Abstracts (in alphabetical order)

 

The family as field: General properties and broader significances

Will Atkinson, University of Bristol

This paper elaborates a notion only briefly discussed by Bourdieu and overlooked by most commentators yet fundamental to the understanding of how habitus are forged, how reproduction is ensured or resisted and how fields intersect: the family as field. Drawing on an ongoing qualitative research project on the mundane, everyday experience and reproduction of class in routine family life, it outlines and evidences its core features – doxa (or the 'family spirit'), orthodoxy and heterodoxy, struggle, alliances and rifts – and its refraction by gender, class, age and the social surfaces of the implicated agents. From there the paper opens out to consider the wider theoretical questions raised by this notion, including the question of boundaries, the interconnections between overlapping family fields in a universe of reciprocal influence, the formation of fields from pre-field relations and affinities and their dissolution, and the impact of other fields – not just in terms of the influence of the different field positions of each implicated agent but also in terms of the effect of the dominant perception of 'family' and its challengers emanating from the struggles within the field of power.

 

By-product data and the hidden dimensions of the musical field

David Beer, University of York

This paper seeks to identify some of the hidden dimensions of the musical field and explores the potential of digital by-product data for illuminating the aspects of musical taste and preference that are difficult to see with traditional social science methods. It suggests that the largely acknowledged limitations of existing field analysis create what might be thought of as darkened areas of music consumption that may remain outside of the gaze of the interested sociologist. The paper briefly discusses some of the analytical problems associated with this lack of visibility – amongst other possible problems this discussion includes some brief reflections upon the researcher’s selection, projected interpretations and understanding of genre, artists and musical works, in particular it highlights the significance of the role of the researcher in creating connections between these three visible layers of the musical field. Existing accounts of the musical field understandably tend to rely upon survey and sometimes interview based data, with occasional inclusions of participation rates. This paper focuses upon the specific example of Last.fm and looks to make use of the by-product data that this particular application accumulates about individual’s everyday music listening practices. From this it provides some insights into the potentials and limitations of using by-product data in the analysis of the musical field. One clear advantage of by-product data is that it reveals what individuals and ‘taste communities’ are actually listening to rather than what it is that they report that they are listening to (which might of course itself be an exercise in cultural capital!). In more specific terms the presentation will use some of the available data to observe musical taste and to highlight the particular insights this data set offers, it also draws upon forms of visual analysis that illustrate some existing insights into the musical field that already exist outside of academic research – to give one example, this includes the ‘islands of music’ visualisation available from Last.fm which uses cluster analysis to map out the connections between music genres, or the ‘structure of the musical field’, for a random sample of 13,000 listeners. One of the notable features of this example is that it not only accounts for actual listening practices but that it also draws upon the genres that these listeners themselves actually associate with particular musical works.
 

The bairro is not here': Social divisions and symbolic boundaries in a council housing area of Porto (1977-2010)

Virgílio Borges Pereira, University of Porto

Taking as reference a segment of information gathered in the frame of an extended case method research developed in one of Porto’s council housing areas (drawing on the results of an analysis of official archives that was able to reconstitute the genesis of the context in 1977, on a survey by questionnaire to a representative sample of the population of the area that involves more than 400 individuals applied in 2009 and on the results of 20 in-depth interviews to local in-habitants), the present research establishes a set of interpretative coordinates for the understanding of the social (re)composition of the context under study.

The de-industrialization of the local social space, the growth of routine employees and the impact of unemployment on it are read in the light of a close attention to the structuration of everyday life and to the ways of representing the neighborhood by the local inhabitants.

With the help of MCA and detailed sociolinguistic analysis it is possible to understand the ways of investing the local world with meaning. The management of this meaning is an important dimension of local everyday life and is established under relevant practical and symbolic divisions, which are mainly organized as avoidance and individualization. Through an analysis of the social trajectories of the local population and the links that these establish with the practices and representations of the inhabitants, it is the sociological grounding of avoidance and individualization that is taken into account in the present paper as well as a discussion, in the light of Bourdieu’s Distinction, of the main social and symbolic properties of routine employee’s world in the bairro.

 

The Internationalisation of the Swiss Business Elite: an attempt to tackle "methodological nationalism" by the means of field analysis

Felix Bühlmann, Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences

Historically economic elites are well anchored in international business networks and they often spearhead dynamics of inter- and transnationalisation. The "recent globalisation" and the process of europeanisation since the 1980s is no exception in this respect. In Switzerland for instance, a small and highly globalised country, 35% of all CEO's and presidents of boards of the 110 biggest "swiss" firms in 2010 are foreigners and its most important companies (Nestlé, Xstrata, UBS, ABB, Crédit Suisse) employ more personnel abroad than in Switzerland. Under these circumstances we must ask whether it still makes sense to speak of a field of the "Swiss business elite". It seems necessary at least to think about adaptations of existing methods of elite research and the development of new methodological devices in order to tackle dynamics of inter- and transnationalisation. Two strategies are imaginable when it comes to field analysis: a) an international sampling strategy and the construction of an international field of business elites. b) the use of a series of variables that are able to tackle the internationalism of certain faction of the business elites and that could be pooled into something like "cosmopolitan capital". According to Dezalay, who investigated the internationalisation of business law, a combination of these two strategies is the most promising – he explains: "Dans l’espace des pratiques internationales, les opérateurs dominants sont ceux qui peuvent mobiliser des ressources acquises et homologuées dans des champs nationaux de pouvoir, en particulier des titres et des diplômes d’État. En contrepartie, la mobilisation d’un capital international de compétences et de relations représente un atout non négligeable dans les stratégies de pouvoir dans le champ national" (Dezalay, 2004: 7). In this contribution I seek to address one side of Dezalay's contention and try to integrate "cosmopolitan capital" into a field-analysis of the Swiss business elite. I will do this by the means of a) a typology of "transnationality" of the career, b) the degree of internationality of the company and c) the international flavour of the educational credentials. In the concluding part I will present a series of ideas on how such an "internationally sensitive" type of field analysis could be completed by an analysis of the international field of business elite (the other side of Dezalay's hypothesis).

 

The same everywhere?

Roger Burrows, University of York

The globalisation of geodemographics – the technology of area-based classifications – provides an interesting case study of the recursive relationship that exists between the social sciences and the global machinations of capitalism. The idea behind geodemographic classifications is a simple one. It is the notion that the physical spaces that people occupy say something profound about the sort of people that they are. Empirically it is the case that knowledge of where someone lives is a powerful predictor of all manner of consumption practices, values, tastes, preferences and so on. There are many social scientific explanations for the socio-spatial zoning of populations, but one of the most recent displays a strong concordance with the views of ‘commercial sociologists’ working in the geodemographics industry. This is the idea that it is now ‘place’ and not ‘class’ that ‘is determinant in the last instance’. Crudely, whereas occupation used to define social class, now it is residential location. We are thus witnessing nothing less than the spatialisation of class. In a sense then geodemographic classifications are codifications of complex spatial articulations of habitus. Even though, until recently, geodemographers have been unaware of the work of Bourdieu. This paper examines a scheme that aims to provide a common set of socio-spatial codifications of habitus for Australia, New Zealand and the UK. 

 

Class, status or both

Predrag Cvetičanin, Centre for Empirical Cultural Studies of South-East Europe, Serbia & Mihaela Popescu, California State University, San Bernandino

The old dispute concerning the best approach in studies of social stratification between representatives of culturalist class analysis (working basically within the Bourdieusian framework) and proponents of the Weberian and rational action approach (best exemplified in the work of John H. Goldthorpe) has been rekindled by the publication of the study ”Culture, Class, Distinction“ (Bennett, Savage; Silva; Warde; Gayo-Cal and Wright: 2009) and the volume “Social Status and Cultural Consumption“ (ed. Tak Wing Chan: 2010), as well as journal articles by the same authors which preceded these two publications (from 2003 to 2009). Our paper aims to contribute to this debate on how class and status relate and their influence on the shaping of taste and cultural participation based on data from the study ”Cultural Needs, Habits and Taste of Citizens of Serbia and Macedonia“ (2005).

One of the specificities of Serbian society are status struggles between proponents of the two discourses which we have termed the discourse of “civilizedness” and the discourse of “authenticity” – which are supervened by two competing status hierarchies. Proponents of the discourse of “civilizedness” (most of whom come from educated families; from families with a long urban tradition; from families which reside in the “European” North of the country; and cosmopolitans) view “civilizedness” as the basis for the status hierarchy and themselves at its top, while perceiving their opponents as “primitive”. On the other hand, proponents of the discourse of “authenticity” (mainly from families with a weaker educational background; with a rural tradition; residents of the “Oriental” South of the country; and “patriots”) maintain the standpoint that degree of “authenticity” should be the basis of the status hierarchy; they see themselves as the authentic representatives of the “people“ and their opponents as ”alienated-from-the-people“, “feminized“ and “Westernized“. When, using MCA and relying on these indicators (educational trajectory of the family, urban trajectory of the family, region of residence and score on the nationalism scale), we constructed something which might conditionally be termed a “status field”, it emerged that this “field” distributes indicators of cultural participation and taste of the citizens of Serbia in a way very similar to the distribution we had arrived at in the course of our analysis of social space in Serbia. Namely, as might have been expected, cultural styles (traditional elite cultural style, elite omnivores and urban cultural style) which are constituted near the “global cultural capital” pole (in social space), are also grouped at the pole at which all indicators of “civilizedness” overlap (in the “status field”). The reverse also holds: cultural styles (folklore style, neo-folk cultural style and rurban omnivores) which are located in the vicinity of the “local cultural capital” pole are concentrated in those segments of the “status field” where indicators of “authenticity” are grouped.

Athough the status hierarchies in question are those which are established outside of the occupational system, they are not independent of the economic dimension (people with lower education, those who live in rural areas and inhabitants of the southern regions of the country are usually poorer than their counterparts). It is for this reason that, as the next step in our analysis, we included as active variables in the “status field” indicators of economic capital (which even in Bourdieu’s conception constitute the basis of other types of capital). When we projected, as passive variables, indicators of taste and cultural participation, as well as indicators of political preference and identity onto this “status/class” field, four groups of variables formed: 1) group of indicators of economic deprivation, without clear status markers, followed by lack of cultural participation and lack of participation in political life; 2) grouping of indicators of average economic capital and indicators of “authenticity”, characterized by an active political conservatism and cultural styles based on local, folklore culture; 3) indicators of significant economic capital, without clear status markings, with adjoining groupings of libertarian political attitudes, intensive participation in cultural and sporting activities, lavish cultural equipment and omnivore tastes; and 4) a group of indicators of meager economic capital and the status of “civilizedness”, joined by indicators of “pure” types of taste (elite taste and urban taste), lack of particularly significant cultural participation in the public sphere, European identities and support for the political parties of the cultural left.

Even though these findings are preliminary, we feel they testify to the fact that status and class, although analytically separable, are, in practical life, inseparable and that they rather stand as a “reservoir of resources” at agents’ disposal for the shaping of their activities and strategies.

 

Unruly objects, judgments and boundary drawing in the field of contemporary art conservation

Fernando Dominguez & Elizabeth Silva, The Open Universit

Over the last decades, the study of the dynamics of the ‘artworld’ has motivated a great deal of sociological interest. This interest has been very productive in detailing the processes of negotiation, cooperation and struggle between the different agents involved in this field. However, there has been very little consideration of the role that artworks themselves play in mediating these dynamics. In this paper we explore how artworks intervene in these processes both re-producing divisions within the field of contemporary art and re-drawing boundaries between agents and fields. The study is based on ethnographic evidence from the Conservation Laboratory of the Museum of Modern Art of New York (MoMA). It shows how some artworks operate as ‘unruly objects’ challenging and redrawing internal boundaries and established hierarchies as well as the institutional boundaries that separate the museum from other institutions and related fields. Tracing the trajectories of some of these unruly objects as they travel through various departments will allow us to explore the dynamics of change as the different agents in the museum adapt to the challenges posed by these objects. As we shall show, these unruly objects demand the institution of a novel process of judgement that redistributes competencies and expertise and creates, in so doing, a new cartography of power within the museum. We will conclude by exploring the role of these ‘unruly objects’ as vectors of transformation and change in the field.

 

Field, sub-field and local social spaces: Structural levels of “low brow” music and social conditions of cultural domination

Vincent Dubois, University of Strasbourg & Jean-Matthieu Méon, Université Paul Verlaine-Metz

This paper is based on a research on amateur wind music orchestras musical (« orchestres d’harmonie », similar to brass bands) in France (Dubois V., Méon J.-M., Pierru E., Les mondes de l’harmonie, Paris, La Dispute, 2009). This research was conducted on in North-East France (Alsace). The empirical work consisted in two complementary parts: a statistical study of the orchestras, their musicians and their associative presidents and musical directors to collect broad sociological data, with multi-correspondence analyses of the musicians’ profiles and of the orchestras: ethnographic monographs of three orchestras (observation of rehearsals, concerts and internal social events ; biographies and comprehensive interviews with musicians).

The paper we propose addresses several questions of the workshop, including: the use of field analysis on levels other than the national (1st area), the way different fields inter-relate (3rd area). It intends to identify and specify a localized space of musical practices and its relations to the national musical field. Following Bourdieu’s field theory but also qualifying it, we identify four levels of the relational structures of social positions and relations underlying this music. 1) national musical field; 2) brass bands musical sub-field; 3) localised cooperation networks; 4) local social spaces of relationships. This four-level analysis sheds light on the conditions required for cultural legitimacy to exert its domination on low forms of culture. It shows how the grounding of musical practices in a specific territory and its local social space allows those practices to take place in a « cultural free zone » (Pierre Bourdieu) –i.e. protects disqualified cultural practices from judgements and injunctions from the legitimate (national) musical field and cultural institutions.

This paper could be organised in four main points:

• The dominated status of the wind music practice in regard to the cultural legitimacy (and especially in regard to the musical field criterions).
• The existence of a sub-field of wind music, whose structural principles are specific and differ from those of the musical field (a field which is not organized on esthetical and musical oppositions; ethics based on dedication and fidelity to the group rather than on musical quality)
• The practices of the musicians take place into the framework of a local social space which partly replaces the legitimate rules of the musical with constraints related to the social context (local animation, etc.)
• The conditions of existence of such a free zone are challenged by general social evolutions (in leisure, education, work organisation, rural society, etc.), by internal transformations of the orchestras (recruitment, organisation) and by cultural policy choices.

As a conclusion, we could discuss two theoretical propositions: 1) field theory can be combined with the analyse of other levels of social structuration, this combination being particularly necessary for the sociology of positions and practices on which “field effects” are weaker than other social determinations; 2) this qualified use of Bourdieu’s field theory can help us to go beyond the sociological dilemma of domination vs autonomy of low forms of culture, and proves efficient to address the question of cultural legitimacy and symbolic domination in a concrete way.

 

Politics of the service class: The case of Scandinavia

Magne Flemmen, University of Oslo & Johs Hjellbrekke, University of Berge

This paper investigates the political attitudes of the service class. To what extent are they united by shared political views across the fault lines of different institutions and sectors? We address this question by analyzing the attitudes of members’ of the Scandinavian service class(es) on a range of questions, establishing what disagreements are salient and how these are related to occupation, industry, income and education. Through the widespread acceptance of the Goldthorpe class scheme (Erikson and Goldthorpe, 1993), the ”service class” has in practice become the most generally agreed-upon definition of the “upper class” in contemporary sociology. We raise the question of how cohesive the service class is. We investigate political cleavages within the service class, as means to understanding its integration. For this, we consider a range of question on economic policies (such as redistribution, progressive taxing and governments provision of welfare services etc.), and dimensions of “new olitics”, like the “liberal-authoritarian” issue (such as views on homosexuals, sentences for criminals, attitudes towards traditions etc.) and attitudes towards the environment, materialism and religiosity. Next, we seek to connect political position-takings to social positions – occupation, industry, income, education, social origin – thus assessing whether different “fractions of the service” class are in political disagreement.

We further illuminate this by analyzing how other class schemes – Erik Olin Wrights’s (1985, 1997) and the Bourdieu-inspired Oslo Register Data Class Scheme (Hansen et al., 2009) – are distributed in the political space. This allows to assess whether the service class’ political cleavages may be “explained” by the the inclusion of class positions that should be kept apart, by other theoretical standards. This question is addressed by turning to the approach of Pierre Bourdieu as found in Distinction, notably the notion of social space and the technique of multiple correspondence analysis (Le Roux and Rouanet, 2010).

 

‘There’s something fundamental about what makes you laugh’: Comedy taste and symbolic boundaries

Sam Friedman, University of Edinburgh & Giselinde Kuipers, University of Amsterdam

According to a number of recent studies, cultural audiences no longer use their taste as a means of drawing symbolic boundaries between themselves and other social groups (Lamont, 1992; Van Eijck & Knulst 2005; Bennett et al, 2009). In contrast, they indicate that it has now become a badge of honour to be eclectic in one’s cultural preferences and explicitly not be seen as an exclusivist cultural ‘snob’. However, one cultural form that has been largely ignored in such studies of cultural consumption is comedy.

This article utilises interview data from both the UK and the Netherlands to demonstrate that audiences from different social classes tend to draw very strong symbolic boundaries on the basis of comedy taste. Eschewing the kind of openness described in other cultural areas, comedy audiences make a wide range of negative aesthetic, moral and political judgments on the basis of comedy taste, inferring that one’s sense of humour reveals deep-seated aspects of their personhood. Moreover, they often make harsh judgements without the disclaimers, apologies and ambivalence so typical of “taste talk” in contemporary culture. The article also demonstrates how both Dutch and British middle class audiences use their comedy taste to communicate a powerful sense of distinction and cultural superiority. We discuss several reasons why such processes of social distancing may exist in comedy taste and not other cultural areas: the traditionally low status of comedy; the strong relation between humour, morality, and personhood; the continuity between comedy tastes and humour styles in everyday life; as well as the specific position of comedy in the British and Dutch cultural fields. 

 

One Scandinavian model of journalism - or several? Sketch for a comparative analysis of three national professional social fields

Jan Fredrik Hovden, University of Bergen

In Bourdieu-inspired research, statistical constructions of social fields of professionals on a national level are almost never compared more than very superficially. The reasons are various, and to a degree, obvious. Studying more than one national field within the same project is both vastly more difficult and expensive: analysing just one such field adequately is in itself a monumental task of data gathering and requires extensive knowledge of the specific national nuances, and a general design (e.g. replicating a national survey) can easily end up in ignoring just what makes these field differ and distinct. A second reason is that the many possible approaches to the study of social fields means that they are usually constructed very differently and is thus very difficult to compare  (I discuss some aspects of this problem in regard to the differences of a Norwegian and French journalistic field in Hovden 2009).

In my dr. thesis (Hovden 2009) I sketched a model of the Norwegian journalistic field using an individual-anonymous approach (using survey data). Using this as a starting point, I will in this paper/presentation discuss an attempt to model the same national field using an institutional-unanonymous approach, that is, by using institutional characteristics of the various news outlets combined with other data (including a Nordic study of journalism students), an approach which in field analysis has been used both by Bourdieu (see for his analyses of constructions firms 1990 and publishing houses 1999) and others (see for example Duval 2000).

This analysis of the Norwegian field, however, is just the first application of an analytical approach which is planned to be used as the basis for a comparative field study of the the Norwegian, Danish and Swedish journalistic field. In addition to discussing the specific challenges involved in moving from an individual-anonymous to an institutional-nonanonymous analysis, I will therefore also discuss some challenges - and possible solutions - to such a national-comparative project, and some of the possible scientific benefits.

 

New technologies and cultural participation in the French-speaking part of Belgium

Laurie Hanquinet, University of York

This paper presents the first results of the survey on cultural participation in the French-speaking part of Belgium. With the use of a multiple correspondence analysis and an ascending hierarchical classification on a dataset of 2021 individuals, it will be explored how the cultural field is structured in this European area and how preferences, cultural activities but also uses of new technologies are linked one another. This would help investigate issues related to the relevance, the definition and the formation of Bourdieu’s cultural capital, in a sociological context where the issue of “omnivorousness” has taken precedence. Seven classes of cultural participants will be distinguished and attention will be paid to the profile of one of these classes particularly involved in the “new screen culture” (Donnat), namely in the uses of internet, DVD players, computer and console games. As Donnat observed it in France, it will be shown that this new screen culture leads them to disregard other activities, such as watching television (and then the traditional screen culture). Involvement in new technologies has not often been tackled in studies on cultural participation, whereas it appears nowadays to be one essential element to understand it.  

 

The link between gender and cultural capital in Finland

Tuomo Laihiala, University of Helsinki

This paper is contributing to recent research on class differences and gender differences in cultural consumption. First this paper sets out from Bourdieusian theoretical frame using concepts such as cultural capital, habitus and social differentiation. In addition I will focus on “sexual differentiation” and habits of gender (i.e. gender-typical cultural taste and participation). In examining cultural participation and taste by gender the aim is to explore the effect of gender in shaping cultural consumption patterns using Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) as a method. MCA is used to create cultural maps for males and females separately in contrast to previous research. The analysis draws upon the survey data (N=1388) that was particularly designed with the recent debates of cultural consumption in mind by the research project Cultural capital and social differentiation in contemporary Finland. Results suggest the same dimensions of the MCA solution found in the previous research (i.e. by our research project and by the British project Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion).

Some differences between the maps of males and females were found in both of these dimensions, but the most important differences that were found relate to distribution of background variables such as salary, marital status and occupational classification.

 

Responses to discrimination and social resilience under neo-liberalism: The case of Brazil, Israel and the United States

Michèle Lamont, Crystal Fleming & Jessica Welburn, Harvard University

This paper analyzes social resilience by focusing on responses to stigmatization across national contexts.   Drawing on collaborative research, we compare responses to stigmatization among middle class and working class in Brazil, Israel, and the United States, with a focus on African-Americans, Afro-Brazilians, and three groups in Israel:  Ethiopian Jews, Mizrahis (Oriental Jews) and Muslim citizens of Israel.  The broader objective is to analyze the narratives of “ordinary people” concerning their responses to stigmatization and how these are enabled by cultural repertoires that are associated with 1) collective myths about national identity; 2) counter-repertoires, namely a) repertoires about matrixes of human worth that are favored by neo-liberalism and that emphasize competition, consumption,  individualization, and personal achievement; b)  repertoires tied to African-American shared history and identity, which stress resilience and morality (e.g. the caring self). After sketching how responses are enabled by national myths in the United States, Brazil, and Israel (namely, by the American dream, the Brazilian ideal of racial mixing, and the Zionist creed in Israel), we consider the contradictory influence of different types of cultural repertoires on African-American responses to stigmatization. We discuss how these various types of narratives foster resilience and can act as resources or buffer against the wear and tear of stigmatization, with the goal of better understanding how to reduce racial disparities in health. Finally, we discuss the theoretical implications of this research for understanding the transformation of group boundaries at the level of individual and collective boundary work and the interface between cultural sociology and social psychology in the study of destigmatization processes.

 

Geometric data analysis of French cultural practices

Frédéric Lebaron, Université de Picardie – Jules Verne/CNRS, Philippe Bonnett & Brigitte Le Roux, Université Paris Descartes/CNRS

Our proposal is to make an assessment of the latest breakthroughs in geometric data analysis. This will be illustrated with cultural practices data from the permanent INSEE survey (2003) about cultural and sport participation. The aim is to prolong the theoretical and methodological approach Pierre Bourdieu and Monique de Saint-Martin initiated in “L’anatomie du goût”. This approach can be enriched with the new possibilities of geometric data analysis.

Different kinds of problems will be examined at different steps of analysis:

• preparation of the data table: choose active individuals and active variables and encode categories;
• choose the method (MCA, specific MCA);
• after interpretation of axes in the cloud of categories, inspecting and dressing up the cloud of individuals;
• supplementary elements: individuals and variables;
• deep investigation of the cloud of individuals (structuring factors, concentration ellipses, between-within variance,…);
• euclidean clustering and interpretation of the clusters in the space of individuals;
• statistical inference.

These problems will be presented and illustrated within the analysis of cultural practices and lifestyles data.

 

An exploration of the ‘fell runners habitus’ in a shifting socio-cultural field: Developing an ethnography of the running in the English Lake District

Sarah Nettleton, University of York

Since the 1950s fell running in the English Lake District has transformed from a marginal activity into a sport popular with both locals and tourists, and as such it quintessentially mirrors the changing socio-economic fortunes of this unique area.  As such, fell racing in this geographical locality provides a neat case study of a multiplicity of shifting boundaries between: men and women; locals and visitors; old and young; elite and novice; and the working and middle classes. Historically fell runners were shepherds and farm workers; fit young men native to the area who offered their services to guide wealthy tourists keen to explore the untamed wilderness. Success in fell races could earn them an, albeit meager, additional income. Furthermore, their habitus was shaped by their native terrain, it was ingrained. Today men and women, young and old, locals and ‘off-comers’ participate strictly as amateurs in a growing number of well organised race events. They have to learn how to run up and down fells and to navigate the landscape in variable weather conditions. They have to cultivate a ‘fell runner’s habitus’ the bodily and mental practices required to effectively negotiate the terrain.  Although an intensely individual and potentially lonesome activity (especially if lost in the mist) there is also a collective dimension, as the changing nature and context of this pursuit would attest. Fell running is now but one of many outdoor sporting activities in the Lake District. Each week there are other forms of running events such as: road races, trail traces, mountain marathons, ultras and orienteering. There has been a veritable increase of extreme sports with triathlons, mountain biking, outdoor swimming also featuring on the national park’s sporting calendar. The historical transformation of the Lake District from a feral landscape that yielded limited economic returns, to a playground that generates income through servicing the leisure activities of a heterogeneous middle class represents the construction of a complex and shifting cultural, economic, and social field. Thus the embodied habitus of fell runners has changed with a growing variety of athletes cultivating the skills of running, and is no longer limited to indigenous competitors participating in low key events. Reporting on an ongoing ethnography of fell running in the Lake District this paper will present preliminary findings in order to explore the changing nature of the fell runners’ habitus.

 

Cultural Capital in the UK and Finland: Methodological issues in comparative work on tastes

Semi Purhonen, University of Helsinki & David Wright, University of Warwick

An abiding criticism of Bourdieu's work in Distinction is that it is as much about the relationship between taste and class in a specific national social space than it is about general transferable patterns of taste in contemporary societies - or at least contemporary Western societies. One response to this is to compare national spaces.  Although some comparative work has been attempted, it has rarely followed the methodological model from which Bourdieu's own findings emerge. Comparative studies tend, for example, not to draw on Multiple Correspondence Analysis. This method underpins Bourdieu's insistence of the relationality of social life and it is partly from it that claims for the transferability of the approach or the universality of the findings might logically stem.  Such studies also rarely take account of the mix of methods - and in particular the combination of the quantitative with the qualitative – which are evident in Distinction and that allow for the meaning of the positions in social space Bourdieu identifies to be narrativised. Drawing on two projects which develop Bourdieu’s methodological approaches, into two distinct national spaces (the UK and Finland), this paper outlines some specific difficulties in using MCA and mixed methods in comparative work.

 By identifying the ‘translation’ problems in the construction of two nationally relevant research instruments, the paper will consider the extent to which the similarities and differences in the meaning of items in different national spaces should concern the Bourdieu-inspired comparative analyst.  The paper also reports on the evident similarities between the two constructed spaces but, drawing on the direct dialogue between quantitative and qualitative enabled by developments in MCA, identifies some differences in what different positions in social space appear to mean in the UK and Finland. It will conclude by suggesting that, whilst Bourdieu's model provides a robust set of methods for exploring relations between taste and class within nations, it still needs to be used with caution in comparing patterns between nations. Calls for comparative work as an inevitable and valuable next step to the nationally based data on taste and social class might raise as many methodological questions as they resolve.

 

Exploring cultural oppositions within privileged and underprivileged classes: the case of Aalborg

Jakob Skjøtt-Larsen, University of Aalborg

In Distinction Pierre Bourdieu does not limit himself to construct a “global” space of social positions and of lifestyles. He also uses MCA to construct two spaces dedicated to explore variations in tastes within the dominant class (pp.260-67) and the petit-bourgeoisie (pp.339-46). The aim of this paper will be to make a similar exploration of cultural variations within privileged and underprivileged classes. The analysis will be based on survey data (N=1174) collected in the municipality of Aalborg in Denmark. Using MCA, a “global space” of lifestyles is constructed, with cultural practices and preferences as active categories. Then a class of individuals with high volume of economic and cultural capital and a class of individuals with low volume of economic and cultural capital is singled out (based on a separate construction of a space of social positions). Using “class specific analysis” the internal variations in tastes in each of the chosen classes is explored in turn. The main questions posed are: What are the main oppositions in tastes within the privileged class? And within the underprivileged class? Are these oppositions to be found between economic and cultural fractions? Or between other subgroups? Using "class specific analysis" it is possible to study a class of individuals, while still maintaining reference to the whole set of active individuals (Le Roux & Rouanet 2010:64).

[1] Dubois V., Méon J.-M., Pierru E., Les mondes de l’harmonie, Paris, La Dispute, 2009.