The author covers his long-lasting work on the social change of forms of capital in Scandinavia, expounding on methodological considerations (in particular, the combination of marxist thought and quantitative investigation of social phenomena) and the relationship between theory and research, standing by his decision to spend a whole career at a minor Norwegian university. The multidimensional analysis of compositions of capitals and the geometric modeling of data are explored as the most significant promise of Bourdieu's sociological approach. Written in the third person, the paper stresses the primacy of fields and impersonal forces over the individual agent.
I denne artikel analyseres sammenhængen mellem kulturelle præferencer og social baggrund ud fra et surveymateriale om kulturelle forbrug i Aalborg, der underlægges korrespondance- og klusteranalyser. Der træder tydelige mønstre frem i form af forskelle i præferencer, og disse forskelle kan knyttes til forskelle i kulturel og økonomisk kapital. Dog synes ikke en inddeling i tre hovedklasser efter mønster fra Bourdieus Distinction oplagt i disse danske data, hvor de mest kapitalstærke grupper heller ikke har en lige så markeret smag. Det er hverken luksus, klassisk dannelse eller avantgardisme, der særkender de mest kapitalstærke i Aalborg, men forskellene fra den mere folkelige smag er alligevel tydelige, hvorfor modsætninger mellem det abstrakte og det konkrete, mellem det sjældne og det almindelige, det kostbare og det billige, deltagelse eller ikke deltagelse mv. kan trækkes. Derigennem tegnes også et billede af forskelle både mellem forskellige kapitalstærke grupper og mellem forskellige mindre privilegerede grupper.
ENGELSK ABSTRACT:
Annick Prieur and Lennart Rosenlund: Cultural Differences in Denmark
The aim of this article is to analyze the relationship between cultural preferences and social background on the basis of survey data about cultural consumption in the Danish city Aalborg. The data are subjected to multiple correspondence analysis and cluster analysis. Some clear patterns appear regarding preferential differences that may be related to differences in economic and cultural capital. A division, however, into three main classes, like Bourdieu did in Distinction, does not seem evident in these Danish data, in that the respondents who have the highest levels of capital do not have very distinctive tastes. They are not characterized by luxury, classical education or avant-gardism; but the differences from more popular tastes are still evident in distinctions between the abstract and the concrete, the rare and the common, the expensive and the cheap, participation and non-participation etc. Therefore it is possible to draw a picture of differences between privileged groups and less privileged groups.
Key words: Cultural consumption, Bourdieu, multiple correspondence analysis, classes, cultural capital.
Questions of political conflict have always been central to class analysis; changing political fault lines were a key argument in the debates about the 'death of class'. The ensuing 'cultural turn' in class analysis has shown how class continues to shape lives and experience, though often in new ways. In this article, we bring this mode of analysis to the political domain by unpacking how a multidimensional concept of class – based on the ideas of Bourdieu – can help make sense of contemporary political divisions. We demonstrate that there is a homological relation between the social space and the political space: pronounced political divisions between 'old' politics related to economic issues and 'new' politics related to 'post-material values' follow the volume and composition of capital. Importantly, the left/right divide seems more clearly related to the divide between cultural and economic capital than to the class hierarchy itself. ; This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors. ; acceptedVersion
Abstract Although social class was once central to political sociology, it has become increasingly less so; many analysts now believe that one's class position is less important in determining political attitudes and political party preferences. Simultaneously, more attention has been paid to what might be called the culturalization of politics, as epitomized by the US culture wars and stereotypes like the "latte-drinking liberal." Here, political attitudes are regarded as primarily structured by people's lifestyles and broader way of life. But do political preferences have to be explained by either relations of sociomaterial conditions (e.g. class) or cultural orientations (e.g. status and lifestyles)? In this article, we argue in favor of an approach that aims to reconcile these factors, allowing for the empirical mapping of whether and how they intersect in shaping political party preferences. We investigate this by using detailed Norwegian survey data to measure the extent to which intraclass heterogeneity in political party choices can be accounted for by the interaction between class and lifestyle. We employ a novel combination of Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) and Chi-Squared Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID). In drawing on constructed models of the social space and the space of lifestyles, we show that there are important correspondences between these spaces and that their interaction may help account for party choices. The results highlight the need for a more complex account than that suggested in recent works of cultural stratification research.
Questions of political conflict have always been central to class analysis; changing political fault lines were a key argument in the debates about the 'death of class'. The ensuing 'cultural turn' in class analysis has shown how class continues to shape lives and experience, though often in new ways. In this article, we bring this mode of analysis to the political domain by unpacking how a multidimensional concept of class – based on the ideas of Bourdieu – can help make sense of contemporary political divisions. We demonstrate that there is a homological relation between the social space and the political space: pronounced political divisions between 'old' politics related to economic issues and 'new' politics related to 'post-material values' follow the volume and composition of capital. Importantly, the left/right divide seems more clearly related to the divide between cultural and economic capital than to the class hierarchy itself.
