property and assets’ and «lack of property or assets’ are therefore the basic categories of all
class situations» (Weber 2010 [1922]:139).
8 A central point here is that Stand is left untranslated. Earlier translations replaced it with «status» or «status
group», but this does not capture the historical sense of Stand as it is used by Weber.
15
The propertied and the property-less alike are, however, differentiated by a number of
factors. The sheer range of these is indicative of the way in which Weber’s view of class
differ from that of Marx:
All of the following property distinctions differentiate the class situations of the propertied as well as
the ‘meaning’ they can (and do) give to the utilization of their property, especially liquid assets which
are easily converted to cash:
- ownership of residential houses, factories, depots or stores, agriculturally usable land, all this in large
or small holdings which means there is a quantitative difference with possibly qualitative consequences
- ownership of mines, of domestic animals, people (slaves),
- disposition of the mobile tools of production, or acquired capital goods of any kind, especially money
or goods, that easily and at any time can be exchanged for money,
- ownership of products of one’s own labor or of strangers’ labor differing according to their level of
desirability, or of marketable monopolies of any kind (Weber 2010 [1922]:139).
The property-less are, in line with the last point quoted, differentiated by the type of
services they offer, and furthermore «whether they provide a continuous or discontinuous
relationship to the recipient» (Weber 2010 [1922]:139) – which, under contemporary
conditions, would probably mean whether they are permanently employed or not. All of this
illustrates that with the definition of class as founded in markets, it comes to encompass a
much wider range of economic phenomena and relationships than those that fall within the
scope of the abstract model of Marx. Indeed, as can be seen from the quote above, even the
ownership of people is a form of relevant property, and this refers to not specifically capitalist
economic relations – i.e. slavery.
That aside, Weber echoes Marx in tying class to basic economic relationships of capitalist
societies. For Marx, this involves the specific capitalist relations of production, while for
Weber this is effected through connecting to a distinct, but equally central aspect of capitalism,
its reliance on markets as a means of distribution and economic coordination: «classes are
created by economic interests which are connected to the existence of the market» (Weber
2010 [1922]:140). While the economic relationships brought to the fore in Marx are those of
exploitation in production, the relations implied by Weber are relationships between buyers
and sellers, creditors and debtors – and, of course, relations between buyers and relations
between sellers. The buying and selling of labour-power thus appears as only a specific case
of the more general phenomenon.9
9 Modulations of this point are frequent in Neo-Weberian theory, that exploitation in the Marxian sense is a
special case of domination, exclusion or some other Weberian notion.
16
In his bid on the structure of social classes – «the totality of those class situations within
which individual and generational mobility is easy and typical» – Weber outlines a four-class
model:
a) the working class as a whole-the more so, the more automated the work process becomes,
b) the petty bourgeoisie,
c) the propertyless intelligentsia and specialists (technicians, various kinds of white-collar employees,
civil servants-possibly with considerable social differences depending on the cost of their training),
d) the classes privileged through property and education (Weber 1978:305).
This clearly bespeaks the centrality accorded to education as a factor in class divisions:
what distinguishes class c) from a) and b) is education, and class d) is seen as privileged
through both property and education.
An important aspect of Weber’s work on class is that he maintains a distinction between
what he calls class situation and social classes. Class situation is broadly equivalent to what
Marxists refer to as class position, and denotes any precise position one can occupy in the
relations of market exchange. «It is the kind of chances in the market that determines the
common conditions of the individual’s fate. ’Class situation’ in this sense ultimately is
‘market situation’» (Weber 2010 [1922]:139). This would seem to imply that the total number
of class situations would approach the number of individuals being considered. Social classes,
however, «makes up the totality of class situations within which individual and inter-
generational mobility is easy and typical» (Weber 1978:302). Social class therefore refers to a
demographically formed group of people in class situations bound together by mobility
patterns.
While I quoted Weber above as suggesting that status refers to successful claims to social
esteem, his discussion in the earlier essay suggests a definition that puts it more on par with
class. «In contrast to ‘class situation,’ which is purely determined by the economy, we want to
characterise the Stände situation as resulting from the typical integral part of life, in which the
fate of men depends on a specific positive or negative social assessment of honor» (Weber
2010 [1922]:142). This brings it into a closer equivalence with class situation, as both would
then refer to specific causal components in affecting life chances: class working through
economic exchange, and status situation through the evaluation of honour or prestige. This
17
interpretation is emphasised in John Scott’s impressive formulation of a Neo-Weberian
synthesis on class, stratification and the sociology of elites (Scott 1996).10
Party, as Scott notes, does not seem to be a directly comparable concept.11
Parties are
basically any type of association that is geared towards changing laws and rules that are
enforced by the state, or even, if possible, taking over the state and/or political institutions
(Weber 2010 [1922]:149). Parties can represent both class and Stand interests, but not
necessarily. The concept, however, sits uneasily with class and Stand since one cannot have a
«party situation» in the same sense as a class or status situation. Scott solved this by replacing
the concept of party with that of command, to denote power founded in
organisations/bureaucracies, which can then be applied fully analogous with class and Stand
(Scott 1996).
2.2.3 European class theory (ECT)
I use ECT to refer broadly to what I consider the sort of common denominator of most
work on class that follow on from Marx and/or Weber, that is the ambition to understand
inequalities, power and conflict in connection the historically specific institutional
arrangements that make up capitalism. From this, in turn, it follows that questions of class are
fundamentally tied to the notion of modernity, itself crucial to sociology. Class, at least as
understood in the way being discussed here, is a distinctively modern form of power and
stratification, as opposed to pre-modern forms of stratification like, say, Stand society and
slavery (Turner 1988).
It should be noted here that I do not draw on or discuss the so-called Durkheimian
approach developed by David Grusky and colleagues (Grusky and Galescu 2005). As is
indeed stated by Grusky himself, the micro-class approach was not explicitly developed by
drawing on Durkheim, and the neo-Durkheimianism seems indeed to be developed for the
purposes of the volume edited by Wright (2005) in which they claim Durkheim as their
ancestor. This is no way to belittle their contribution – it might indeed be claimed a strength
of their approach that they are unbound by the formulations of the forefathers! However, I
should note that Goldthorpe’s questioning of whether their approach is indeed class analytical
10
In my «Putting Bourdieu to work…» paper in this thesis, I place some special emphasis on understanding class
and status as referring to specific causal components and processes. 11
One can suspect a certain conceptual sloppiness on Weber’s part here. He introduces the whole essay by
describing classes, Stände and parties as phenomenon of the distribution of power. But when he discusses the
concept of party, he states that classes belong to the economic sphere, Stände to the social sphere and parties to
the sphere of power.
18
is warranted: how is that approach a case of class analysis and not one of occupational
sociology (Goldthorpe 2002)?
ECT basically corresponds to what John Scott, in his formulation of a comprehensive
framework for stratification research, considers the proper domain of the concept of class
(Scott 1996:48-92). On his reading, «the Marxian analysis of class is compatible with the
views that were later set out by Weber» (Scott 1996:48). From the perspective taken here, this
holds true at a somewhat high level of generalisation. That is, I consider Marxian and
Weberian analyses of class as the two main variants of ECT – sharing the view that classes
are phenomenon of capitalist economies, but differing on how precisely this is so.
Marx and Weber fathered enormous disagreements and protracted debates on that last
question. For those who followed Weber, Marxian class analysis was flawed because it was
caught up in indefensible notions of philosophy of history, economic reductionism and – of
course – political radicalism. Weber himself offered many rather merciless remarks on the
Marxists of his time, like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht who founded the Communist
Party of Germany: «Liebknecht belongs in the lunatic asylum and Rosa Luxemburg in the
zoological gardens» (quoted in Giddens 1971:192). For the Marxists, the most general
problem with Weberian theory is its sole focus on market processes at the expense of the
productive relations considered to be the true heart of class relations. The problem is seen as
that, in Frank Parkin’s (1979:3) sarcastic words, Weberian theory is pitched at the wrong level
of reality.
Much ink has been spilled, however, on the relative virtues of Marxian and Weberian
class analysis. The differences among them are not crucial for the questions addressed in this
thesis, although I would maintain that they should be recognised. Marxist class theory has
generally distinguished itself from Weberianism by emphasising that classes are «really»
shaped in the productive sphere, as Marx said, and not in the market encounter, as implied by
Weber. In a forceful statement of a strongly Marxist view, Crompton and Gubbay argue that
Weberian approaches are incomplete, and that attempts at synthesising Marx and Weber have
led Lockwood (1958), Parkin (1972) and Giddens (1973) to (implicitly flawed) neo-Weberian
conclusions (Crompton and Gubbay 1977:39)12
. The most prolific contributor to neo-Marxist
12
It should perhaps be noted that Giddens has quite explicitly rejected both the terms and conclusions of this
criticism, stating that he sees it as neither desirable nor feasible to synthesise Marx and Weber on class – and that
his own views are much closer to Marx than to Weber (Giddens 1981a:297).
19
class analysis, Erik Olin Wright, made a similar point when noting how «exploitation» is the
key concept for Marxists, whereas «life-chances» serves that purpose for Weberians:
Both ‘exploitation’ and ‘life-chances’ identify inequalities in material well-being that are generated by
inequalities in access to resources of various sorts. Thus both of these concepts point to conflicts of
interest over the distribution of the assets themselves. What exploitation adds to this is a claim that
conflicts of interest between classes are generated not simply by what people have, but also by what
people do with what they have. The concept of exploitation, therefore, points our attention to conflicts
within production, not simply conflicts in the market (Wright 1997:33)
Spectacularly, however, Wright himself has been attacked by Gubbay (1997) for falling
prey to the superficialities of Weberianism, failing to account properly for how surplus value
is produced and pumped around the system.
Marxists’ claims to encompass the broader perspective, and the implicit invitation to find
their place in the scheme of things,13
have been flatly rejected by Weberians. For Parkin, for
example, all of this rests on entirely flawed premises. The mode of production, so central to
the concept of exploitation, is dismissed as too ambiguously defined to be of any theoretical
or explanatory use (Parkin 1979:5-9). Similarly, the buzzword of exploitation, at least in its
explicit Marxist sense, is seen as haunted by numerous fundamental ambiguities (Murphy
1985:225-33). Giddens too rejects the explanatory power of exploitation and suggests
expanding it to a looser, more encompassing meaning: «any socially conditioned form of
asymmetrical production of life-chances» (Giddens 1973:130, italics removed).
Why would so much energy be spent on whether class is really about production or
markets? Some of the energy of the debate probably stemmed from the different political
implications that would emanate from these conceptions. If class divisions emerge in the
relations of production, then any meaningful political tackling of them would imply that the
relations of production would have to be fundamentally transformed – hence, a more radical
position. If classes are phenomena of the market place – the distributive system, as the
Marxists say – then class divisions can at least be lessened through political regulations of
market transactions and redistribution. This would seem more congenial to moderate political
views.
There is, then, no use in trying to cover up the considerable diversity inherent in what I
refer to as ECT. The formulations of Marx and Weber respectively spawned quite different
13
Not all Marxist critiques of Weberianism have taken this «inclusive» tone. Göran Therborn, for example, was
wholly dismissive of the Weberian approach to stratification: the conception of class, status and party is
lambasted for falling prey to subjectivism and for an allegedly misguided reliance on marginalist economics
(Therborn 1978:138-43)
20
types of inquiry. Marx’ emphasis on the exploitative relations prevailing in the capitalist
mode of production led his followers to focus on class relations in the productive sphere – the
concentration of capital, the organisation of contemporary firms or the production process
(Braverman 1974; Poulantzas 1975; e.g. Bottomore and Brym 1989; Zeitlin 1989). Weber’s
emphasis on life-chances produced more attention among his followers on the distribution of
desired outcomes along class or status lines, and particularly an emphasis on social mobility.
What is misleading, however, is the impression generated that one will have to opt for
either one of these points of view. Marxists do not directly make that point, but rather imply
that the Weberian concerns are simply more limited than their own, and hence, in some sense,
fall within the scope of Marxism.14
This, however, is contradicted by the relatively weak
emphasis on issues of life-chances in the Marxist tradition, as is, in a restricted sense,
understandable given the emphasis on relations and processes of production (but see for
example Westergaard 1995; Wright 1997). It is, therefore, broadly correct to see the Weberian
tradition in class analysis as primarily concerned with the distribution of life-chances and the
market processes shaping them, as distinct from the Marxist emphasis on production. It is,
however, unproductive to maintain that contemporary class analyses have to opt for either one.
In fact, class analysis proper will have to engage with production and distribution, property
and market relations. «To suppose that, in capitalism, product and labour markets can be
severed from the process of production is simply foolish or doctrinaire» (Giddens 1981a:299).
All of this raises the question of how and in what ways their views are compatible. Scott
indicates two broad ways. Firstly, the Weberian perspective emphasise the centrality of
demographic processes in creating social classes out of bundles of class situations: «The
failure to incorporate demographic processes into the Marxian model is one its major
analytical limitations». Secondly, Scott argues that Marx’ recognition of the differentiation of
the «basic social classes» into fractions can be interpreted as «based in narrower and more
specific class situations than the basic class position of which they are fractional parts» (Scott
1996:69). Class situations (Weber’s concept) are then differentiated by the type of «market
capacities» that are usable in the market encounter – Scott points to different types of capital
(industrial, banking, commercial) and different types of labour power (highly qualified or not,
for example). This suggests a rather unproblematic process of theoretical incorporation of
14
Scott opts for the exact opposite strategy from a neo-Weberian position, seeing Marxist analyses as too
restricted in their sole emphasis on class, and thus integrates Marxist class analysis within his neo-Weberian
synthesis (Scott 1996).
21
Marxian views into his general Neo-Weberian project. This depends on the putting aside of
more general features of the social theories of Marxism and Weberianism, which differ on a
range of questions, not least in their analysis of power, the state and the role of bureaucracy.
While these issues do not directly concern the formal properties of the concept of class, it
remains important for the substantive issues and the role of class analysis in the broader
analysis of modernity.
I use ECT, then, to refer to what Scott in his strict terminology refers to as class, that is,
forms of stratification and power that is rooted in property and market relationship, while
recognising the plurality of more precise conceptions of this. I opt for a different and more
specific label out of pessimism in the possibilities of terminological or conceptual policing.
«Of all the concepts used by sociologists for describing and explaining social relationships,
social class is probably the most ambiguous, confusing and ill-defined» (Scase 1992:1). While
Scott shows that class can indeed be given a concise and consistent theoretical definition,
there seems little prospect for substituting this for the variegated uses of the word, however
unsatisfactory they may be.
But why exactly European class theory? This is to differentiate it from the particularly
American tradition of using «class» to refer to social inequalities conceived of as differences
in prestige. Talcott Parsons installed this usage, defining stratification as the ranking of «units
[individuals or groups] in a social system in accordance with a common value system»
(Parsons 1954:388). In this scheme, stratification is basically produced by broadly shared
normative evaluations of different properties of «units», even if some conceptual space is
allowed for power differentials, probably implying that some «units» have better possibilities
for obtaining favourable evaluations (Parsons 1954:390-1). This is basically the view
underlying the tradition of community studies, that mapped out «class structures» of small-
town America by having people evaluate the status of people around them (Warner and Lunt
1942; Warner 1949). The development of occupational prestige measures follow on from this,
expanded to the national representative survey. For Frank Parkin, this approach embodies key
assumptions underlying a subjectivist approach to stratification:
Occupational prestige scales are constructed by aggregating the status evaluations of a representative
sample of the population. The ranking of positions which results from this exercise is then held to
indicate the common view on matters of prestige. This is what might be called the «moral referendum»
view of social honour; the assumption is that the prestige accorded to different positions derives from
the sum total of individual assessments, rather in the way that the Top Ten music chart is constructed
from the total selections of individual record buyers. Such a procedure thus leads to the view that the
22
distribution of social honour is regarded as legitimate (whatever may be felt about the distribution of
material reward) because it rests upon popular evaluations of common worth (Parkin 1972:40).
In the influential work of Blau and Duncan (Blau et al. 1967), the status of occupations is
measured by a «objectively» defined index of income and education. «The particular index
we used, however, was designed to give near-optimal reproduction of a set of prestige
ratings» (Blau et al. 1994 [1967]:205).The scale applied in their status attainment model was
not constructed by aggregating prestige evaluations, but was designed to mimic them by
reconstructing similar scales by the indexing socioeconomic variables. This was designed to
apply such a scale to data lacking respondent evaluations. Even if their status scale is then not
directly based on the «moral referendum», that is what it is supposed to tap, and this
constitutes their theoretical framework. That work formed the basis of much later research,
and the Origin-Education-Destination model advanced by Blau and Duncan is still widely
applied, even in work otherwise far removed from more fundamental elements of their
theoretical orientation.
The distinctive trait of this American brand of stratification research is that it is much
more attuned to issues of the social distribution of honour, even if distributions of resources
were mixed into it. This warrants Scott’s treatment of it as being not about class in the strict
sense, but in fact status (Scott 1996:93-126). These writers themselves, however, often
employed the language of class when referring to prestige, generally respecting no distinction
between class and status (as evidenced in the title of Warner 1949). While, of course, Parsons
based his hugely influential theorising on classical European social theory (Pareto, Durkheim,
Weber), it is clear that his was a rather original take on it. Importantly, in terms of his views
on stratification, his work in important respects breaks with at least Weber’s thoughts. Hence,
I use ECT to refer to modes of conceptualising class that are in a much more pronounced
continuity with either Marx or Weber, or both.
As I stated earlier, this conception of class sees it as a specific feature of capitalism as an
economic system. The very organisation of capitalist economic activity simply implies classes,
as it is based on the private ownership of the means of production and the selling and buying
of labour-power in formally free markets. Capitalism thus is a class society in a very
fundamental way, since the constitution of class divisions in fact is part and parcel of what
capitalism is. This does not mean, however, that any society with basically capitalist
economies will necessarily be heavily class stratified. The particular socio-demographic
inequalities and mobility patterns around class divisions concern the contingent process of
23
what Giddens called class structuration. Economic class divisions only become actual social
divisions in the case of convergence between what he calls proximate and mediate sources of
structuration (Giddens 1973:107-10). According to this view, the question of class is tied to
the understanding of modernity as a social form, of which capitalism is a core dimension
(Giddens 1981b, 1990; Sayer 1991)
2.2.3.1 Class structuration
The problem of how classes are formed is, of course, central to the whole literature of
class analysis. Weber’s emphasis on mobility spawned much research on social mobility into
and out class situations. To the extent that certain bundles of class situations are marked by
restrictive mobility, this is interpreted as a sign of the class being formed and possibly be
expected to act (Goldthorpe et al. 1980:28).15
A similar concern animates some Marxist
research on class (Westergaard and Resler 1975; Wright 1997). All of these accounts share
the Weberian emphasis on demographic processes in transforming economic divisions into
social classes.
Later in this thesis, I will make use of Giddens concept of class structuration to aid in the
attempt to solve certain theoretical puzzles. Class structuration was coined by Giddens in
order to deal with precisely how the problem of the above-mentioned «translation» occurs.
Giddens stands out from much of this literature by the sheer range of factors he draws into the
explanation, and we will see later that the concept seems particularly congenial to the type of
position I want to elaborate.
Giddens pinpoints a broad range of factors relevant to class structuration, giving due
space to the centrality of mobility closure, as recognised by almost everyone. Furthermore, he
argues that the division of labour, cultural distinctions (status groups) as well as broader
demographic processes are crucial (1973:107-12). This, then, is opposed to the more narrow
emphasis on demographic formation in the Weberian tradition, and is further differentiated
from that lineage of thought by maintaining that Stand – a concept rejected by Giddens
(1973:80) for its conflation of estates in the historical sense and status groups as referring to
shared life-styles and evaluations of honour in capitalist societies – is a factor in class
structuration and not just an independent dimension of stratification (cf. Scott 1996). This
does not involve a refusal of independent or cross-cutting effects of status, but highlights the
15
Goldthorpe and colleagues note that they also study mobility out of a normative interest in social openness and
the opportunity for everyone to fulfil their potential.
24
significance of convergences of class and status in the bringing about of subjectively
meaningful class divisions and social classes as groups.
This brings us to the question of the subjective salience of class. Giddens introduces a
distinction between class awareness and class consciousness. When the sources of
structuration converge – i.e. market capacities overlap with cultural divisions – classes will
tend to manifest common styles of life. When class is thus a «structurated phenomenon, there
will tend to exist a common awareness and acceptance of similar attitudes and beliefs, linked
to a common style of life, among the members of the class». This does «not involve a
recognition that these attitudes and beliefs signify a particular class affiliation, or the
recognition that there exist other classes, characterised by different attitudes, beliefs, and
styles of life». That would be the domain of class consciousness. The difference between
them is a fundamental one, as class awareness «may take the form of a denial of the existence
or reality of classes. Thus the class awareness of the middle class, in so far as it involves
beliefs which place a premium upon individual responsibility and achievement, is of this
order». Note that this point anticipates the recent emphasis on class disidentification (Skeggs
1997; Savage 2000; Faber et al. 2012) The crux of this position is that, even if the bases of
status-groups and classes are different, «the tendency to class structuration may receive a
considerable impetus where class coincides with the criteria of status group membership»
(Giddens 1973:111-12).
The effects of «party» is conceptualised as crucial to the development of class
consciousness, since this hinges on the development and activity of «organisations or agencies
devoted to the advancement» of class interests (and identity) (Giddens 1973:115). This point
were also given central importance by certain Marxist authors, in particularly influential form
by Lenin (Lenin 1988). A related point is, as we will see, also made by Bourdieu.
2.3.1 The use of «class» in this thesis Having clarified what I mean by ECT, and paid some attention to the qualifications the
term demands, I will now turn to present how I apply insights from this broad camp of authors
in my work. The two quantitative papers confront specific incarnations of ECT thus defined
with the «Bourdieusian» approach. The theoretical paper takes an opposite approach of sorts,
confronting some recent «Bourdieusian» contributions to class analysis with the emphasis of
ECT. I will discuss the approach drawn from Bourdieu in the next section. Here I will turn to
how more specifically I draw on ECT, and conclude with a few notes on the use of the term
25
«class». In the following subsections, I will therefore briefly expand upon how I employ
concepts drawn from the somewhat amorphous tradition of ECT. This is intended to
supplement the discussion of these concepts given in the respective papers, but with a view to
show how they are precisely exemplars of ECT.
2.3.1.1The upper class In analysing the economic upper class, my ambition was to develop an operationalisation
of this that would class-theoretical, that is, not simply descriptive, like «the top 1%» or
something of that nature. This means trying to develop a category that would tap into class
relations, in the ECT sense. I do so in a broadly Weberian way. That is to say, class in this
sense is understood to refer to essentially market relationships, but under the understanding
that market relationships are intertwined with relations of production. In the case of the upper
class, for example, being identified as living off income-generating property also means
having a certain position within relations of productions. This latter implication is however
left vague or maybe even opaque in the paper, for the simple reason that the data does not
allow further specification.
In doing this, I drew on John Scott’s work on the capitalist class (Scott 1997), even if my
own take on this involves a considerably larger group than what he studied and is coarser in
the specification of class situations. Scott’s analyses indicate that, in contemporary capitalism,
four broad types of capitalist class situations can be delineated: the remaining entrepreneurs,
the rentiers, the finance capitalists and the chief executives (Scott 1997:278-9). The first three
of these can be said to live off property in some sense, whereas the last are technically
speaking employees.
Using this deductively means devising criteria of operationalisation that can capture these
positions. The data used were Norwegian registers, which on the one hand facilitates the
analysis of very small groups in the population, but on the other hand is quite restricted in the
range of variables that can be used. What is more, the different types of «owner capitalists» –
rentiers, entrepreneurs and finance capitalists – could not be distinguished. That being said,
the operationalisation, itself outlined in the paper, captured persons either 1) living off returns
to property in some form, or 2) earning their income through working in the higher echelons
of the control structures of capitalist firms.
The first involves not directly measuring their market situation, but approaching it by
their type of income, itself pointing to its source. For this I use information from the tax
26
authorities, merged in the registers. The core theoretical assumption is, accordingly, that
people whose main income is either capital income (stocks, interest, property, etc.) or self-
employed income (i.e. deriving from personally owned enterprises and not join stock firms)
can be said to live off of some form of property ownership. This, then, is opposed to earning
wages or salaries, which indicates class situations in which labour-power, and/or skills, are
the chief market capacities relied on.
The executives, managers and business professional segment is conceptualised in simpler
terms, by firstly selecting the relevant occupational titles, and thereafter selecting the small
subsection of them that have comparatively high annual incomes.16
2.3.1.2 The service class Goldthorpe’s class scheme (Goldthorpe et al. 1980; Erikson and Goldthorpe 1993) has
proved to be the single most influential attempt at providing a classification of social class for
survey analyses. By implication, this renders his conceptualisation of the service class
(Goldthorpe 1982) the most influential solution to the «problem of the middle class(es)».
Goldthorpe’s approach to class departs from an emphasis typical of ECT, namely
understanding class as fundamentally about property. Hence, he outlines three basic class
positions: the employer, the self-employed and the employee, corresponding to the Marxian
triad of bourgeoisie, petit-bourgeoisie and proletariat. Applied as such, however, the category
of employee becomes very large. It is the differentiation of employees that received
Goldthorpe’s attention (Goldthorpe 2007b).
In its full version, the Goldthorpe class scheme has no less than eight classes of
employees: agricultural workers, the unskilled workers, the skilled workers, lower technical
and manual supervisory workers, two categories of routine non-manual workers and two
categories of the service class (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1993:36). In his latest formulations,
the principle of differentiation here is the type of contract that regulates the employment
relationship. The traditional workers have labour contracts, which are short-term and specify a
specific exchange of effort for wages, at piece or time rates. This works as long as work can
be quite easily measured, either in terms of output or time spent.
The service class, however, is in lines of work which does not involve such discrete
exchanges of effort for salaries, since their effort is less easily quantifiable, such as filling
16
As specified in the paper, the limit is set to 1 million NOK. In retrospect, it would doubtlessly make more
sense to apply a relative measure, like the top 1% of them, or something of that nature.
27
leadership functions and the application of expertise. As this is less readily monitored and
measured, they cannot be compensated per unit produced. Since the service class exercise
delegated authority, and also apply specialised expertise, they require certain autonomy, but
also a moral commitment to the employing organisation. The service contract involves long-
term, relatively secure conditions of employment and also career prospects, and hence
involves a form of institutionalised trust.
Thus, the theory of the service class accounts for how these middle-class groups fit into
class relations that are primarily shaped by property relationships. Employment relationships
are shaped within this context, coordinated through markets (creating market situations). The
bureaucratisation of the employing organisations, in tandem with technological change,
created needs for other types of work, and this would have to be organised in efficient ways
that served the overall purposes of capitalist firms. Hence what I refer to as the structural basis
of the middle class, which I think is basically convincingly conceptualised by Goldthorpe.
2.3.1.3 Class power and domination
… as a minister, I experienced the power of industrialists and bankers to get their way by use of the
crudest form of economic pressure, even blackmail, against a Labour Government. Compared to this,
the pressure brought to bear in industrial disputes by the unions is minuscule.
- Tony Benn (1988:xiii), former UK minister of technology
Throughout the «Putting Bourdieu to work…» paper, I refer to the types of power and
domination that are founded in the basic institutions of capitalism. In the paper, I indicate that
this is basically the important crucial point from ECT I would want to retain. In the paper,
however, I give rather tentative comments on how this is to be understood.
First of all, what are the basic institutions of capitalism? This is, of course, a huge
question. For purposes of this thesis, I refer principally to the relations of production and
market exchange. Productive relations in capitalism are organised through the private
ownership of the means of production and the buying and selling of labour-power, which
directly implicates market exchange. These core institutions rely on a state to, at least, enforce
contracts and provide basic infrastructure and services. Furthermore, capitalism relies on
banking and credit systems, which under present conditions take on a very particular
significance, not least given the enormous role played by debt (Ingham 2008). For the
purposes of class analysis, I emphasise primarily the production and market relations, in the
tradition of Marx and Weber.
28
What types of power and domination are established in these institutional foundations?
This, of course, hinges upon how power and domination are to be conceptualised. This is an
issue fraught with controversy. I cannot visit this debate in anything approaching the detail it
deserves. I use the concept in the following sense. In its most fundamental meaning, power
refers to transformative capacity, and is hence an intrinsic property of agency. «Power as
transformative capacity can then be taken to refer to agents’ capabilities of reaching [definite]
outcomes» (Giddens 1979:88, emphasis removed). The exercise of power involves drawing
on resources implied by structures of domination. «Resources are the media through which
power is exercised, and structures of domination reproduced» (Giddens 1979:91). As such,
power is a relational concept, but operates through the utilisation of transformative capacities
as generated by structures of domination. Power thus concerns the ability of actors to secure
outcomes where the realisation of these outcomes depends on the agency of others (Giddens
1979:93).
The point of this is to avoid the either voluntarist or structuralist conception of power, and
viewing them instead as mutually dependent. One important aspect of this is that power may
be used even in the absence of explicit and discursively conscious intentions to do so, but
logically not independently of action as such. It is thus better to adopt Giddens’ terminology
to speak of instantiations of power. Murphy, writing from a different perspective, distinguish
three different types of power, which nonetheless are consistent with the structurationist view
and also illustrate it (Murphy 1988:134-35). The first concerns the power to command, as
pointed to in Weber’s discussion of legitimate domination (Weber 1978:212-45). Here the
dominant actor or group can instruct the dominated actor on what to do, and this is accepted
by the latter. This may hinge on structural aspects – like position in legal-rational
arrangements, or empowerment through institutionalised history or tradition – or on charisma,
which might itself be based on mediated structured forms of domination, as Bourdieu showed
(see below)
The second type of power is the power to constrain. This refers to situations in which
actions of dominant actors or groups effectively constrain those of others, regardless of why
these actions are undertaken. Murphy points to Weber’s example of a quasi-monopolistic
banking institution, which can impose its own terms, in its own interests, for the granting of
credit (Weber 1978:943). The dominated group – people who need credit – have no choice
but to accept the terms (or make do without what they need, try another bank). This thus
29
involves the possibility to constrain or narrow the opportunities open to dominated actors,
without commanding the subordinates and independently of what are the intensions of the
dominant actor (Murphy 1988:135). This, obviously, depends on distribution of resources in
structures of domination, as Giddens points to.
The third category pointed to by Murphy is the power to profit from. This refers to the
capacity of actors or groups to profit, «in order to realize its goals, from the autonomous
actions of others». That is to say, these autonomous actions are not initiated by the profiting
actor or group, and they may be oriented to other goals. The power to profit from «implies the
capacity to take advantage of possibilities that are presented by others» (Murphy 1988:136).
Murphy proposes that this is the type of power that upper and middle classes enjoy in relation
the school system: They are not so much able to command or constrain how the school works,
but through their cultural capital, they are able to profit from the relatively autonomous
working of the school system. Murphy argues – convincingly, I think – that this is the proper
form of the power relation between classes and the school, and it is this relationship which
properly explains the misrecognition analysed by Bourdieu discussed below (Murphy
1988:149-50)
The two first types of power are those conventionally considered as class power and
domination. At least three broad types of such power can be identified. By virtue of the
ownership of means of production, capitalists (in various forms) and their employed
executives and managers make decisions about how socially significant economic resources
are put to use. In capitalism, decisions about what should be built and produced, and how,
what and where, are private decisions, exempt from democratic decision-making. Various
legal regulations and limits on these decisions do not alter the fundamentals of this. This is
thus a case of power to command.
Furthermore, since the finances of the state to some considerable extent derives from
taxation on the activities of private profit-making, a relation of structural dependency pertain
between state and business. «[T]the state, as everyone else, is dependent upon the activities of
capitalist employers for its revenue, and hence the state operates in a context of various
capitalistic ‘imperatives’ (Giddens 1981b:211).17
This implies that even if «[t]he state remains
an ‘arena’ within which class struggles are fought out», it is nevertheless «one in which there
17
The dependency goes both ways, of course, since private enterprises depend on state provision of a range of
community services, of which infrastructure and the maintenance of law and order stand out as particularly
relevant.
30
are influences at work that have a particular character of their own» (Giddens 1981b:216).
This means that there are objective, structural forces which tend towards deterring
governments from politics that would or could hamper accumulation of profits, even in the
absence of strategies of lobbying threats of flagging-out. This concerns a power to constrain.
By the same token, the labour contract also ensures their power to command employees in
the work-place. This, then, refers to the capitalists and executives power over workers and
middle-class employees. More generally, the accumulation of pecuniary resources make for a
broader type of social power, in that money (not as capital in the strict sense) can be
«invested» in housing, educational careers for offspring, put to work in political campaigns
etc. Power over capital, the associated political power, and the power over employees refer to
quite specific forms of capitalist power.
This is put in rather sketchy terms and in no way constitute a full-fledged formulation of
what class power is. I outline this simply to clarify the types of power which I think ECT
rightly draws attention to, and which «Bourdieusian» class theory seems at a risk to lose from
sight.
2.4 Pierre Bourdieu on class
The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu is multifaceted and deals with a broad range of
empirical issues. A concern with questions of inequality and power, often under the rubric of
class, is however a common theme: «… the scientific function of sociology is to understand
the social world, starting with the structures of power» (Bourdieu 1993c:14).
The most famous concept couched by Bourdieu is, of course, cultural capital, in some
later texts redubbed information capital. In studies of educational inequality, Bourdieu and his
colleagues applied the concept to help explain how the offspring of the bourgeoisie fared
better than the sons and daughters of farmers in the education system. The concept was coined
to capture the familiarity with legitimate culture displayed by the descendants of the upper
classes through manners of speaking and dressing, as well as substantive cultural knowledge.
Through having grown up in the bourgeoisie world, the students had a «natural» mastery of
these relatively rare cultural competences. Though unintended, this was tacitly recognised by
teachers, who willy-nilly rewarded these signs of distinctions with better grades and
evaluations. Through this process of «misrecognition», the school system contributes to the
reproduction of the distribution of cultural capital, and as Bourdieu puts it in his foreword to
31
the second English edition, by transmitting «cultural capital across generations and to stamp
pre-existing differences in inherited cultural capital with a meritocratic seal of academic
consecration by virtue of the special symbolic potency of the title (credential)» (Bourdieu and
Passeron 1990:ix-x).
With Distinction, cultural capital takes on an even more important role in his work. In that
book, it becomes a core building block of his conceptualisation of social class. In that very
rich and subtle analysis of the relationship between class and culture, a novel model of the
class or stratification structure is advanced. With the concept of social space, Bourdieu
constructs a model of the class structure as shaped by the distribution of, and relation between,
key forms of capital. In social space, the geometric distance in the map reflects social distance
– that is to say, different endowments with capital and the associated difference in life-style.
His portrayal of the class structure of France of the 1960s is three-dimensional: Classes are
firstly delineated by the overall volume of capital – that is, the amount of scarce «marketable»
resources that agents possess. Secondly, classes are fractioned by capital composition, that is,
the relative weight of cultural and economic capital in their overall holdings. Thirdly, a last
cross-cutting division is trajectory, that is, changes over time in the volume and composition
of capitals of individuals and/or groups (Bourdieu 1984:114-143).
The social space, then, is a way to model the distribution of capitals, and this serves to
give a snapshot of the relations of power between social classes at a given point in time. To be
that, its constituent elements – the forms of capital – must represent the key forms of power
that is effective in the context being studied. In the case of the social space of classes in globo,
this would refer to forms of power of more general currency (as opposed to the more field-
specific forms, discussed below). The social space is a relational structure of difference and
similarity, objectifying the distribution of capitals. It is worth emphasising the relational
aspect of this: The social space captures relations of strength or power, domination and
subordination. Any position in social space is only meaningful in a relational sense: «High
volumes» of capital are only understandable in relation to low volumes; just as «cultural
capital» gains its meaning and efficacy by its relationship to economic capital. Individuals’
placements are also strictly relational: there is no inherent, substantial meaning ascribed to
residing in any sector of the space – each position is understandable in relation to the position
of others. This is a point of extraordinary importance in understanding Bourdieu’s analysis,
especially as it relates to life-styles, because the difference between life-style items only
32
makes sense in their interrelationships. The interpretation of the «classed» nature of the taste
for Warhol and Tel Quel owes everything to its opposition to having large art collections and
membership of automobile clubs, as well as to a distinctive taste for bacon and public dances
(Bourdieu 1984:128-9).
Since the concept of capital plays such an important role in Bourdieu’s work, and
especially in the use I put it to in this thesis, it is worth spelling out certain key aspects of it. In
its most general sense, anything can be a capital – given that three special conditions are met:
Relative scarcity, unequal distribution and the presence of a relevant «market», that is to say,
a field. In an interview included in La sociologie est un sport de combat (Carles 2001 06:10-
18:15), Bourdieu illustrates this with the capacity to speak «proper French», a core part of
cultural capital. The accent-free, «proper» French is not spoken by everyone, and is hence in
short supply. Moreover, the mastery of that particular linguistic competence is unequally
distributed, concentrated among the native, the Parisians and the generally well-off (these
traits are not directly specified in the interview, but implied). This goes from being a scarce
and unequally distributed competence to being capital once it encounters a field which in it is
valued and can be «invested». Bourdieu draws attention to the field of education: the
«improper» French of newly arrived immigrants is «worthless on the ‘school market’». If you
speak that kind of language, you will earn a straight F».
This helps elucidate his application of «capital» in general. Economic capital refers to all
sorts of monetary resources or anything that can rather easily be converted into money (such
as property, houses, cars, stocks, etc.). This quite obviously meets the conditions specified
above: it is scarce, it is unequally distributed and it provides purchasing power. The embodied
form of cultural capital – dispositions of the body and mind to speak, act and think in certain
ways – operate directly analogous to «proper French», which is a case of it. In the cliché
example, a familiarity with high-brow culture can be a capital since not everyone has it and it
is (tacitly) valued in schools. That implies if that the oft-repeated claim of the declining
significance of high-brow culture is correct, this does not mean the end of cultural capital as
such, but simply the demise of high-brow culture as capital. Educational credentials become
institutionalised cultural capital insofar as they remain in short supply and are recognised in
relevant labour markets, giving access to specific jobs and/or special remuneration. Similarly,
social capital – durable, more or less formal ties, friendships, acquaintances, connections – is
33
valuable by virtue of being rare and since it can be put to use in a range of contexts, as a
channel of information and opportunities (Bourdieu 1986).
Importantly for the explanatory purposes, one form of capital may be converted into
another. Economic capital can be invested so as to accumulate cultural capital by purchasing
rare cultural objects (the objectified form of cultural capital) or investing in education.
Similarly, institutionalised cultural capital is frequently rather easily converted into economic
capital, through the process mentioned above. That is basically the heart of what Bourdieu
refers to as strategies of conversion (Bourdieu 1984:125-41), whereby power can be attained
by creative conversions between the forms, so that, for instance, wealthy business owners
may invest in their off-spring’s education, which can later be converted into a directorship or
an executive position (Bourdieu 1984:137).
A core point in Distinction is, famously, that a clear correspondence pertains between the
social space and a related, but independent and distinct, space of life-styles. The latter
metaphor applies the same spatial logic to account for, not distributions of capital, but
distributions of items indicating life-style. To each position in social space corresponds a
position in the space of life-styles. This is, in fact, a core point in his understanding of what
class is, since «individuals or groups are objectively defined not only by what they are but by
what they are reputed to be, a ‘being-perceived’ which, even if it closely depends on its being,
is never totally reducible to this» (Bourdieu 1990a:135). That is to say, classes are not simply
defined by their amount and type of capital, but equally by their cultural representation.
Bourdieu puts much emphasis on the point that the relation between the social space and
the space of life-styles, or between class and culture, is one of homology. The precise meaning
of homology is not very clearly spelled out by Bourdieu. What he seems to have in mind is
this: «the spaces defined by preferences in food, clothing or cosmetics are organised
according to the same fundamental structure, that of the social space determined by volume
and composition of capital» (Bourdieu 1984:208).
Since the homology argument is important for Bourdieu, and I draw upon it in the
«Politics…» paper, it is useful to try and tease out more precisely what it means. The claim is
properly understood as pertaining to the relationship between two distinct structures – social
and symbolic – and one cannot «reduce the homologies between systems of differences to
direct, mechanical relationships between groups and properties». This means that it is not
34
being proposed that one can statistically predict one individual’s taste in cosmetics based on
knowledge about one’s social origin. That would suggest a rather mechanic model of social
determination, even if rendered in probabilistic term. Homology means that the space of
positions and the space of position-takings (life-styles) are structured along the same lines.18
In explaining this, Bourdieu uses formulations and ways of presenting his argument that
nevertheless gives it a somewhat determinist ring, as when he writes that «the two major
organising principles of the social space govern the structure and modifications of the space
of cultural consumption, and, more generally, the whole universe of life-styles» (Bourdieu
1984:176, my italics). He explains this by showing that the principal oppositions in life-styles
reflect distance or proximity to necessity. By consistently prioritising form over function or
substance, distance to necessity is manifested in taking up «practices designated by their rarity
as distinguished». This distance is, for Bourdieu, in a sense expresses the material distance to
necessity facilitated by high overall volume of capital. The opposite is «practices socially
identified as vulgar because they are both easy and common», prioritising function over form
– hearty meals, catchy tunes, entertaining movies – is characteristic of low volumes of capital.
These oppositions are «specified according to capital composition», but the difference in
tastes between the economic capital fractions and cultural capital fractions are «variants of the
same fundamental relationship to necessity and to those who remain subject to it» (Bourdieu
1984:176).
How more precisely does this become the case? Bourdieu proposes that the
correspondence between social position and life-styles comes about through the conditioning
of the habitus – «systems of generative schemes applicable, by simple transfer, to the most
varied areas of practice». Habitus reflects the conditions in which it was produced, so agents
under similar conditions will produce similar practices (Bourdieu 1984:170). This is summed
up in a much cited figure in Distinction, reproduced below (figure 1).
Hence, Bourdieu suggests that between these two spaces lies a third space of habitus, of
the generative formulae «which underlie each of the classes of practices and properties»
(Bourdieu 1984: 126)19
. That is to say, the space of habitus then refers to the distribution of
differential modes of perceiving, classifying, thinking and acting. Through this space of
18
In the «Politics…» paper, I follow Lennart Rosenlund’s (2009) interpretation of this, taking the implication to
be that the different structures – social space and space of life-styles, or of political opinions in my case – should
be constructed independently of each other, and then compared. 19
These formulations are drawn from the «Politics…» paper.
35
habitus, the economic and social conditions of existence become mediated into life-styles.
These mediations imply that the overall «fit» between the space of conditions of existence and
the space of life-styles is somewhat loose.
On a superficial reading, the scheme gives the impression of a rather immediate and
instantaneous reflection of current social position in life-styles. However, the conditions of
existence that shape the habitus must necessarily to some considerable extent pertain to the
conditions of social origin: a core point of the idea of class habitus is that social class
background shapes mental structures from early on, which was, of course, the central premise
of Bourdieu’s interventions in the sociology of education. Peoples’ habitus are of course not
fully shaped by their current conditions of existence. Indeed, this is strongly emphasised by
Bourdieu in The Logic of Practice: «The habitus, a product of history, produces individual
and collective practices – more history – in accordance with the schemes generated by
history» (Bourdieu 1990a:54). This is what is accounted for by the often overlooked third
dimension of social space – social trajectory. As can be grasped from the correspondence
analysis maps, the effects of social origin – the second dimension of inherited capital, or
trajectory – appear fully independent of the capital composition principle, so that there are
distinct differences of taste by the composition of capital and distinct differences by «class
seniority» (Bourdieu 1984:262).
36
Figure 1: Conditions of existence, habitus and life-style (Bourdieu 1984:171)
The concept of habitus, then, fills a very central role in Bourdieu’s work. Much of the
explanatory power of his theory rests on the social processes whereby the habitus is shaped
and whereby it is effective. In a much quoted passage in Outline of a theory of practice,
Bourdieu offers a characteristically dense and difficult, but highly accurate, description:
The structures constitutive of a particular type of environment (e.g. the material conditions of existence
characteristic of a class condition) produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions,
structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the
generation and structuring of practices and representations which can be objectively «regulated» and
«regular» without in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their goals
without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary to
attain them and, being all this, collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating
action of a conductor (Bourdieu 1977:72).
I suspect that the simple fact that these 106 words make up one single sentence – and that
this is in no way unrepresentative of his style of writing – goes some way in accounting for
the frequent misunderstandings surrounding the views of Bourdieu. For instance, a leading
exponent of so-called «analytical sociology» lambasts a basically identical paragraph
(Bourdieu 1990a:53) for being «ambiguous», «like mental clouds that mystify rather than
clarify», being «clearly unsatisfactory», lacking «clarity and precision», being unclear about
37
«what habitus actually refers to» and so on (Hedström 2005:4).20.
While there is no denying
the density and complexity of the paragraph cited above, it is both clear and precise. Let us
flesh out the constituent parts of the description:
1. Particular class conditions (fundamental conditions of existence) produce habitus.
That is to say, the experience of particular endowment with resources and
opportunities – in the context of their unequal distribution – produces distinct
2. systems of durable, transposable dispositions. Disposition thus refer to predispositions,
tendencies, propensities or inclinations21
towards particular ways of perceiving,
thinking and acting. Dispositions are interrelated in a system.
3. These systems of dispositions are structured structures. This sums up what has just
been said. The habitus refers to a system of dispositions, a structure, which is the
product of conditions of existence, or social structures. That is to say, the habitus
refers to embodied or mental structures that are shaped by their surroundings, i.e.
structured by the social structures.
4. Habitus functions as a structuring structure, principles of the generation of practices
and representations. The embodied or mental structures provide the dispositions that
shape social action. Actors draw on these structures in their practices and
representations, and in the «decoding» or interpretation of the practices and
representations offered by others. Hence, social action – practices and representations
– are structured by the habitus.
5. The practices produced by the habitus display regularity, precisely because they are
produced by it. This refer to the fact that any individuals views, statements and actions
are likely to display a certain «family resemblance», owing to traits, characteristics
and the personality specific to that individual – as opposed to the following of rules. In
an illuminating example, Bourdieu likens this to handwriting: «a singular way of
tracing letters which always produces the same writing, i.e. graphic forms which, in
spite of all the differences of size, material or colour due to the surface (paper or
blackboard) or the instruments (pen or chalk) – in spite. Therefore, of all the different
20
The meaning of the sentence is, however, clearly not entirely lost on that professor, as in the midst of these
putative insults, he is seemingly able to offer a semi-precise interpretation: «It seems as if Bourdieu is trying to
say that individuals often behave in habitual ways without consciously reflecting upon what they are doing, and
that individuals who occupy similar positions in some abstractly defined social space tend to behave in similar
ways; but I must admit that I am not entirely sure whether this interpretation is correct». It is, however, broadly
correct, even if it does not sum up the entire passage. 21
These specifications of the concept of disposition are named in an endnote (Bourdieu 1977:214, n 1) following
«disposition» in the paragraph cited above.
38
uses of muscles – present an immediately perceptible family resemblance, like all the
features of a style or manner whereby a painter or writer can be recognised as
infallibly as a man by his walk» (Bourdieu 1984:173).
6. In contexts and relations not too dissimilar from its formation, the habitus equips
actors with dispositions that are relatively well attuned to the relevant exigencies. In
this case, actors are like «fish in water», equipped with embodied and sub-reflexive
dispositions fitted to one’s social conditions. This allows acting adequately with little
reflexive strain, in a quasi-automatic fashion, thus allowing one to act in ways
conducive to achieving particular goals without aiming at them, or even expressing
any mastery of the relevant skills and knowledge. This particular feature is
exceptionally central to the concept of habitus, pointing to the fact that the dispositions
and competences in the habitus are primarily of a practical nature. This does not rule
out explicit, reflexive and discursive deliberation, but points to the tacit mastery of the
social world embedded in what Giddens refers to as practical consciousness: «For
action to be purposive, agents do not have to be capable of formulating the knowledge
they apply as an abstract proposition» (Giddens 1976:83, my italics).
7. As habitus is constituted by conditions of existence, it follows that similar conditions
of existence would produce similar habitus. It is this that would amount to «class
habitus», owing to its classed context of constitution. (It is important to note that class
habitus is distinct from the concept of individual habitus: few persons experience
exactly identical conditions of existence. One individual’s habitus will reflect the
conditions of existence faced by that individual, while class habitus would refer to the
elements of habitus common to a class of individuals, produced by what is common in
the conditions of existence of people considered to belong to, or originate in, the same
or a similar class). When this is added to what is said in points 1-6, it emerges how it
is that practices and representations can be «collectively orchestrated without being
the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor».
The habitus, then, is a core conceptual explanatory tool in the argument of homology. It
posits that through actors creative application of dispositions acquired through classed
conditionings, systematic differences in life-styles and position-takings arise that follow the
same lines as the social divisions that create classes and class fractions. Clear patterns are
found in life-styles, because clear patterns are found in the habitus, the generative principle of
these life-styles. As Bourdieu expresses it, systematicity «is found in the opus operatum
39
because it is in the modus operandi» (Bourdieu 1984:173). And these systematic patterns in
the modus operandi are found because of the systematic patterns found in the conditions
producing the habitus, i.e. pre-existing opus operatum. The structure of the social world
shapes the mental and embodied structures of the habitus, and the habitus shapes the style of
life.
This dialectic between object and subject, society and actor, outside and inside, is central
to Bourdieu’s approach. On this account, there is no starting-point or ultimate foundation for
social analysis in either the individual or the collective, or the actor or the structure. What is
implied is that the mutually co-constitutive relations that exist between them are the true stuff
of social analysis. This constitutes the broad contours of Bourdieu’s tackling of the oft-cited
challenge posed by Marx in that famous dictum from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte: «Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not
make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given
and transmitted from the past» (Marx 1954:15). At this general level, Bourdieu seems to posit
what Giddens has famously called a duality of structure and agency (Giddens 1984). 22
22
I have on more than one occasion drawn parallels between the views of Bourdieu and Giddens, and more will
follow. This might seem odd, given the latter’s extremely dismissive attitude towards the former: After
condemning Giddens as a prototype of the «communication consultant to the prince» under neoliberalism,
structuration theory is called a «a scholastic synthesis of various sociological and philosophical traditions
decisively wrenched out of their context and thus ideally suited to the task of academicized sociodicy» (Bourdieu
and Wacquant 2001:5). This was a serious sharpening of tone as compared to Wacquant’s earlier comment on
structuration theory, which was content in emphasising its theoretical nature as the chief difference between the
Brit and the Frenchman’s work (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:3, n. 3). Wacquant goes on to note that
Bourdieu’s theory of practice predates Giddens’ structuration theory by at least ten years, which may be taken as
implying that one is in some sense a copy of the other.
Giddens’ attitude towards Bourdieu seems considerably friendlier. However, nowhere does he enter into any sort
of extensive engagement with Bourdieu’s work. This is in itself remarkable: Giddens is commended even by his
most hostile critics for his wide engagement with profiles and theories in social science (Loyal 2003:174), but he
manifestly failed to ever discuss the approach of another sociologist whose approach quite obviously resembled
his own. But the places where Giddens does refer to or mention Bourdieu, it is in a positive way (Giddens
1979:216; 1981b:161; 1984:133;1991:82) – except for his reserved attitude towards the concept of «symbolic
violence» (Giddens 1994:231).
Moreover, in reviewing Distinction, Giddens claimed that Bourdieu had done more than any other living author
to bridge the gap between objectivism and subjectivism (Giddens 1986:300-1). This would seem to be a rather
big concession, given that his own entire production from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s was devoted to just
that task. In a retrospective mode, Giddens indeed seemed to consider Bourdieu’s views and structuration theory
as, for all practical purposes, similar: «We can’t make any sense of social life without something like the view
that I am taking. I don’t see what the alternative is. I can see failed alternatives, as it were, like Durkheim and
social facts, or even the methodology of neo-classical economics. People might not like the concepts I use, and
may prefer say a version by Bourdieu or somebody else, but that is just what social life is like. It is continually
contingently reproduced by knowledgeable human agents – that’s what gives it fixity and that’s what also
produces change» (Giddens and Pierson 1998:90, my emphasis).
I would concur with Giddens judgment on this issue: structuration theory is broadly similar to and compatible
with the main aspects of Bourdieu’s structural-constructivist theory of practice. They are, however, strikingly
different in emphasis: Giddens work is a wholly theoretical and a conceptual critical synthesis of a broad range
40
People do not, of course, relate to the social world in globo in an unmediated fashion23
.
The concept of field is of central importance to Bourdieu. It is clearly related to that of social
space, and employs the same spatial analogy, but also involves a certain (limited) analogy
with magnetic or force fields, in that the force(s) of the field affects any element (agents or
institutions) that operate within it. Sometimes Bourdieu speaks of the broader «field of
classes» as equivalent to social space (1984: 345) but his most distinctive application is
related to a recognition of the central importance of social differentiation. Thus, field is used
to denote more or less autonomous microcosms of social practice, like the field of literary
production or the scientific field. Within these fields, particular forms of capital are
established (for example, a set of competences and resources may come to count as literary
capital), and there are also established (tacit) rules on how these capitals are to be
accumulated and invested. The field is thus a field of forces – you can only partake in the
practice going on within the field if you abide by these rules, accumulate these resources and
invest them in accepted ways. It is also is a field of struggle – for positions within the internal
hierarchy of the field, but also a struggle over these rules and resources. A central implication
is that the field is governed by rules and forms of capital that are to some extent restricted to it,
that are not (as) valid outside of it (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 94-115).
As with the notion of social space, fields are also conceptualised strictly as relational
structures. Fields are, for Bourdieu, «structured spaces of positions (or posts) whose
properties depend on their position within these spaces». «The structure of the field is a state
of the power relations among the agents or institutions engaged in the struggle […] about the
monopoly of the legitimate violence (specific authority) which is characteristic of the field in
question, which means, ultimately, the specific capital» (Bourdieu 1993d:72-73). Note that
Bourdieu’s notion of relations here often concerns structures of objective relations, and not
interpersonal relationships (Bottero 2009), as will be discussed more in the next chapter.
of other theoretical approaches, constructed as a social ontology. Bourdieu’s work is resolutely empirical and
addressed to problems of actual empirical research. That is to say, Bourdieu’s theoretical work is constructed
more epistemologically (Broady 1990), concerned with how we can study the objective and subjective
dimensions of social life in their dialectical relationship.
In line with this judgement, Rob Stones has integrated many of Bourdieu’s ideas into his reworked program of
«strong structuration theory» (Stones 2005). That there has been so remarkably little cross-fertilisation between
structuration theory and those who follow Bourdieu might seem to stem at least in part from the radically
divergent political orientations taken by Giddens and Bourdieu. Through the 1990s, Bourdieu became an
increasingly central figure on the French left, leading French social democrats to speak of «la gauche
bourdieusienne». Giddens took the opposite path and became a cherished intellectual inspiration for New Labour. 23
The following is based on passages from the «Putting Bourdieu to work…» paper.
41
Bourdieu employed «fields» as a means to grasping the complex relation between
positions and position-takings. Bluntly put, the point is to show how agents’ position-takings
are intelligible in relation to the position they hold within the relevant field. For instance, he
demonstrates that the positions taken by French humanities and social science professors
towards the events of May ’68, could be understood in relation to their relative positions
within the field, and thus the universities (Bourdieu 1988a). For this endeavour, it is of central
importance to grasp the positions of all relevant agents in their relation to the other positions,
conceptualised in terms of a field structured by the distribution of relevant forms of capital
and the strength relations between capitals. «Fields are to be viewed as systems in which each
particular element (institution, organization, group or individual) derives its distinctive
properties from its relationship to all other elements» (Swartz 1997:123).
Agents’ positions in the field thus capture how they’re situated with respect to the
resources and profits of the university world (or other fields). This means also capturing how
the agents are situated with respect to the other agents engaged in the same field. This, then,
lays a basis for the strategies agents adopt in the various struggles within the field, such as
those brought about by the upheavals of May ’68. The position-takings of the professors
varied systematically with their positions within the field: the holders of specifically academic
capital and/or tenured positions more often took conservative positions. Conversely, those
with weaker positions in the field were less inclined to take positions in favour of the status
quo (Bourdieu 1988:77-84). Similar patterns emerge in other of his field analyses: The
dominant tends towards orthodox positions, whereas the subordinate more often take the
heterodox positions (Swartz 1997:124).
The most general aspects of Bourdieu’s sociology can be described in terms of the
interrelationship of field, capital and habitus. Fields – either in the sense of the global social
space or a more delimited microcosm – constitute the context in which people act - employ
their capitals by the accomplished use of dispositions and competences in the habitus.
Capitals, accumulated social energy, are the means whereby which action can be effected –
goods purchased, school grades achieved, jobs obtained, etc. Habitus, the armoury of
dispositions, competences and world-views, is not simply required by any actor engaging in
the field, but is what gives any field meaning, through the sense of illusio – the sense that the
«games» in the field are worth playing (Bourdieu 1998:76-79). To take an example rather
close at hand, the field of scientific production and consumption is wholly dependent on the
42
presence and participation of actors who are willing to «invest» and engage in it. Of course,
not falling into subjectivism, it is equally true that there could be no such will in the absence
of a field.
These summary comments indicate the tight interdependence of these concepts – the
aspects of the social world that they point to. In fact, these concepts themselves make no
sense alone: For example, the embodied form of cultural capital is made up of «long-lasting
dispositions of the mind and body» (Bourdieu 1986:47), that is to say, embodied cultural
capital exist in the habitus, and these particular dispositions can only function as a capital
within fields where they are recognised as distinct and valuable. As evident from its origin,
cultural capital’s prime field is that of education.
It is misleading, therefore, to consider habitus to be Bourdieu’s «theory of action», as is
suggested, for example, by the title of the chapter on habitus in David Swartz’ excellent
account of Bourdieu’s work – «Habitus: A cultural theory of action» (Swartz 1997). For
Bourdieu, action is most properly conceived of as practice, implying both the practical, as
opposed to discursive, nature of it, and – it seems to me – the same thing as Giddens
highlights: «To speak of human social activity as Praxis is to reject every conception of
human beings as ‘determined objects’ or as unambiguously ‘free subjects’. All human action
is carried on by knowledgeable agents who both construct the social world through their
action, but yet whose action is also conditioned or constrained by the very world of their
creation» (Giddens 1981b:53-4). Practice, for Bourdieu, arises in in the intersection of habitus,
field and capitals, somewhat confusingly expressed in a formula: «[(habitus) (capital)] + field
= practice» (Bourdieu 1984:101).24
The social space approach to social differentiation and divisions is taken up in Bourdieu’s
other major works as well. These illustrate the necessary of identifying the types of power that
are effective within the more delimited microcosms of social life. In Homo Academicus,
Bourdieu analyses internal differentiation of the French university field, by studying the
distribution of the various forms of capital that are effective in that world. This is done by
correspondence analysis using indicators like fathers’ occupation, number of children, own
24
Swartz in fact recognises this, and rightly comments on the weirdness of that formula: «Unfortunately, the
formula confuses more than it clarifies the exact relationship among the terms. Are habitus and capital
interactive terms whereas field is additive? Or does the formula simply recommend that every empirical inquiry
take into account all of these factors?» (Swartz 1997:141, n.50). It seems more likely that the latter is the case,
but if so, why is it expressed in a seemingly precise mathematical formula if its specific interpretation is not what
Bourdieu had in mind?
43
educational credentials, publication record, directorships, various teaching experiences, place
of higher education, awards, translations, television appearances, mentions in Who’s who. In
place of the three dimensions of the global social space, this produces three dimensions of
differentiation: 1) full university power vs. other forms of power/prestige, 2) tenured teachers
vs. younger teachers without institutional recognition, and 3) main university Establishment
vs. «more obscure specialists» (Bourdieu 1988a:271-6).
Similarly, the analysis of corporate heads undertaken in the broader analysis of the field
of power in The State Nobility uses, among others, place of birth, number of children, place of
residence, fathers’ occupation, the length of time the family had been in the business world,
schooling, attending on of the top Parisian lycées, number of higher education diploma, board
memberships, career trajectory (public or private) etc., as indicators of the different forms of
capital effective in the field. This produces a first opposition between public and private
sector, and a second opposition between «old and new» (Bourdieu 1996:340, 301-2). In all
three analyses, then, the trajectory dimension is in evidence, as is some form of opposition by
«form of capital»: cultural vs. economic in the global social space; strictly academic vs.
power drawn from the «outside world» in the university; and public vs. private business
among the corporate heads.
The presentation outlined above centred on the aspects of Bourdieus’ work that I draw
most explicitly on in the thesis. It should be noted, however, that what is perhaps the strongest
element of how Bourdieu deals with social class is his insistence on the need to systematically
connect the structural and constructivist analysis. The social world cannot be reduced to either
its objective structural aspects, nor to the social constructions, interpretations and
symbolically meaningful actions. Accordingly, sociology cannot restrict itself to a «social
physics» of the laws and regularities that seemingly operate behind the backs of actors, nor to
a «social semiology» or hermeneutics, which concerns itself only with interpreting actors’
interpretations of the social world.
In short, social science does not have to choose between that form of social physics, represented by
Durkheim […] and the idealist semiology which, undertaking to construct ‘an account of accounts’, as
Harold Garfinkel puts it, can do no more than record the recordings of a social world which is
ultimately no more than the product of mental, i.e., linguistic, structures. What we have to do is to bring
into the science of scarcity, and of competition for scarce goods, the practical knowledge which the
agents obtain for themselves by producing — on the basis of their experience of the distributions, itself
dependent on their position in the distributions — divisions and classifications which are no less
objective than those of the balance-sheets of social physics. In other words, we have to move beyond
the opposition between objectivist theories which identify the social classes (but also the sex or age
classes) with discrete groups, simple countable populations separated by boundaries objectively drawn
44
in reality, and subjectivist (or marginalist) theories which reduce the ‘social order’ to a sort of collective
classification obtained by aggregating the individual classifications or, more precisely, the individual
strategies, classified and classifying, through which agents class themselves and others (Bourdieu
1984:483).
2.4.1 Bourdieu, Marx, Weber
How does this view of social class compare to those of Marxists and Weberians? That is a
complex question which inevitably produces a complex answer. Bourdieu’s thinking of social
class does not represent a distinct sphere of his thought: in a sense, all of his work is
concerned with class. Furthermore, Bourdieu was «not a class theorist in the way that his
Anglo-American counterparts were» (Savage et al. 2005:42). We do not find the type of
theoretical determination of what class refers to, like we find in Wright, Goldthorpe and many
others. Bourdieu quite explicitly refused aligning himself with any single classical tradition in
sociology:
whether or not to be a Marxist or a Weberian is a religious alternative, not a scientific one. In fact, one
may -- and should -- use Weber against Weber to go beyond Weber. In the same way, one should follow
Marx's advice when he said "I am not a Marxist" and be an anti-Marxist Marxist. One may think with
Weber or Durkheim, or both, against Marx to go beyond Marx and, sometimes, to do what Marx could
have done, in his own logic. Each thinker offers the means to transcend the limitations of the others
(Bourdieu 1988b:780)
This has in no way prevented classifications and dismissals of Bourdieu for being either a
Marxist or a Weberian (Weininger 2002:49-50). French structuralist-Marxist Nicos
Poulantzas derided Bourdieu for his «impenitent Weberianism» (1975:178), while Jeffrey
Alexander called Bourdieu «the most impressing living embodiment of a neo-Marxist»
tradition, claiming that Bourdieu, «like Habermas, has sought heroically to reconstruct
historical materialism (Alexander 1995:128-9). However, Bourdieu is lambasted as a
«bourgeois social scientist» offering a Weberian «liberal theory in disguise» by Rachel Sharp
(1980:66-76), which in a certain sense seems in line with Brubaker (1985), who approvingly
portrays Bourdieu’s work as basically neo-Weberian. Furthermore, Tom Bottomore opts for a
more favourable reading from a Marxist perspective in his preface to Reproduction (Bourdieu
and Passeron 1990), and Bridget Fowler (2011) argues in a friendly vein that Bourdieu is an
«unorthodox Marxist». And still in a sympathetic tone, Jacques Bidet argues that Bourdieu is
indeed quite removed from «historical materialism», but that his perspective is an important
corrective to that tradition (Bidet 2008).
The assessment of the Marxists Poulantzas, Sharp and Bidet is certainly correct, in so far
as Bourdieu did not account of classes, class conflict, class power and its reproduction with
45
reference to «the dynamics of capitalist accumulation» (Sharp 1980:73). It is also correct, as
Alexander notes that Bourdieu does seek to effect a materialist radicalisation of Weber’s
concepts. However, Alexander acknowledges but quite explicitly ignores Bourdieu’s repeated
attacks on Marxism, trying instead to argue that the very «marrow of [Bourdieu’s] social
science» is penetrated by Marxism (Alexander 1995:128). Wacquant’s succinct examination
of the classical inheritance in Bourdieu’s reframing class shows, however, that it does not
neatly fit into any of the established traditions, even if it shows clear affinities with many of
them (Wacquant 2013), as can be seen in his sociology more generally (Swartz 1997:28-48)
Accordingly, I hold that Bourdieu’s analysis of class, like his sociology in general, cannot
be equated with – that is to say, reduced to – an exemplar of any of the established traditions
of classical sociology. In the following, I will focus very narrowly on how Bourdieu’s views
on social class, as laid out above, compares to Marxian and Weberian class analysis. Two
issues are dealt with: The first concerns exactly what Bourdieu means by class, and how this
compares with how Marxists and Weberians usually understand that term. The second
concerns more precisely how Bourdieu effects his oft-cited ambition to rethink the
relationship between class and Stand.
The most obvious point about Bourdieu’s use of «class» is that he applies it in a fairly
encompassing way, including more elements in it than do Marxists and Weberians (at least
usually). The analysis of social class is based in the analysis of social space, understood as a
«field of social classes». As described above, the structure of the social space is the
distribution of the different forms of capital, and the relations of strength and of convertibility
that exist between them. In addition to capitals, and again opposed to the views of most other
analysts of class, «secondary differences» are also part and parcel of what makes a class – and,
as mentioned, so is the particular style of life of the class. Witness this «maximalist»
definition:
Social class is not defined by a property (not even the most determinant one, such as the volume and
composition of capital) nor by a collection of properties (of sex, age, social origin, ethnic origin—
proportion of blacks and whites, for example. or natives and immigrants—income, educational level
etc.), nor even by a chain of properties strung out from a fundamental property (position in the relations
of production) in a relation of cause and effect, conditioner and conditioned; but by the structure of
relations between all the pertinent proper-ties which gives its specific value to each of them and to the
effects they exert on practices. Constructing, as we have here, classes as homogeneous as possible with
respect to the fundamental determinants of the material conditions of existence and the conditionings
they impose, therefore means that even in constructing the classes and in interpreting the variations of
the distribution of properties and practices in relation to these classes, one consciously takes into
account the network of secondary characteristics which are more or less unconsciously manipulated
46
whenever the classes are defined in terms of a single criterion, even one as pertinent as occupation.
(Bourdieu 1984:106, emphasis added).
Several comments must be made here, under the provision of the uncertainty surrounding
extrapolative interpretation. Firstly, it is worth noting that Bourdieu considers the fundamental
property of a class to be its position in the relations of production, thereby coming into close
connection with Marxism. The «chain of properties strung out from» it would probably mean
things like occupation, work autonomy, participation in decisions in the work-place or other
factors associated with property relations and the organisation of the production process (see
also below). These are the types of properties often drawn upon in the empirical
operationalisation of class (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1993; Wright 1997; Leiulfsrud et al.
2005). Hence, it would seem reasonably to say that Bourdieu accepts property relations as the
fundamentals of social class. This is superficially bolstered by his assertion that the
«’objective’ truth» of class is relations of exploitation (Bourdieu 1990a:136). However,
inspecting his application of the term «exploitation» indicates that he is not thinking of
exploitation in the strict Marxist sense, but in a more everyday sense. As will be recalled,
other non-Marxist analysts of class have also opted for an expanded and looser conception of
exploitation.
Secondly, Bourdieu points to the dimensions of the social space – the volume and
composition of capital – as the most determinant property of class. This seems to be his own
operationalisation of class, and given the choice of the word «most determinant property»,
this seems to imply that, for him, it would be the most unambiguous way of identifying social
classes. Hence, aspects of the distribution of resources, as opposed to productive relations, are
seen as the most determinant property of class. According to the discussion above, this brings
him closer to Weberian class analysis, but – significantly – with a considerable extension of
what should be included in the distribution. This, of course, points further to his emphasis on
the relative autonomy of different fields in constituting their own principles of stratification.
(The terminology causes an ambiguity, however, because it is not immediately apparent what
the difference is between a fundamental and a determinant property).
Thirdly, he underlines the relevance to class of a range of other properties: «collection of
properties (of sex, age, social origin, ethnic origin—proportion of blacks and whites, for
example, or natives and immigrants—income, educational level etc. ». This connects with
remarks made other places in Distinction on the need to consider these properties when
understanding class, since all of them take part in constituting the reality of different classes.
47
If one class fraction is, for example, either strongly feminised or «ethnicified», this would be
seen as relevant to any understanding of that class – both in terms its cultural practices and its
capability for reproduction. The proper significance of this point is, I think, that it contrasts
Bourdieu from the very widespread belief in the social sciences that in order to understand the
real «causal effects» of class, it is necessary to control it for all the causal effects of, more or
less, closely connected stratifying factors. Bourdieu seems to advocate the exact opposite – it
is necessary to consider all of these factors in their specific intersection. What Bourdieu refers
to as «secondary properties» – gender, age, ethnicity – have stratifying effects that are only
intelligible relative to the «primary» properties of volume, composition and trajectory of
capital: «This means that a class or class fraction is defined not only by its position in the
relations of production, as identified through indices such as occupation, income or even
educational level, but also by a certain sex-ratio, a certain distribution in geographical space»
(Bourdieu 1984:102):
the volume and composition of capital give specific form and value to the determinations which the
other factors (age, sex, place of residence etc.) impose on practices. Sexual properties are as inseparable
from class properties as the yellowness of a lemon is from its acidity: a class is defined in an essential
respect by the place and value it gives to the two sexes and to their socially constituted dispositions […]
So the true nature of a class or class fraction is expressed in its distribution by sex or age (Bourdieu
1984:107-8).
In sum, then, Bourdieu considers classes as complex structured forms of domination and
inequality. Recognising that, in capitalism, the fundamentals of class relationships lie in the
relations of production, it is nonetheless emphasised that class cannot be severed from the
other forms of domination with which it is intertwined. This does not amount to saying that
no assessment can be made of the relative importance of different factors – Bourdieu most
certainly does that by clearly distinguishing between what he considers primary, pertinent or
determinate properties of class, and its secondary properties which are given the role of
specifying the effects of primary properties. What is argued, however, is that classes cannot
be properly analysed in some form of artificially obtained isolation from the structures of
power within which they are embedded. This calls for a totally different mode of analysis
(and quantification) than that which dominates sociological research, and I will pick up on
this in the next section.
This view of class undoubtedly differ markedly from both Marxist and Weberian views.
Bourdieu’s distance from Marxism is rehearsed in many places in his work. He renounces
Marxist approaches for their economism and determinism (Bourdieu 1985, 1987). The first
48
concerns the tendency to, in some sense, reduce cultural, political and social phenomenon to
economic ones. This is, of course, what is suggested by the notion of «base» and
«superstructure»:
In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relationships that are indispensable and
independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of
their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic
structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which
correspond definite forms of social consciousness (Marx 1859 [2000]:425).
An overriding ambition of Bourdieu’s work was to overcome the «false antinomy»
between so-called objectivism and subjectivism. The fruitlessness of this opposition «is most
visible, and most sterile, in the theory of social classes»:
On the one hand, there are strictly objectivist definitions which, like the economistic strand of Marxism,
seek the principle of class determination in properties that owe nothing to the agents' perception or
action (not to mention those that identify classes as countable populations separated by frontiers traced
in reality). On the other hand, there are subjectivist or nominalist definitions, including Weber's theory
of 'status groups' which privileges the symbolic properties constituting a life-style; empirical analyses
seeking to establish whether and how classes exist in the agents' representations… (Bourdieu
1990a:136).
This connects to the ambition stated in the preface to Distinction, to «rethink Max
Weber’s opposition between class and Stand» (Bourdieu 1984:xii). It is not, however, entirely
clear what this rethinking amounts to. That is to say, it is clear that Bourdieu seeks to connect
the objective and the subjective in the analysis of class, and that he perceives Weber’s
opposition as corresponding to this divide, and therefore wants to rethink what he perceives as
Weber’s posited opposition between the two. However, even if based on an endeavour to
rethink Weber’s opposition, there is precious little attention given to that opposition, to
interpretation of how Weber envisioned the relationship between class and Stand, and no
explicit discussion of Weber’s ideas in Distinction. In fact, that second page of the book just
cited contains the only mention of «Stand».
Bourdieu’s explicit discussion of class and Stand is found in a much earlier piece
(Bourdieu 1966), where he specifies how he appropriates and reformulates these concepts. It
is worth noting his interpretation of the Weber on the relationship between class and Stand:
everything seems to indicate that Weber opposes class and status group as two types of real unities
which would come together more or less frequently according to the type of society…; [however,] to
give Weberian analyses all of their force and impact, it is necessary to see them instead as nominal
unities…which are always the result of a choice to accent the economic aspect or the symbolic aspect—
aspects which always coexist in the same reality…. (Bourdieu 1966:212-13, cited in Weininger 2005:84,
with his additions and modified emphasis)
49
Bourdieu proposes therefore to not think of classes and Stände as two different types of
groups, but as two different aspects of stratification – the social/economic and the
symbolic/cultural.25
Slightly confusingly, he uses «class condition» to refer to socioeconomic
conditions of existence (a la Weber’s class), and «class position» to refer to symbolic
distinctions emerging from oppositions and affinities among classes. Class positions, or the
Standish traits, are, according to Swartz, a sort of symbolisation of class condition, i.e. of
class in the strict sense (Swartz 1997:150-1).
This leads into the following interpretation, offered by Swartz and picked up by others:
This reformulation of the relationship between social class and status permits Bourdieu to integrate
culture, taste and lifestyle indicators into a social-class framework. It marks his distance from Marxist
class analysis by conceptualizing culture as a constituent feature of social class and by identifying status
as a source of false consciousness. Bourdieu offers a class-symbolization model of status where cultural
differences serve as markers of class-differences. Class differences find expression in status distinctions
that rank individuals and groups on scales of social honorability rather than in terms of economic
interest alone (Swartz 1997:151).
In Bourdieu’s own words: «’Status groups’ based on a ‘life-style’ and a ‘stylization of life’
are not, as Weber thought, a different kind of group from classes, but dominant classes that
have denied or, so to speak, sublimated themselves and so legitimated themselves»
(1990a:139). This would seem to bring Bourdieu into a very similar position to that taken up
by Therborn, who equates status with mere ideology (Therborn 1978:142).
Regrettably, Swartz’ formulation that «cultural differences serve as markers of class-
differences» is sloppy. How can culture be a constituent feature of class (cultural capital) and
at the same time a symbolisation of class (life-style, status)? This can be clarified by pointing
out that cultural capital in its embodied form do not refer to life-style as such, but to the
dispositions embodied in actors which facilitate the style of life. The expression of Stand in
life-style is however found in the instantiation of these dispositions in practice. Because the
dispositions are invisible to everyday observers and the practices may be conspicuous, the
latter masks the former. The embodied cultural capital is «external wealth converted into an
integral part of the person, into a habitus» (Bourdieu 1986:48). Exclusive life-styles therefore
function as Stand honour – symbolic capital, in Bourdieu’s terms – when it is not recognised
that the very practice of that life-style presupposes embodied cultural capital, and hence
25
It should be noted that it is dubious whether this interpretation of Weber is justified. Neo-Weberians seem split
on the issue: Parkin (1978) suggests that status groups are not a distinct dimension of stratification, but instead
cross-cut class divisions. In contrast, Scott (1996) advocates maintaining that they are different dimensions, and
offers an account which clearly considers status groups, or estates, as clearly different types of groups from
classes, even if the empirics of this remains open.
50
ultimately is facilitated by arbitrary privilege. Hence, Stand honour appears as charisma, and
power relations are thereby misrecognised. It is this misrecognition which comes closest to
«false consciousness» – a concept Bourdieu did not use and had fundamental reservations
about (Bourdieu and Eagleton 1992) – and not Stand as such. The specific symbolic efficacy
of life-styles cannot be assigned the «passive» role of false consciousness.
The rethinking of the class and Stand opposition lies in the model of the relationship
between the social space and the space of life-styles. What Bourdieu does is to posit that these
are two clearly distinct phenomena, and he constructs the space of life-styles – the space of
Stände, if you like – and then inspects its relationship to the space of social positions – or, the
space of class situations. Bourdieu argues that these are only partially independent in the real
world: While there is no denying the so-called relative autonomy of the symbolic sphere, it is
causally connected to the socio-economic conditions of existence through the mediating force
of the habitus. However, rather than Stand being determined by class, it is more accurate to
say that it is underdetermined due to its autonomy and the fact that «causal effects» of class
are mediated by different fields and habitus which never amounts to mechanical reproduction.
In Distinction, Bourdieu does interpret differences in life-styles as symbolisations of
differences in socio-economic conditions of existence. This, however, is an empirical claim
about the specific case, even if he most definitely expects to find something similar in other
countries (Bourdieu 1991). That something similar can be found, or not found, in other
countries points us to the crucial distinction between what is an empirical claim and what is a
theoretical and methodological approach. What Bourdieu suggests is that the space of life-
styles and the space of social positions could be constructed independent of each other,
respecting the distinct and partly autonomous nature of the symbolic and the social. Once
these spaces are constructed, their interrelation can be inspected without imposing any
determinations on them through the analytical model. It is unclear if this is, strictly speaking,
what Bourdieu did, that is to say, if this refers to actual research operations which Distinction
reports on. As I return to later, Lennart Rosenlund (2009) seized on this formulation to
investigate the homology between the social and the symbolic by literally constructing each
space in independent operations.
51
Conclusion
In this chapter, I have presented the theoretical perspective of the thesis. The thesis relies
on principally three concepts from Bourdieu – social space, capitals and fields. I have entered
into a presentation of broader aspects of Bourdieu’s work to try to show how these concepts
belong in a broader sociological framework which gives them their specific meaning and
validity. The thesis aims to bring this perspective into a much more explicit and systematic
dialogue with what I would consider the mainstream of theoretically informed class analysis,
which I have referred to as ECT.
This is necessary, I think, because many applications of Bourdieu’s work to stratification
create a considerable distance from this theoretical tradition. At the same time, I have no
bones to pick with the «Bourdieusians» insistence that huge theoretical problems haunt such
conventional class analysis. But much ambiguity is created by the fact that the concept of
class is applied by both camps, but with very divergent meanings. This promotes talking at
cross-purposes.
The first step is therefore to acknowledge this difference, and, crucially I would add, to
recognise a validity and fruitfulness in both. The second step is to address how some form of
systematic theoretical cross-fertilisation can be achieved, and this can therefore be seen as the
main theoretical ambition of the thesis. The third step would be to try to create a conceptually
sound and robust integration of the valid and fruitful points of both camps into what would
hopefully amount to a simultaneously theoretically and empirically more sophisticated study
of the forms of stratification and power that are founded on the generic features of capitalism.
And this, by implication, concerns the ability of class analysis to intervene in and contribute
constructively to the on-going debates about the transformations of modernity and the
question they raise about the contemporary meaning and significance of class.
52
3. Methodological relationism and multiple
correspondence analysis
Two of three papers in this thesis involve quantitative analysis by way of Multiple
Correspondence Analysis (MCA). The remaining paper is wholly concerned with theoretical
discussion and critique. This involves, naturally, two quite different methods. The «Putting
Bourdieu to work…» paper involves exegesis and comparison of conceptualisations of class.
In it, I quote and cite extensively from the authors discussed and strive to be explicit about
how I interpret their views, and on which grounds I find them objectionable. I will not dwell
further on the method applied in that paper.
The quantitative analyses apply a technique of data analysis, which, even if emergent, is
still not widely applied nor understood in sociology. Moreover, the multiple correspondence
analyses presented in this thesis is conducted within a particular methodological framework of
what can, following Bourdieu, be described as relational. In this, my ambition is to follow
Bourdieu in exploiting the «elective affinities» between the relational mode of analysis
implied in the conceptual apparatus, and the relational properties of MCA.
The basic research strategy of the quantitative papers is to analyse internal relations
within classes by modelling them as social spaces. This involves a close interlinking of theory
and method. Theoretically, this is based on an understanding of intra-class relations as
objective relations of power, that is, capital. I use Multiple Correspondence Analysis to
construct these spaces. In this, I exploit a connection between the relational understanding of
power with the relational properties of MCA. This makes MCA particularly suited for
constructing social spaces, and in a way which closely related techniques, like non-linear
principal component analysis, is not.
As some of Bourdieu’s collaborators once remarked, «doing correspondence analyses is
not enough to do ‘analyses à la Bourdieu’» (Rouanet et al. 2000:5). As a technique of data
analysis, correspondence analysis is in no way especially designed for sociological analyses,
and, owing to its flexible properties, can be applied to a wide range of types of data (see for
example the analysis of antelope census data in African wildlife areas in Greenacre and Vrba
1984). Bourdieu innovated a specific mode of applying and interpreting correspondence
analysis, in close collaboration with statisticians. While the principal output from
53
correspondence analyses is geometric spaces, the construction of social spaces in Bourdieu’s
sense is a special way of applying the technique.
In this section, I will discuss the «elective affinity» between the sociology of Bourdieu
and the technique of MCA. I start with a brief discussion of Bourdieu’s reasons for rejecting
the mainstream techniques of regression analysis, which leads to a consideration of why he
chose MCA. This warrants a more direct discussion of the relational nature of his approach
and the relational properties of MCA. In this context, I offer a brief technical introduction of
MCA. After that, I turn to certain issues of research design and strategy, with some attention
to the potential tension between the approach I take and the philosophy of data analysis
associated with correspondence analysis. The chapter concludes with some notes on the
methodological bracketing involved in the papers.
3.1 Bourdieu and quantification
In a paper otherwise rich in rather objectionable points, Breiger makes a remark very
pertinent to the issues discussed below:
Social and cultural analysts well know that issues of theoretical orientation are matters of contention
and worth fighting over. When it comes to quantitative methods, however, we often assume (even while
occasionally being content to condemn such methods out of hand) that styles of quantification are
entirely irrelevant to theoretical and ideological struggles. Such an assumption is not productive.
Interpretation of quantitative methods is inseparable from more usual forms of textual interpretation,
and on occasion interpretation of an author's methods of quantification can deeply enrich our reading
and writing of social and cultural theory (Breiger 2000:109)
An important, but somewhat overlooked, aspect of the work of Bourdieu is how attentive
he is to the issue pointed to by Breiger.26
Bourdieu stressed that statistical techniques were not
neutral tools, but involved a distinct way of viewing the object under study:
various statistical techniques contain implicit social philosophies that need to be made explicit. When
you perform a regression analysis, a path analysis, or a factorial analysis, you need to know what social
philosophy you are bringing in, and more especially what philosophy of causality, action, the mode of
existence of social things, and so on (Bourdieu et al. 1991:254)
These are the types of issues that animated Bourdieu’s rejection of standard approaches
and adoption of MCA. Let us first visit the background for this position.
26
Breiger makes his comment in the context of a discussion of Bourdieu (among others) and in recognition that
this is indeed a core concern of Bourdieu.
54
3.1.1 The methodological rupture of Distinction27
In his earlier work Bourdieu practiced conventional forms of quantitative analysis.
Regression analyses were performed and interpreted with a view to establishing the different
variables’ explanatory power. The books (especially The Inheritors) were also structured as a
conventional presentation of quantitative results. This accordance with the standard rules of
quantitative practice, of which Paul Lazarsfeld was the chief exponent, seems to have
discomforted Bourdieu and his collaborators: The Love of Art, he said, is that «which of all
my works is no doubt the one that most conforms to the positivist canon (even Paul
Lazarsfeld appreciated it)» (Bourdieu 1993a:265).
Regression analysis, and the extension into multiple regression, should be so well-known
that only cursory introduction is offered here. Regression in general deals with how the value
of one dependent variable (to be explained) change when the independent variable (that which
explains) change by a value of 1. In multiple regression, this is extended so as to encompass
several independent variables.28
The real gist of the technique is that it allows the assessing of
each independent variable’s association with the dependent by holding all other independent
variables constant (Treiman 2009:104-105), that is, it offers a way of «operationalising» the
ceteris paribus clause.
Bourdieu’s critique of what he perceived as common, sociological application of these
techniques is sprinkled throughout Distinction, with regard to the question of how «class»
should be connected to culture.29
Early on, he warns of treating variables as something fixed
and self-evident:
One has explained nothing and understood nothing by establishing the existence of correlation between
an ‘independent’ variable and a ‘dependent’ variable. Until one has determined what is designated in
the particular case, i.e. in each particular relationship, by each term in the relationship (for example,
level of education and knowledge of composers), the statistical relationship, however precisely it can be
determined numerically, remains a pure datum, devoid of meaning. And the ‘intuitive’ half-
understanding with which sociologists are generally satisfied in such cases, while they concentrate on
refining the measurement of the ‘intensity’ of the relationship, together with the illusion of the
constancy of the variables or factors resulting from the nominal identity of the ‘indicators’ (whatever
they may indicate) or of the terms which designate them, tends to rule out any question of the terms of
27
These paragraphs owe to Denis Baranger’s presentation at Thirty Years after Distinction in Paris, November
6th – 9th
2010. 28
Even though particular modifications of the technique deploy logistic transformation in order to handle
categorical outcomes, or quantiles instead of means, or some similar extension, the basic idea in all kinds of
regression approaches are pretty much the same – especially when contrasted with other multivariate techniques. 29
It is of course important to take note of the context of this critique and stay clear of context-insensitive
generalisations of its point.
55
the relationship as to the meaning they take on in that particular relationship and indeed receive from it
(Bourdieu 1984:18).
The critique is extended to the notion of «explanatory variables». When one «treats the
properties attached to agents – occupation, age, sex, qualifications – as forces independent of
the relationship within which they «act», the researcher slips into treating the variables as
substances. «This eliminates the question of what is determinant in the determinant variable
and what is determined in the determined variable», that is, what «constitutes the pertinent
property that is really capable of determining the relationship within which it is determined».
The crucial conclusion is that sociologist must «take the relationship itself as the object of
study,» and not the statistical relationship as such, which is only the recording of effects of
relationships (Bourdieu 1984:22).
The critique is amplified when he turns to the presentation of the social space. He warns
of the «fallacy of the apparent factor», the propensity to equate «class» with a single variable
like socio-occupational category. When a group is defined by such a criteria, a whole set of
«secondary properties» are smuggled into the explanatory model. Thus, a class is also defined
«by a certain sex-ratio, a certain distribution of geographical space […] and by a whole set of
subsidiary characteristics». He thus alludes to all those things which are brought into a «class»
when it is formally defined by occupation; that is, all those things which socially defines the
class in practice (Bourdieu 1984:102). Rather than seeing these as some kind of disturbing
factors to be controlled for, Bourdieu advocates considering all these things a part of what
belonging to a certain «class» is all about. This point is then methodologically stated:
The particular relations between a dependent variable (such as political opinion) and so-called
independent variables such as sex, age and religion, or even educational level, income and occupation
tend to mask the complete system of relationships which constitutes the true principle of the specific
strength and form of the effects registered in any particular correlation. The most independent of
‘independent’ variables conceals a whole network of statistical relations which are present, implicitly, in
its relationship with any given opinion or practice (Bourdieu 1984:103).
This is to alert the researcher (and the reader) of the tendency to consider variables
separately. «Economic and social condition […] gives a specific form to all the properties of
sex and age, so that it is the efficacy of the whole structure of factors associated with a
position in social space which is manifested in the correlations between age or sex and
practices» (Bourdieu 1984:106). To account for sociological relationships, the various
important factors – variables, technically speaking – should be studied in their relational
configuration, not isolated from each other.
56
The question is thus not, Bourdieu would say, which effects are produced by income
controlled for educational level, but what effects are produced by their empirical
configuration. Let us imagine an example: An income around the mean level is a different
thing if co-appearing with, say, high educational level, highly educated parents and perhaps
some inherited wealth, as compared to co-existing with an unemployed partner, no higher
education and working-class parents. It’s readily understood that the type of cultural
consumption or political orientation typically associated with mean level of income,
understood in isolation, would be uninformative – to say nothing of pretending to predict
someone’s cultural orientation by some «pure» effect of income (or education, or occupation).
Conventional approaches wish to isolate variables so as to assess each one’s potential
predictive power, when all other possible predictors are controlled out of the picture, so to
speak. Bourdieu advocates the exact opposite: Rather than trying to assess precisely what a
single variable «does» when all other things are considered as being equal, one should
consider all the relevant variables in relation to each other, in their specific constellation, so as
to grasp the whole network of causal factors at play.
This connects directly with the discussion of Bourdieu’s view of class in the previous
chapter. His maximalist definition of class pointed towards the need to establish the particular
configuration of the relevant properties. That is, of course, what he and his colleagues did
with correspondence analysis, and it is what I try to achieve in the quantitative papers that
follow. There is thus, as outlined, a strong connection between Bourdieu’s substantial views
on the social world and his methodological approach. If one does not believe that the social
world is accurately understood in terms of the linear determinations of phenomena by isolated
variables, it makes sense to investigate the social world in a way that does not present it that
way. Put positively, the relational understanding of social life leads to a relational mode of
analysing it, making relations the object of study.
3.1.2 Correspondence analysis
Criticisms of variable sociology are a dime a dozen. What is most distinctive about
Bourdieu and his colleagues’ work was that they found a viable alternative mode of
quantification in correspondence analysis. The particular formulations cited above seems
influenced by this discovery, pointing to short-comings of regression techniques that were felt
to be resolved by the type of correspondence analysis presented in Distinction.
57
Correspondence analysis was developed by the French linguist and data analyst Jean-Paul
Benzécri and his students and colleagues in the 1960’s (Greenacre 2007:ix). Bourdieu first
used the technique in Anatomie du goût (Bourdieu and de Saint Martin 1976), a long paper
that formed the basis for Distinction (Bourdieu 1984). After Distinction, multiple
correspondence analysis is employed by Bourdieu and his colleagues in much or all of their
empirical work involving quantification (Lebaron 2009).
Distinction analyses culture «in the broad anthropological sense» (Bourdieu 1984:99).
The multivariate extension of correspondence analysis applied within it allowed analysing the
cultural orientations of classes and class fractions with a broad range of questions. The space
of lifestyles of the dominant classes, for instance, are constructed using questions on qualities
of interior, the qualities of a friend, the style of meals served to friends, furniture purchases,
preferred singers, preferred classical works, museum visits, knowledge of composers and
opinions on art. Age, father’s occupation, qualifications and income were used as
«explanatory variables» (Bourdieu 1984:261).
This allows all of these lifestyle components to be grasped in their relation to each other,
so that the research is not limited to consider only a few pertinent questions (as one would
have to with the conventional techniques). The factorial plane (Bourdieu 1984:262) illustrate
this system of relations, with the explanatory variables plotted in so as to reveal how the
different lifestyles are related to social differences. This allows the analysis of lifestyles as a
system of relations, and also the use of «explanatory variables» in relation both to the
lifestyles and each other. There is no need to consider single variables in isolation;
correspondence analysis allows the construction of precisely the network of causal factors
called for in his understanding of class.
3.2 Multiple correspondence analysis: A brief introduction
While the technique of correspondence analysis and its extension into multiple
correspondence analysis was long one of the best kept secrets of French data analysis, several
good English introductions are now available (Greenacre 1984; Lebart et al. 1984; Greenacre
1994; Le Roux and Rouanet 2004; Greenacre 2007; Le Roux and Rouanet 2010). These are
mentioned because they introduce the French Benzécrist version of MCA, as opposed to the
Dutch psychometric version based on optimal scaling, properly named Homogeneity Analysis
(Gifi 1990).
58
The introduction that follows will be kept in simple terms and aimed at a non-specialist
reader. A proper technical introduction would start from simple correspondence analysis of
cross-tables or contingency tables, and demonstrate its extension. I will however proceed
directly to a presentation of what MCA does. More specifically, I will present the multiple
correspondence analysis of the indicator matrix, as opposed to that of the Burt table or the
Joint Correspondence Analysis developed by Greenacre (Greenacre 2007:137-52).
What MCA does is similar to what Principal Component Analysis – sometimes simply
but confusingly referred to as simply factor analysis – does. It seeks to detect underlying or
latent dimensions in the data that can account for main structures in it. MCA transforms a
table of categorical data into a graph or a map which gives an approximate summary of the
table. This facilitates the analysis of huge tables. Like PCA, MCA extracts orthogonal
dimensions – that is, dimensions that are independent of each other – that can be thought of as
latent variables. For convenience, this can be illustrated with an example from this thesis. If
one wants to place people on a continuum according to their political attitudes, one can ask
them to place themselves on a ten-point scale from left to right. This, of course, runs into the
problem of what «left» and «right» mean, of whether people have a reasonable understanding
of where on the scale they belong, and a host of other issues associated with these types of
self-classification.
The approach taken in the «Politics…» paper is different. There I start from a selection of
thirteen questions of peoples’ political attitudes on specific issues and questions, guided by
the idea that «under» these specific attitudes there are more general «ideological» orientations
– socialist or laissez-faire, liberal or anti-liberal. Through the MCA, three underlying
dimensions are found: socialist vs. laissez-faire and liberal vs. anti-liberal, but also an
opposition between strong opinions and weaker or more indeterminate views. The basic
model of thought, which in a sense applies to MCA generally, is that «beneath» the specific
questions analysed, a general structure can be found.
This is the same logic that underpins the analyses presented in Distinction. The implicit
assumption is thus that «beneath» the specific tastes and knowledge, more general
orientations can be detected. Hence, Bourdieu found that in the upper and middle classes, two
basic lines of divisions were found: cultural taste was differentiated, firstly, by capital
composition – i.e., differences in taste between cultural and economic class fractions – and
59
secondly by «class seniority» or volume of inherited capital – i.e., differences in taste related
to social origin.
The MCA approach used in this thesis proceeds from an Indicator x Categories table,
what is called a binary indicator matrix. In its essentials, MCA here means correspondence
analysis conducted on an indicator matrix instead of an ordinary cross-table. The rows
represent individuals and the columns represent each category of the variables analysed. Each
cell will contain 1 if the individual has the relevant property and 0 if the respondent does not.
The first step of the correspondence analysis is to transform data into vectors, vector
being a quantity with a certain direction (or a location). To do so, counts are transformed into
proportions according to both row and column marginal distributions. Once these are
calculated, each column category can be placed in a high-dimensional space, where each
dimension has a scale from 0 to 1 (Hjellbrekke 1999a:26-9). This produces a so-called profile
space. The profile space accurately sums up all the information in the table, but when in it
cannot be visualised or even imagined, it is of little or no help. The ambition of
correspondence analysis is to reduce the dimensionality with minimum distortion and loss of
information, so that main structures in the table can be visualised and interpreted.
The distances are calculated as chi-square distances. This is conceived in terms of
difference from a «null hypothesis» of sorts, where there are no real differences in the data. If
we assume that there are no real differences in the response patterns of cases, each row profile
would be similar to the average, only deviating from it because of sampling fluctuations. That
would be an assumption of no difference, or homogeneity assumption. The point here is not
the statistical test, but the ability of the χ² statistic to measure heterogeneity of the profiles. Its
computation is elegantly described by Greenacre (2007:27-32). These distances can be plotted
onto a geometric space by transforming coordinates so that they can be interpreted in the same
way as can distances in physical space (Greenacre 2007:34).
For tables with more than three rows or columns, this quickly becomes difficult to
understand. Most of us would have problems imagining spaces with more than three
dimensions. The table analysed in the «Politics…» paper, however, have 51 dimensions. This
brings us to the crucial analytical aspect of correspondence analysis, namely the reduction of
dimensionality. This is the stage in which the underlying dimensions are extracted, identifying
«dimensions along which there is very little dispersion of the profile points» and eliminating
60
«these low-information directions of spread, thereby reducing the dimensionality of the cloud
of points so that we can more easily visualize their relative positions» (Greenacre 2007:43)
and interpret the principal dimensions of the space.
Simply put, this means finding the first line that comes closest to the points in the high-
dimensional space. This involves computing χ² distances from each profile to the line, in a
manner similar to fitting regression lines, with two exceptions: the procedure must allow for
the different mass associated with each profile which quantifies the importance of the profile
in the analysis; and the fitting of regression lines refer to the response variable axis, while in
CA it refers to the subspace. The subspace produced by reduction of dimensions provides an
approximation of the true position of the points. How good the approximation is can be
assessed by calculating percentages of inertia, even if this is not so straightforward in MCA
(Greenacre 2007:47-56, 140)The analyses in the papers use rate of Benzécri’s modified
eigenvalues to assess the amount of explained variance – that is to say, how good the
approximation is (Hjellbrekke 1999a:66-67).
These procedures are followed for both row (individuals) and column (properties) profiles.
The remarkable feature of correspondence analysis, which gives it its name, is that these two
analyses correspond to each other and are equivalent, so that both can be represented in the
same space by using transition formulas (Le Roux and Rouanet 2004:37-8, 188)
Standard practice, followed in the papers, is however to analyse the cloud of individuals
and the cloud of categories separately. The cloud of categories shows the mean points of all
properties in the constructed space, and this is the central tool for interpreting the results,
alongside numerical output like category contributions. These reveal the extent to which
different categories affect the obtained solution. This is an important aid in the interpretation,
directing attention to categories that should be emphasised in interpretation. This proved
particularly important in the «Upper class» paper, using figures that display only categories
that contribute above average (Le Roux and Rouanet 2004:218) In the cloud of categories, the
interpretation proceeds by inspecting axis for axis, seeking to understand what is the
difference between the properties placed at the far ends of the axis.
The cloud of individuals shows the distribution of all respondents in the space. The cloud
of individuals is significant for the analysis, not least because it allows detailed analysis of the
distribution of supplementary variables. These are variables that play no part in the
61
construction of the space, not affecting its structure, but whose distribution can be inspected.
This is a crucial feature for using MCA to do structured data analysis (Le Roux and Rouanet
2010:ch. 4). MCA as such deals symmetrically with relations between the variables analysed,
but by using supplementary variables as structuring factors, asymmetric analysis becomes
possible – i.e., the space can be considered a «dependent variable» and the structuring factors
«independent variables», or vice versa. This was used by Bourdieu in Distinction to see how
socio-demographic variables mapped onto the patterns of taste revealed by the
correspondence analyses, allowing the interpretation that patterns of taste corresponded to
divisions by capital composition and class seniority (Bourdieu 1984:260-7).
3.3 Correspondence analysis and methodological relationism
If I make extensive use of correspondence analysis, in preference to multivariate regression for instance,
it is because correspondence analysis is a relational technique of data analysis whose philosophy
corresponds exactly to what, in my view, the reality of the social world is. It is a technique which
«thinks» in terms of relation, as I try to do precisely with the notion of field. (Bourdieu and Wacquant
1992:96)
Similar passages, or statements to the same effect, are found many places in his work.
Bourdieu’s stated reasons for relying so heavily on this method are noteworthy: He does not
justify it on technical-practical grounds. He could emphasise how MCA can handle large
amount of variables; is fit for categorical data; proceeds «inductively», making a model from
the data rather than fitting a predefined model to it; and make no assumptions about
distributions and relations in the data (Le Roux and Rouanet 2010; Meulman and Heiser
2010:55). Such a reason would be like the conventional justifications for the choice of method,
where one shows that the method can handle the type of data/question one is dealing with. But
Bourdieu offers a theoretical rationale: The method «thinks» in relations like he tries to do
with his theories.
Now, it is not entirely clear what this actually means. I will discuss in what sense
correspondence analysis «’thinks’ in terms of relation». This rather sketchy discussion will
hopefully shed at least some light on the particular affinity between method and theory in
Bourdieu, which I exploit in the papers.
First we must clarify what methodological relationism means. Sociology is
conventionally seen as torn between two opposed methodologies: individualism and
collectivism. Individualists hold that all social phenomena can and should be explained with
62
reference to individual properties and actions, while collectivists stress the role of supra-
individual properties of groups and institutions. Methodological relationism rejects this as a
false opposition. Instead, its guiding principle can be stated as follows: «no analytical level or
unity can be attributed the ultimate explanatory power with respect to a social phenomenon.
Instead, in sociological explanations one must focus on the complex relations existing
between (and where possible also within) the various structures, fields, positions, and agents.
If this is to be achieved, the concepts used in the analysis must include these relations»
(Hjellbrekke 1999b:61). In the previous chapter, I discussed general aspects of Bourdieu’s
sociology with the aim of showing how it is relationist in the sense that it is concerned with
the dialectical relationship between the objective and the subjective – fields and actors, capital
and habitus. A core point is that neither side can be analytically isolated. It follows from this
that the challenge is to study relations, instead of either individuals or collectives.
In the previous chapter, I spelled out the ways in which social space and field are
structures of relations. What Bourdieu has in mind here seems to be a rather specific
understanding of what relations are. Let me demonstrate that by drawing attention to two
meanings of relations that he is ostensibly not referring to. What is perhaps the most common
understanding of relations is that which can be called relations of interaction. That I take to
refer to relations established through concrete interactions, and interpersonal relationships
established on the basis of such a history, such as the relations between friends, between
parents and children, between colleagues, etc. This is the sense of relations applied in Nick
Crossley’s recent manifesto for relational sociology (Crossley 2011). These are the same type
of relations appealed to in the construction of the «social interaction space» through the
Cambridge Interaction Scale based on the «social distance» created by differential association
(Bottero and Prandy 2003).
Bourdieu is explicit that this is not the type of relations he has in mind. What he wants to
analyse is the relations of power between agents, in terms of capital. These are objective and
invisible relations which both facilitate and constrain actors. Bourdieu seemingly regards
network connections or empirical patterns of differential association of secondary importance
(Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:113-14).30
Less explicitly, however, Bourdieu seems also not
30
This, however, is removed from the type of view taken by Bottero and Crossley in a joint-written paper: «if
field relations manifest themselves in networks, as [Bourdieu] suggests, then such interconnections can identify
field relations» (2011:101). The gist of their argument seems to be that the analysis of objective relations that
Bourdieu undertakes is disposable. This seems quite misguided. Bourdieu’s point is that the relations between
forms of capitals and their holder structure interactions. His emphasis is that it is necessary to understand the
63
to refer to the type of relations drawn attention to in Marxism, that is, the exploitative
relationship between workers and capitalists. As I argued in the previous chapter, classes in
the proper sense of ECT are strictly relational entities – actors become members of a class by
virtue of the relation they enter into with others. It is this exploitative relationship that actually
constitutes the very position of worker and capitalist. Without exploitation, neither can be,
and they exist in relations of dependence, since to be a capitalist means employing and
exploiting workers, and the theoretical meaning of worker is also one who is being employed
and exploited. This, which Elster calls internal relations, in which the elements are causally
connected (Elster 1985:92-3), is, as far as I can judge, not what Bourdieu is referring to.31
We can now begin to sense the strong affinity between the notion of field and
correspondence analysis. A field is a system of relations defined by the distributions of
relevant forms of capital, which agents can be situated within. A multiple correspondence
analysis of respondents’ capital profiles produce an approximation of a map of the field. Its
geometrical multidimensional space represents the structure of the field, defined by the most
specific configuration of capitals in order to understand strategies of actors. People’s interactions are formed by
structures of capital in many ways: inherited capital, or social origin, affects who you grow up with, where you
go to school, etc. Levels of economic capital affect where you can afford to live. The list could be extended.
These «underlying» relations structure the specific friendships, formal connections and interactions individuals
may have. But it simply does not follow that this underlying structure can be identified by only analysing the
interactions and/or connections. Despite the similarities between MCA and network analysis, which Bottero and
Crossley exaggerate considerably, network analyses of connections can simply not reveal the structures of
capital distributions that can be uncovered by a social space or field analysis with MCA. The position of de
Nooy (2003) avoids this confusion.
I cannot go into a full discussion of the important question of different types of relationism implied by different
meanings of relations. For a general discussion of the concept of relations in connection to network analysis, see
Scott 2013. That discussion is premised on a division between attribute and relational data: attribute data consists
of information about individual traits – opinions, behaviours, characteristics – while relational data are about
their connections and linkages. For attribute data, variable analysis is deemed appropriate, while network
analysis is appropriate for relational data (Scott 2013:3). Bourdieu’s approach fits in neither slot, however, since
he studies relations that manifest themselves in seemingly individual attributes. In an interview, he makes an
interesting point about this: The objective is to study structures of power, and not the population of elites or
ruling classes. However, «at the very moment I say this, I am obliged to correct myself, for in order to grasp
structures, we have no choice but to deal with populations insofar as, in ordinary life, the properties that
determine access to positions of power are only attached to individuals. The basic difficulty here is one of
conducting statistical surveys that take as their unit of observation individuals or constructed groups made up of
individuals, but without forgetting that the real object of analysis is not individuals, nor even classes of
individuals, nor the institutions to which they belong, but the space of positions that may be characterized
through their properties» (Wacquant 1993:21). 31
De Nooy (2003) recognises this distinction, and argues that the analysis of fields would be well-advised to
study both structural and interactional relations. I am generally in agreement with that view and, as is probably
obvious from the general position I am establishing, in favour of combining this with the type of internal
relations pointed to by Elster.
64
central divisions detected in the capital profiles, and the space of individuals illustrate how
respondents are situated within it.32
This leads us to the question of how correspondence analysis «thinks» in terms of
relations. The most basic answer to this relates to the particular properties of the space, or
cloud, of individuals and of properties. The distance between individuals are determined by
how different they are in terms of the variables (more precisely, the categories) in question.
Individuals who thus answered a questionnaire similarly, will end up close in the space, and
individuals with identical answers receive identical positions in the space. Categories receive
distances based on their similarity or dissimilarity with regards their composition of
individuals, so to speak. Categories that often appear among the same individuals are close to
each other in the map.
This means that the position of individuals and categories positions in the space have no
meaning in and of themselves. While the total dispersion of the cloud testifies to the strength
of relationships in the data, the fact that some respondent has coordinate 0,97 on axis 1 and -
1,22 on axis 2, or the precise positioning of some categories’ mean points, has no inherent
substantive meaning. When interpreting these spaces or clouds, what is emphasised is the
position relative to the position of all other elements (individuals or categories). This means
that the spaces produced by the correspondence analysis need to be handled as systems of
relations: No element’s position is understandable in isolation. It is only possible to interpret
the location of respondents and categories when the whole space is taken into consideration
(Hjellbrekke 1999a). Or, more precisely, the aim of the interpretation is to take the whole
space into consideration, with the ambition being an understanding of what «governs» the
relations between the elements, i.e. what «causes» their different positions.
Each category’s position in the cloud of categories is only intelligible in relation to the
positions of (all) others. This is in fact a unique property of MCA, and strongly related
techniques, like Non-Linear Principal Component Analysis, do not display the same feature.
NLPCA allows the researcher to add restrictions to how variables are scaled, so that, for
instance, the order between the categories of variables supposed to be ordinal is respected
(Gifi 1990; De Leeuw 2006). This means that spaces produced by NLPCA are not relational
32
Note that this affinity arises in the particular extension of correspondence analysis, where the analysis is done
on a matrix where the rows represent individuals, and the columns represent all the categories. This gives the
resulting spaces of, respectively, properties and individuals – a result not obtained as directly in the other
extensions of CA, like the MCA of the Burt table or the Joint Correspondence Analyis (Greenacre 2007).
65
configurations in the same strict sense as those produced by MCA, since when the order of the
categories is respected, then the position of categories in the spaces will in part be a product
of that restriction as it restrict where in the space categories of an ordinal variable can be
placed.33
This brings us closer to a clear understanding of just why MCA has the relational
properties that makes it particularly suited to the type of relational analysis proposed by
Bourdieu. Hence, Rees-Jones (2011) is wrong to dismiss that particular link, which seemingly
stems from a failure to appreciate on what grounds it is posited in the first place.34
I have provided some, admittedly sketchy, comments on the relation between Bourdieu’s
ambition to think relationally in terms of fields, and the relational nature of correspondence
analysis. In the preceding section, I noted how Bourdieu came to the conclusion that one
needs modes of analysis which could place properties in relation to each other, rather than to
treat them in isolation. In 1976 he published his first work with a method that could
accommodate this need. I think this testifies to the thorough sociological and epistemological
reasoning underlying his choice of method. The application of correspondence analysis was
not a result of mere happenstance or a choice of convenience, but a choice guided by
theoretical reflection.
3.4 Research strategy and the philosophy of data analysis
As discussed above, Bourdieu’s application of correspondence analysis was innovative.
His view can be seen as being that the technique was particularly suited to model social
spaces and fields. These notions embody, in a sense, important aspects of Bourdieu’s general
approach to sociology, hereunder what may perhaps be seen as Bourdieu’s social theory. The
relational mode of analysis employed by Bourdieu involves rather distinct ideas about
causality and «the mode of existence of social things», to borrow his own words (quoted
above).
Benzécri, the originator of correspondence analysis under that name and in that form35
,
developed the technique in conjunction with a distinct philosophy of data analysis. Rejecting
the standard statistical approach of fitting a priori defined models to the data, Benzécri
33
If such restrictions are not applied, and all variables are scaled as nominal, NLPCA produces identical results
as does MCA – and, at least in the Gifi-version, becomes MCA (or HOMALS, strictly speaking). 34
As should be clear from what I said in the opening of this chapter, this link in a sense goes only one way. The
structures of fields and spaces can best be studied by MCA, but there is nothing about MCA which and of itself
makes it a tool of field-analysis. That involves a specific application of it, to which it is exceptionally well-suited. 35
It has been said of correspondence analysis that is has been discovered many times in the history of data
analysis. See the references in Le Roux and Rouanet 2004: 11.
66
favoured proceeding from the data to the model. He formulated five principles of data
analysis, the second of which is in need of some commentary below:
Principle 2: The model must follow the data, and not the other way around. This is another error in the
application of mathematics to the human sciences: the abundance of models, which are built a priori and
then confronted with the data by what one calls a ‘test’. Often the ‘test’ is used to justify a model in
which the number of parameters to be fitted is larger than the number of data points. And often it is used,
on the contrary, to strongly reject as invalid the most judicial remarks of the experimenter. But what we
need is a rigorous method to extract structure, starting from the data (Benzecri (1973), translated and
quoted in Gifi 1990:25).
What this seems to advocate, is a rather strong commitment to inductive data analysis.
The researcher should not test out a priori determined models on the data, but seek to extract
patterns from the data to see what the data can tell us. This view seems to be shared by later
«Benzécristians», with approving citations of Tukey on Data Analysis Philosophy (Tukey
1977). A central point for Tukey, as for the Benzécrists, was not only the limitations of a
priori thinking, but also the frequent violations of the assumptions of statistical models. Like
Tukey, Benzécri and his students devised an approach to data analysis that relied on far more
flexible techniques with no assumptions being made about the data.
This is an important corrective to statistical thinking – and, I would add, not least to its
application in sociology. Two important points need to be raised, however: these have, firstly,
to do with some inherent dangers of this style of thinking and analysing, and secondly to do
with how this compares with the approach taken in the present thesis. As I have already
indicated, Bourdieu was not simply a practitioner of correspondence analysis, but the
originator of a highly innovative sociological application of it.
As regards the inductive approach to data analysis, much can be said in its defence. But as
a principled position, it has some problems. These are brought clearly out by Gifi’s comments
on Benzécri’s principles:
if they are applied consistently they lead to the type of blind empiricism that has terrorized
psychometrics for a long time. If we continue to add empirical variables, without the guidance of any
theory or control whatsoever, then we end up with a lot of explained variance but with no possibilities
for prediction. We do need theory or, if you prefer, a model, because we need sensible rules on how to
add variables. If the structure is there, it will become more clear when we add variables from the same
domain. It will disappear when we add enough variables from other domains (Gifi 1990:26).
But Gifi is quick to note that he agrees with the principles, when seen in the context
intended by Benzécri. That being so, the point is important because unsubstantiated and/or
untheorised «data fishing» is dangerous in its own terms. In this thesis, the choice of variables
is guided by a very explicit and acknowledged theoretical position. What is crucial to
67
recognize is that – notwithstanding the «elective affinities» between the technique of MCA
and Bourdieu’s thinking – there is a clear difference to be made between the logic of data
analysis and the philosophy within which it is embedded, and the theoretical orientation and
the system of concepts that the sociologist relies on. While MCA will inductively find
patterns in the data, the researcher choses – more or less strategically – which data are to be
mined for patterns, and this cannot be an innocent decision.
In this specific context, I want to call attention to the distinction between what is
statistically inductive and what is, in a sense, sociologically and theoretically decided. The
patterns detected in the applications of MCA in this thesis are inductive in the sense that the
technique unearths divisions with no reference to any prior formal specification of hypotheses
in the strict sense. But divisions can only be unearthed in variables subjected to analysis; so
much is at stake in what is fed into the procedure.
The point made by Aldenderfer with regard to cluster analysis seems entirely relevant to
the application of correspondence analysis as well:
The importance of using theory to guide the choice of variables should not be underestimated. The
temptation to succumb to a naive empiricism in the use of cluster analysis is very strong, since the
technique is ostensibly designed to produce "objective" groupings of entities. By "naive empiricism" we
mean the collection and subsequent analysis of as many variables as possible in hope that the "structure"
will emerge if only enough data are obtained (Aldenderfer 1984:20)
The research design in the quantitative papers stays clear of such naïve empiricism. Both
applications of MCA are guided by a clear theoretical agenda which provides crisp guides and
constraints on what variables are suitable. The thesis presents two constructions of social
spaces of capital distributions. As made clear in both papers, this necessitates choosing
variables that can be defended as indicating the capital profiles of individuals. In the
construction of the political space, the choice of questions is guided by others’ theorisation of
the difference between «old» and «new» politics, and I based the choice of questions on
previous studies. In both cases, the actual choice of variables faces considerable constraints
owing to the data used. The specifics of this are given in the papers.
3.5 Methodological bracketing
In this chapter, I have brought out how I draw upon important elements of Bourdieu’s
methodological relationism. In the previous chapter, I discussed Bourdieu’s approach with an
emphasis on the aspects of his work which I draw upon in this thesis. The exegetical section
68
on Bourdieu concluded by highlighting his «structural constructivism or constructivist
structuralism» (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:11). This position is closely connected to his
relationism.
The papers in this thesis, however, do not follow up on the call for sociological analysis
to integrate the analysis of objective structures or distributions of capital with an analysis of
the knowledge and actions of actors. The quantitative analyses study relational configurations
of capitals and attitudes, but they stay in what Bourdieu calls the «objectivist moment, by
setting aside the subjective representations of agents» (Bourdieu 1990b:125-6), limited to
studying the distributions and the relationship between distributions. That is to say, the
quantitative analyses are restricted to what Giddens, making a broadly similar case, calls
institutional analysis, and methodologically bracket out the «cultural, ethnographic or
‘anthropological’ aspect» needed to study the practical knowledge of actors (Giddens
1984:284-88). The fact that Giddens opens up for this type of bracketing is sometimes made
out to be indicative of a weakness of structuration theory (Layder 2006:186). I would reject
that assessment: it is difficult to see how one could posit it to be illegitimate to engage in such
bracketing without effectively placing demands on social researchers that few have the
resources and opportunities to meet – i.e., that any single piece of social analysis has to
simultaneously be an institutional analysis accounting for the relevant structures and structural
principles and an «ethnographic» account of the purposive and knowledgeable practices of
relevant actors.
I want to emphasise the methodological nature of this bracketing and underline that the
analyses are therefore decisively one-sided and partial. The patterns analysed and described in
the quantitative papers can in no sense be accounted for independently of the day-to-day
actions that produce, reproduce and transform such structures, and accordingly the complex
mix of practical and discursive consciousness that guide them. Hence, the bracketing is
methodological in that the research presented in these papers call for the investigation of
actors’ knowledge and actions that is constitutive of the patterns revealed. This is to
distinguish it from the «ontological bracketing» found in objectivist or subjectivist
approaches.36
36
I think that this structurationist methodological bracketing should be distinguished from the practice of
postulating «microfoundations» that would seemingly account for patterns found in a model, such as can be
found in certain applications of rational action theory. In Giddens’ sense, methodological bracketing involves
the recognition that all social research presupposes the «ethnographic moment», and that this is not properly
69
This methodological bracketing is, however, not addressed in the papers themselves, but
is instead implied by the interpretations. In the «Upper class…» paper, I argue that, generally
speaking, education works more as a means to reproduce upper-class positions across
generations than as a means for mobility into it from «below». This, however, calls not only
for a more detailed analysis of the extent to which this holds, but crucially calls for an
investigation of the actions and strategies of upper-class families in passing on privilege
across the generations – especially the extent to which they actively use education. Similarly,
it implicitly calls for an analysis of the ways in which people from lower-class background
actually do make it into the upper-class.
In the «Politics…» paper, I show an association between the principle of capital
composition and attitudes to economic issues. Cultural capital fractions more often express
socialist views, while fractions richest in economic capital more often express laissez-faire
views. I argue that this may partly be interpreted as an aspect of the social opposition between
these groups and their struggles to strengthen their own, or weakening the other’s, positions.
The interpretation is rather tentative, and in order to be substantiated and established as
probable, one would have to inquire into the subjective dimensions of these opinions, and
situate them within the broader context of these intra-class relations, hereunder probing the
meaning attributed by members of one fraction to the political opinions of the other. It would,
for instance, be relevant to engage in the analysis of symbolic boundary work on the basis of
the moral-political stances involved (Lamont 1992; Lamont and Molnár 2002).
solved by simply making assumptions about what people do – and especially since these assumptions are often
not very realistic. The actual «microfoundations» – what is really going on – simply demand their own empirical
analyses.
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4. The three papers in summary
In this chapter I offer brief summaries of the three papers in the thesis. Where relevant, I
comment on developments post-dating the writing, acceptance or publication of the papers. I
also try to spell out how the papers relate to the general theoretical issues raised by the thesis
as a whole.
4.1 The Structure of the Upper Class: a Social Space Approach
Published in Sociology, December 2012 vol. 46 no. 6 1039-1058 (goo.gl/OF8FQ4)
This paper takes as its point of departure the economic upper class of Norway, conceived
in as a class of people either living off of property or off working as top executives and
business professionals. In earlier work, I constructed this category in accordance with
principles drawn from basically Weberian class theory to analyse its patterns of recruitment
and the extent to which the class was segmented into a core of successful inheritors and a
periphery of less successful newcomers (Flemmen 2009). This paper investigates this
question of its internal segmentation.
The paper is rather exploratory in nature, seeking to uncover the internal differentiation of
the upper class without relying on any specified hypothesis on what they should be. That
being said, the paper does start from the proposition that internal divisions can be fruitfully
conceptualised in terms of Bourdieu’s concept of social space and forms of capital. By
subjecting twelve indicators of capital to MCA, a social space of the upper class is
constructed and its internal divisions revealed.
Based on the literature of the sociology of elites and upper classes, three general
expectations were formulated. I expected to find some form of division between owners and
managers, a prominent theme in the literature. Furthermore, I expected that the possession of
educational credentials or capitals would be a line of division. Lastly, particularly following
Bourdieu, I expected to find a division by the volume of inherited capital.
In a sense, one could assert that all of these divisions were present by simply inspecting a
few frequency tables. What the analysis does, however, is to establish the particular structure
of such divisions and, importantly, the relationship between them. There is indeed a
significant division by the volume of inherited capital in evidence – this accounts for a good
deal of the variance. There is also, perhaps unsurprisingly, a division by educational
71
credentials. What is most striking is, perhaps, that these two lines of division almost
completely overlap. The volume of educational capital follows the volume of inherited capital.
This means, generally speaking, that the members of the economic upper class of high social
origin also have taken up higher education, while those of lower social origin have done so
less often.
This is striking because it shows that newcomers do not generally find their way into the
economic upper class through the education system. That flies in the face of the popular belief
in education as the main road to success. What it also seems to suggest is that educational
credentials are more important for class reproduction than for recruiting from the lower ranks.
This, I note in the conclusion, is surprising in a sense, but in fact in line with the cases of
several high-profile Norwegian capitalists of low social origin who give interviews where
they talk down the value of education for business success, yet their own children pursue
educations in business. The analysis indicates that this is not contradictory, but in keeping
with the role of educational credentials in the reproduction of the upper class, in line with
what has been suggested by Bourdieu and Scott. It should, however, be noted that connection
between inherited and educational capital is a general tendency, there are of course many
exceptions.
Another important finding is what is interpreted as a sustained division between owners
and managers, manifested in a division by the source or form of economic capital –
wages/salaries vs. capital income and wealth or assets. This means that, generally, there is no
complete overlap between the group of property owners and that of top executives and
business professionals. This point is also used to make a significant theoretical claim, namely
that class analysis a la Bourdieu needs to appreciate that economic capital is a complex issue,
and that one should differentiate it. Where one’s economic capital comes from is of course of
central importance, as drawn attention to by ECT.
That these are social divisions, and not simply statistical constructions, is corroborated by
two things. One is the fact that they echo important themes from earlier research, but more
importantly, the divisions are found to overlap with the segmentation of the upper class by
occupation and industry. High volume of inherited capital is associated with working in
banking and finance, as well as professional/scientific services. This is opposed to the
association between low volumes of inherited capital and dealing in motor vehicles. It would
72
thus seem that the business and financial elites within the upper class are a substrata marked
by relatively more exclusive social origins.
As can be seen, the paper is thus exemplary of the overall project of this thesis, the use of
the Bourdieusian tool-box to analyse the fractioning of social classes conventionally
understood. However, the paper was written before this overarching ambition was spelled out.
The paper does not, therefore, address that problem as such. At a minimum, however, I think
the paper demonstrates the fruitfulness of applying these tools to deal with intra-class
relations.
4.2 The Politics of the Service Class: the Homology of Positions and
Position-takings
Accepted for publication in European Societies (http://goo.gl/krJuyA).
This paper deals with the «new middle class» by taking Goldthorpe’s theory of the
service class as its point of departure. The question addressed concerns whether the political
divisions within it overlap with its social divisions, understood in terms of the distribution of
capitals modelled in a social space. More specifically, I try out Bourdieu’s suggestion that
position-takings are homologous to social positions.
To do this, I adopt Lennart Rosenlund’s way of analysing homology. Rosenlund
emphasises that homology refers to a relation between systems or structures, not between
properties in an individual. Rosenlund took this to imply that one should construct the
relevant systems or structures independently by the use of MCA (2009). In line with this, I
compare the structures of the political space with the structure of the social space within the
service class, instead of modelling correlations between specific socio-economic traits and
specific attitudes.
To do this, I construct two spaces of the Norwegian service class. I construct one space of
position-takings, analysing a range of questions on political attitudes. This is analogous to
Bourdieu’s construction of spaces of life-styles in Distinction, but substituting political
opinions for cultural consumption and taste. A core point is that I set out to include questions
tapping both «old» politics, i.e. relating to issues of equality and public spending etc., and
«new» politics, like environmentalism, the right for homosexuals to adopt, the role of
Christian values etc. Owing to limitations of the data, the social space of positions is
73
constructed by rather few and suboptimal indicators of capital, thought to tap both the volume
and the composition of capital. (This is a case of the theoretically guided application of MCA
discussed in the methodology chapter).
The social space of position does exhibit the expected structure. Its first and most
important dimension reflects the composition of capital, while its second dimension reflects
the volume of capital. The political space also exhibit the expected dimensions: The first and
by far most important dimension reflects divisions in «old» politics, between what I refer to as
socialist and laissez-faire opinions, but also environmentalism. The third dimension reflects
«new politics» divisions, while the second show a division by the strength of opinion,
differentiating between those who have strong opinions (regardless of what they are about,
«strongly agree» and «strongly disagree») and those who express weaker opinions (simply
«agree»). Only dimensions one and three are used in the analysis, since the second dimension
was not deemed relevant to the questions at hand.
I found the two spaces to be fairly homologous. The volume of capital corresponded to
attitudes to new politics: those with high volumes of capital were in favour of homosexuals
adopting, for a more internationalised society, against a prominent place for Christian values.
Those of low volumes of capital expressed the opposite views. Most striking, and statistically
most important, was the correspondence between the composition of capital and attitudes to
«old» politics. Cultural capital fractions are more socialist, economic capital fractions more
laissez-faire.
These findings are used to question Goldthorpe’s assertion that the service class would be
«essentially conservative». The paper supports earlier research that found it to be
systematically fractured politically. The amount and form of capital possessed by service-
class members are importantly related to differences in political views. Goldthorpe’s point
was, however, not that the service class would be homogeneous, but that its internal diversity
was not related to class – i.e. employment relationships. This throws up the question of
whether capital, in Bourdieu’s sense, is theoretically relevant to class analysis, and
accordingly to the basic question of the entire thesis.
74
4.3 Putting Bourdieu to work for class analysis: Reflections on some
recent contributions
Published in The British Journal of Sociology, June 2013 vol. 64 no. 2 325–343 (:
http://goo.gl/fVBGc9)
This paper is wholly conceptual or theoretical in focus. It deals with recent applications of
the work of Bourdieu in class analysis. More specifically, it reviews recent distinguished
attempts by British authors to take an approach to class that exclusively finds its theoretical
basis in Bourdieu. While recognising the strengths of this, and the fruits of their work, the
paper nevertheless argues that through this particular theoretical reorientation, the basics of
class relations in capitalism are overlooked.
The work being discussed exhibit two different ways of fashioning a «Bourdieusian»
class analysis. One is referred to as a Social Space Approach (SSA). The crux of this
approach is that class is defined with reference to Bourdieu’s model of social space, so that
class refers to positions or clusters of positions that are reasonably similar in terms of the
volume, composition and trajectory of capital. This is found in the work of Skeggs and Sayer,
but most systematically and vigorously in Will Atkinson’s recent contribution.
The other approach is referred to as a Field-Analytical Approach (FAA). This considers
class to be the end result of multiple structurations of inequality produced in a multitude of
different social fields. In many ways, this view is fully compatible with the social space view,
but the emphasis on class as simply structured inequality, and that field is arguably the central
analytical concept, is distinct. This approach is taken by Mike Savage and some of his
collaborators.
The paper raises a number of objections to these approaches. The core problem lies in the
fact that neither approach allows any conceptual space for the relations of production and
market exchange that was the hallmark of ECT. In both cases, class becomes a term denoting
structured social inequality in the endowment of capitals. While I obviously support such an
understanding in many respects, it is problematic because the approach has no room for
conceptualising the relations of power and domination that are created by the fundamental
workings of capitalist economies.
75
The paper therefore calls for bringing the «Bourdieusian» approaches into a much clearer
and explicitly elaborated connection to ECT. Specifically, the paper tries to argue for one
such bridge by connecting with Weber’s distinction between class and status or Stand,
conceiving them as referring to causal processes in which capitals can gain a currency beyond
their respective fields.
After the paper was accepted for publication, Savage and colleagues (Savage et al. 2013)
offered a heavily-promoted new model of social class in the UK. The paper conceives of
classes as shaped by the distribution of capitals, so that classes are seen as aggregates of
people with similar amounts of resources or capitals. Savage et al. do not, however, adopt the
social space as a model of class relationships, but rely on classifying respondents by their
amount and type of capital through a latent class approach. Seemingly, the approach to
measuring class there is consistent with the FAA (class as outcome of workings of fields). It
seems reasonable to argue that the approach taken in that paper can be subject to a very
similar assessment as given the other «Bourdieusian» approaches discussed: It provides
important and novel insights into contemporary divisions, but it does not address the types of
economic relationships characteristic of ECT.
76
5. Concluding discussion
As a whole, this thesis concerns the social differentiation of class relations. That is to say,
it seeks to deal with how the sociology of class can adopt a mode of analysis which is more
sensitive to the complexities of contemporary forms of class stratification. Its point of
departure was the idea that central concepts from the oeuvre of Pierre Bourdieu could usefully
be applied to give a rigorous account of the systematic heterogeneity of «conventional» class
categories. That is to say, intra-class relations can fruitfully be understood as divisions in the
distributions of capital and accordingly modelled as multidimensional social spaces.
By way of conclusion, I will highlight empirical, methodological and theoretical
conclusions that can be drawn from the work presented in this thesis. My principal empirical
conclusion concerns how divisions in the distribution of capitals reveal significant patterns of
differentiation of the classes in question. I specify this general conclusion into several specific
conclusions.
1) The composition of capital; the volume of capital; and the volume of inherited capital
are important dimensions of differentiation in contemporary Norway – at least in the
higher echelons of the class structure.
a) The composition of capital is related to internal tensions in the broad service class
and in the economic upper class. In the service class, the division by form of
capital relates to a political fractioning between «old» left and right – socialists vs.
laissez-fair-ists.
b) In the economic upper class, the composition of capital is evident in the structure
of inherited capital: This is tied to the opposition between owners and executives
as well as to the extent to which one relies on educational capital or credentials.
c) The volume of inherited capital captures a powerful distinction between inheritors
and the «self-made (wo)men» in the upper class, and this is in turn related to an
opposition between its arguably more powerful business-elite fractions and
possibly less central industries, like that of motor vehicle retail and repair.
d) The volume of inherited capital to some extent corresponds to the volume of
educational capital. This implies that, in the case of the Norwegian economic
upper class, education seems to be relatively more often a means for class
reproduction or inter-elite circulation, than a means for upward mobility into the
highest echelons of the class structure.
e) The volume of capital differentiates liberal from anti-liberal elements of the
service class.
These conclusions speak to core debates in the fields of class analysis, the sociology of elites
and of social mobility. They do, however, require further empirical work. Much hinges on the
77
validity of the principle of capital composition. Further empirical work should seek to
investigate this line of division further to see whether it «structures» other relevant
phenomena – cultural orientation, educational strategies, symbolic boundary work, etc. (on
symbolic boundary work and capital composition, see Jarness 2013). The connection between
volume of inherited capital and educational capital within the upper class should be
investigated further, to qualify and quantify the nature of that relationship in more detail – not
least through analysis of the actual reproduction and mobility strategies in play. Similarly, the
division of the upper class by this volume of inherited capital should be further addressed, for
instance by more detailed analysis of the specific fractions as compared to the broader class.
My next overall conclusion is methodological:
2) The model of social space, premised on conceptualisation of multiple forms of capital
as constituted by distinct fields, is a powerful tool to analyse intra-class relations.
This was, of course, the supposition guiding the research. It is therefore not in a strict
sense found or verified. I would, however, suggest that the supposition was strengthened by
the fruitfulness of the work done in its application. The two quantitative papers can be read as
an attempt to try out the social space model, and the fact that these applications are able
address core issues in the field testifies to their power. The strength of the approach, and its
fruitfulness, is, however, to be regarded as a theoretical and methodological claim
corroborated by the findings, but ultimately rests on the theoretical foundations laid out in
chapter 2.
3) The integration of the social space and field-analytical approach with the fundamental
of class relationships in capitalism calls for theoretical work of integration and
synthesis.
In chapter 2, I discussed how Bourdieu’s view of class compares with Marxist and
Weberian ones. In «Putting Bourdieu to work…» I discussed various authors attempt at
applying that concept of class, and argued that its application is at odds with the classical
accounts of class. If one wishes, as I do, to retain the strength of both the «Bourdieusian» and
the classical concepts of class, one has to be able to account for how they are or can be made
to be compatible. This is a conclusion that points to further work, as the issue is only briefly
discussed in the papers. Below, I will sum up these discussions and hopefully make my own
view more explicit and indicate how a more satisfactory answer could possibly be developed.
Let me elaborate on and discuss these conclusions further.
78
Taken together, the papers can be read as making the following claim. Class analysis can
benefit greatly from adopting core concepts from Bourdieu’s sociology, as the approach
embodied in them allows for a very subtle mapping and analysis of contemporary forms of
stratification and power. As Bourdieu demonstrated himself, and other researchers have
corroborated, it offers a powerful approach to understanding the fine-grained and
multidimensional nature of class in the context of advanced social differentiation. In the two
quantitative analyses, I emphasise the strength of this approach in modelling and accounting
for intra-class relations.
«The Structure of the Upper Class» takes as its object a categorisation of the upper class
of my own making, rooted in what I call a «fairly ‘orthodox’ conception, in terms of class
theory». From the Weberian emphasis on class situations as defined by the determination of
life-chances in the market, the upper class is constructed so that it captures categories of
people whose life-chances depend either on forms of ownership, or on their employment in
the higher-level managing and related tasks in corporations. «The Politics of the Service
Class» takes Goldthorpe’s theory of the service class at its point of departure. What
Goldthorpe’s theory successfully does account for, is what might be seen as the structural
basis for the new middle class, created by the transformations of capitalism through the better
part of the 20th
century. Or, in other words, Goldthorpe shows how the new middle classes fit
into the relationship between private property and property-less wage labour, without
resorting to ad hoc concepts.
«The Structure of the Upper Class» is premised on the fruitfulness of conceptualizing
«the upper class» in rather orthodox class analytical terms. The analyses demonstrate that one
can come to grips with unavoidable heterogeneity of the category by applying Bourdieu’s
toolbox. The analyses unearth a marked division by what I, following Bourdieu, call the
volume of inherited capital – that is, the amount of capital possessed by one’s parents. This is
frequently referred to in the literature as «social origin», a metaphor which rightly emphasise
the sense in which persons have different starting points in life, but does not capture how this
in itself constitutes an advantage or disadvantage in the form of resources (more or less) at
one’s disposal throughout life.
Something which is not noted in the conclusion to that paper is that the principle of
capital composition also surfaces within the upper class. The second dimension of the space is
mostly shaped by the different sources of economic capital. However, the indicators of
79
inherited capital also map out in interesting ways on this dimension. It reveals a certain
correspondence between the form of economic capital one has (salaries vs. capital incomes)
and the general composition of capital (cultural vs. economic) among the parents. This
suggests that the inflow into the upper class from the «cultural upper or middle classes»
occurs through an acquisition of the educational capital in some sense required to obtain
managerial and professional positions in business. This is opposed to those originating in
class fractions based on economic capital, who more often have large capital incomes and
wealth.
«The Politics of the Service Class» makes a somewhat stronger claim. The paper expands
upon earlier research to make the argument that, despite the convincing nature of
Goldthorpe’s theory of the service class, the class thus constructed becomes systematically
heterogeneous, in ways which, at least, goes to the heart of the types of issues addressed by
class analysis, and, I would argue, also are relevant to the theoretical conceptualisation itself.
Moreover, the specific patterns of internal heterogeneity I detect – the homology between
social positions and political position-takings within the service class – echo the arguments
from Bourdieu’s Distinction. The paper can be read as suggesting that, not only are the
concepts of Bourdieu excellent tools for studying intra-class relations, his more substantive
claims on the multidimensional nature of class relations are also supported. The principle of
capital composition, so central to his work, is found to differentiate the left-wing from the
right-wing of the service class.
This approach to studying class is still not widely used in sociology, but some recent
applications have stayed close to Bourdieu’s formulations and demonstrated the applicability
of a social space approach to class in contexts far removed from France of the 1960s
(Hjellbrekke and Korsnes 2004; Prieur et al. 2008; Rosenlund 2009; Harrits et al. 2010;
Andersen and Hansen 2011; Faber et al. 2012; Skjøtt-Larsen 2012; Harrits 2013). Hence, my
own work shows that a turn to Bourdieu’s concepts of class and stratification allows intra-
class relations to be studied by means of the same theoretical and conceptual approach that
can be applied to inter-class relations. This addresses a short-coming pointed to by Frank
Parkin some thirty-four years ago, that class analyses tend to deviate from their professed
theoretical position once the attention shifts from relations between to relations within classes
(Parkin 1979:29-30). On the account adopted here, however, the two can be seen as cases of
the same phenomenon: the struggle between holders of different forms of capital.
80
While both papers thus seek to advance a more «Bourdieusian» approach, both of them
retain considerable elements from European class theory. In both analyses, I depart from
conceptualisations of specific classes that are grounded in the relations of power and the
social divisions implicated in capitalism as an economic system. Simultaneously, I maintain
that the basic capital-labour division, constitutive of capitalism, does not neatly «translate»
without further ado into empirical social classes. This is brought out in the study of the service
class, in which I argue that the fact that different fractions of the service class «belong to»
different fields goes some way in accounting for their different socio-economic and political
profiles.
The social space approach or, when appropriate, a field-analytical approach can gainfully
be used to address intra-class relations in a manner that is consistent with an understanding of
class as manifested in the distribution of capital. At the same time, class analysis needs to
maintain a conceptual connection with, and a substantive concern for, the forms of
domination that are, in a sense, generic to capitalism (spelled out in the theory chapter above).
While Bourdieu of course is the prime source of inspiration to the authors criticised in the
«Putting Bourdieu to work…» paper, his own position is more in accordance with what I am
arguing than the positions of his followers. Allow me to quote a lengthy passage from
Distinction where he stresses the same point:
The model of social space that has been put forward here is not only limited by the nature of the data
used (and usable), particularly by the practical impossibility of including in the analysis structural
features such as the power which certain individuals or groups have over the economy, or even the
innumerable associated hidden profits. If most of those who carry out empirical research are often led to
accept, implicitly or explicitly, a theory which reduces the classes to simple ranked but non-
antagonistic strata, this is above all because the very logic of their practice leads them to ignore what is
objectively inscribed in every distribution. A distribution, in the statistical but also the political-
economy sense, is the balance-sheet, at a given moment, of what has been won in previous battles and
can be invested in subsequent battles; it expresses a state of the power relation between the classes or,
more precisely, of the struggle for possession of rare goods and for the specifically political power over
the distribution or redistribution of profit.
Thus, the opposition between theories which describe the social world in the language of stratification
and those which speak the language of the class struggle corresponds to two ways of seeing the social
world which, though difficult to reconcile in practice, are in no way mutually exclusive as regards their
principle. 'Empiricists' seem locked into the former, leaving the latter for 'theorists', because descriptive
or explanatory surveys, which can only manifest classes or class fractions in the form of a punctual set
of distributions of properties among individuals, always arrive after (or before) the battle and
necessarily put into parentheses the struggle of which this distribution is the product. When the
statistician forgets that all the properties he handles, not only those he classifies and measures but also
those he uses to classify and measure, are weapons and prizes in the struggle between the classes, he is
inclined to abstract each class from its relations with the others, not only from the oppositional relations
which give properties their distinctive value, but also from the relations of power and of struggle for
power which are the very basis of the distributions. Like a photograph of a game of marbles or poker
which freezes the balance sheet of assets (marbles or chips) at a given stage, the survey freezes a
moment in a struggle in which the agents put back into play, at every moment, the capital they have
81
acquired in early phases of the struggle, which may imply a power over the struggle itself and therefore
over the capital held by others.
The structure of class relations is what one obtains by using a synchronic cross-section to fix a (more or
less steady) state of the field of struggles among the classes. The relative strength which the individuals
can put into this struggle, or, in other words, the distribution at that moment of the different types of
capital, defines the structure of the field; but, equally, the strength which the individuals command
depends on the state of the struggle over the definition of the stake of the struggle. The definition of the
legitimate means and stakes of struggle is in fact one of the stakes of the struggle, and the relative
efficacy of the means of controlling the game (the different sorts of capital) is itself at stake, and
therefore subject to variations in the course of the game. Thus, as has constantly been emphasized here
(if only by use of quotation marks), the notion of 'overall volume of capital', which has to be constructed
in order to account for certain aspects of practice, nonetheless remains a theoretical artefact; as such, it
could produce thoroughly dangerous effects if everything that has to be set aside in order to construct it
were forgotten, not least the fact that the conversion rate between one sort of capital and another is
fought over at all times and is therefore subject to endless fluctuations (Bourdieu 1984:245-6, emphasis
added).’
Two points are crucial in this: Firstly, that any analysis of the distribution of capitals in a
field or a social space at any given time is a snapshot, and does not bring out the struggles that
take place in the field. Secondly, it alludes to the importance of what Bourdieu called the
fundamental property of class as affecting the empirical distribution of capitals. And it is
warned that if all of this is forgotten, rather than simply temporarily put aside, the analysis is
severely impoverished.
It is the first point which has received most attention by Bourdieu, while the latter is my
concern here. Theoretical work is needed in order for class analysis to be able to maintain a
grasp of the fundamentals of class relationships while simultaneously benefitting from the
power of the «Bourdieusian» ideas applied. This points to unresolved issues and challenges
for future work.
The challenge concerns building the conceptual or theoretical links between «class» in
two senses. Between (1), the synthetic-descriptive notion of class – that which considers
position in the social space shaped by the forms of capital and all of the secondary principles
– and its various constitutive elements (field, capital, habitus, etc.); and (2) the type of
analytical-explanatory concept of class that can be drawn from European class theory. This
distinction comes close to the distinction between a concrete and an abstract concept of class.
Or put differently, how can we connect the institutional order of class society with the
structuration of class in social space?
This problem stretches beyond what I have been able to address systematically and
comprehensively in this thesis. In the papers, I sketch out some elements of how this may be
connected. Let me summarise this and offer a few supplementing comments. I propose to
82
conceive of this as a problem of class structuration – the process whereby by «abstract» class
divisions become identifiable social groupings (Giddens 1973, presented above in section
2.2.3.1). I adopt that specific formulation of this more general problem of class formation for
two reasons:
1) The concept runs parallel to Bourdieu’s account of the mode of existence of social
classes, in that it recognises the interplay of economic and cultural dimensions, as well
as the active work of political labour. I would argue, however, that it is distinct in
some important and interesting respects. First of all, it explicitly connects to a
conception of class as based in the institutions of capitalism – and this is, of course,
why I discuss it here in the first place. Secondly, the emphasis on work-place relations
rightly recognises the centrality of work and occupation for class formation. Thirdly, it
recognises that status might operate independently of class – in addition to its
reinforcing effect suggested also by Bourdieu – in ways that might counteract
structuration around the «class principle».37
Fourth, it offers a systematic theoretical
expression of these processes. In sum, this means that the concept of class
structuration offer an outline of the theoretical means to connect the concerns of
Bourdieusian sociology with ECT.
2) Also, I find the concept of class structuration fitting for these purposes because I think
the connection between class society as an institutional order, the mediation of fields
and the structuration of social space could fruitfully be elaborated in terms of a duality
of structure and action. This would, however, involve a reformulation of the concept
of class structuration to make it more explicitly attuned to structuration theory proper.
This, however, is a task for further work. 38
37
As Scott argues, the claims and accounts of a «death of class», which frequently point to the lack of subjective
salience of class, might be interpreted as a severed or reconfigured connection between class and status (Scott
2002). In Giddens’ terminology, this would amount to a lower degree of class structuration, within the confines
of class society as an institutional order. Savage makes a similar point in arguing that class cultures today are
individualised, as opposed to the more or less collective class cultures of times past (Savage 2000). 38
The concept of class structuration predates the formulation of structuration theory proper. Accordingly, class
structuration is not developed by Giddens in terms of the duality of structure, even if it appears consistent with it.
In a later text, he makes a few remarks on how he would see the 1973 arguments through the optics of his more
developed account of structuration (Giddens 1979:109-10).
Structuration theory, as presented by Giddens, is, as Scott remarks, a «sophisticated conceptualization of
action and interaction, and a suggestive outline for the analysis of social systems, but neither level of analysis is
developed into a comprehensive theoretical statement» (Scott 2012::236). It is instructive in this respect to
remind that Giddens’ final statement of the theory was presented as an outline (Giddens 1984). The short-
comings of it is well-rehearsed in the literature and cannot be recapitulated here (see various views represented
in Cohen 1989; Held and Thompson 1989; Clark et al. 1990; Craib 1992; Bryant and Jary 1997; Tucker 1998;
Parker 2000; Loyal 2003; Stones 2005). A particularly acute problem is the question of social structure and
83
Now, drawing on this conceptual armoury, I have proposed that the service class is not
structurated into a distinct class, because it is systematically fragmented by the fact that its
«members» are embedded in different fields. The fields of cultural production operate in a
different mode, with a different logic and different ethos, spawning and/or demanding
different illusio and habitus, than what can be found in the economic field. According to the
terminology introduced above, the service class does not display unitary class awareness, but
a systematically fragmented one. This suggests the operations of a field as mediating between
the existence of market capacities and actual social groups.
The fields help constitute their own specific forms of capital, which forms the basis for
power in their internal hierarchies. For instance, the specific operation of the academic field
constitutes academic and/or scientific capital, which can become the basis for specific
privileged employment relationships, within the confines of labour markets under the sway of
the field. While it is consistent to say that the scientific field then mediates the effects of the
class structure on the lives of the actors in the field, it is crucial to recognise that mediation in
this sense involves autonomous field-effects.
Certain fields are rather delimited microcosms, meaning that the struggles that go on
within them have limited bearings on «the outside world». However, other fields have a much
more profound influence on the entire social formation. A case in point is the fields of
education, in which core aspects of cultural capital is constituted and circulated. Thus, the
capital conferred by the education system takes on a very general currency in contemporary
society: Educational capital is widely convertible so that it is effective even «outside» the
fields of education. In the «Putting Bourdieu to work…» paper I elaborate a bit on this, and
connect it to the interpretation of class and status as causal processes through which capitals
may gain a more wide-spread efficacy.
The theoretical argument set forth in this thesis can therefore be summed up as follows:
The basic institutions of capitalism as an economic system generate class divisions –
principally between owners of productive property and the sellers of labour-power – the latter
being differentiated by the nature of their labour-power in terms of market situation. In this
sense, capitalism is by definition a class society. These «abstract» class divisions do not,
system analysis (see Thompson’s oft-cited contribution in Held and Thompson 1989). I share Scott’s assessment
that structuration theory «provides the key – if not the complete solution» to bringing together structural and
interactional analysis and therefore also «provides the essential basis for further theoretical work» (Scott
2012:viii).
84
however, translate without further ado into social classes in the sense of collectives with
subjective importance for its «members» – class «for-itself», in Marx’ sense. That depends on
a range of factors, many of which are widely recognised in class analysis, integrated in
Giddens’ account of class structuration. These class divisions are diversified in the market in
which labour-power is bought and sold, so that the number of class situations becomes almost
indefinite, as Weber implied. Furthermore, the workings of fields provide further
differentiation, giving rise to more or less disjunctive hierarchies of capitals in relatively
autonomous microcosms of practice. Hence, actors in similar class situations can be
differentially positioned within different fields, yielding different endowments of (more or
less) field-specific forms of capital, in turn connected to different habitus and engagement in
field-specific struggles. Snapshots of the state of this non-linear and complex process can be
obtained by the constructions of social spaces. These spaces are continuous and
multidimensional distributions of capital, generated by the complex interplay of property
relations, market processes and the workings of fields. The model of social space does not
presuppose categorical classes but instead show all individuals’ precise position in this
complex distribution. This is thus a space of possible or probable classes, as Bourdieu
emphasised.
This is a dense statement of a complex process, and it will have to be elaborated and
specified later. One of its chief strengths is that it might open up a way out of the deadlock
between, on the one hand, the insistence on large-scale class categories which obviously fall
short of being social classes by a long shot, and on the other hand, the opposed insistence on
the «death of class» by referring to the obvious differentiation of class-relevant relationships
and the decline of expressed class identity and consciousness. That is to say, the approach
outlined above opens up for a class analysis that does not depend on the existence of classes
as collective actors. Hence, a class society with fractured and individualised class divisions
can consistently be posited and analysed within this framework. This might let class analysis
engage more fully with the widely heralded, if exaggerated, current transformation of
modernity without resorting to the flogging of dead horses.
85
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