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Tradition and Modernity in the Mediterranean: The Wedding as Symbolic Struggle. Vassos Argyrou. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 210 pp.

The central focus of this article is to analyse empirically whether and how the monopoly and legitimacy of highbrow arts as a status marker varies across age groups. Drawing on unique Flemish survey data ( n = 2846) that include information on what cultural objects are consumed as well as on how these are appropriated, I construct a two-dimensional social space that relates cultural practices to positions in the social hierarchy through Multiple Correspondence Analysis. Using Class Specific Analysis, I look into the structuring principles within two age clusters (−25 and 55+) and try to determine the ways in which the distinguishing status and legitimacy of highbrow arts varies among different groups – thus challenging the assumption that cultural classifications are equally salient to every social group.

Research on music streaming has so far tended to normalize a view of streaming as an individual activity solely oriented towards the platform. However, as streaming media have become integral to everyday life and a key metaphor for digital society, we should pay attention to how streaming activities are embedded into social power relations. Furthermore, due to the complexity of streaming infrastructures, we should consider the social implications of ordinary expertise pertaining to the handling of digital streams. To this end, this article advances a theoretical view of music streaming as a form of logistical labour and a part of dwelling. Based on a focus-group study on music streaming, the analysis moves beyond the platform to explore social dominance in a cultural landscape where logistical expertise is increasingly important. The analysis shows how the handling of everyday infrastructures underpins complicit forms of logistical dominance and translates into symbolic violence.

Employing Bourdieu's concepts of field and habitus, this article argues that McDonaldization, and by extension globalization, is a social and cultural practice, implemented by actors, with intentions, motivations, and goals. This analytical approach accomplishes two important objectives: first, it moves away from an agentless view of globalization, viewing it instead as a social practice demanding forms of skills and strategies used by actors, and second, this approach helps us understand how forms of global capital enable and are enabled by local forms of social stratification and identity. The research is based on content analysis of newspaper articles on McDonald's in Israel and an in-depth interview with the chief executive officer of McDonald's Israel. It focuses on his social trajectory, asking how his ethnic, class, and political affiliations within the Israeli context endowed him with a global habitus. This global habitus is apparent in the liberal outlook defended by the McDonald's chairman, an outlook that has pitted him against the ultra-orthodox establishment.

As a consequence of the recent financial and economic crisis, social cohesion and integration are in jeopardy all over Europe. In this context, scholars also speak of decreasing solidarity, which is defined as a normative obligation to help each other and to make sacrifices to reach common goals. By taking the empirical example of Austria, we argue that the meaning of solidarity is increasingly being contested. Various collective actors such as trade unions, civil society actors, but also right-wing populist parties are engaged in symbolic struggles over solidarity. To show this, we examine the different concepts and foundations of solidarity and analyse where and why they conflict with each other, referring to recent debates on political issues, such as the needs-based minimum benefit system and the access to the labour market for refugees.

This article considers the cultural determination of Mental Health and the role conferred on language in the social construction of madness. From a historical perspective, the origin of organizations of "ex-patients and survivors" of psychiatry is examined together with the emergence of Mad Pride as a movement that challenges stigma, prejudice, discrimination and violence of sanism as a form of oppression. In this tradition, the use of the term Mad is redefined, a word that originally damaged, now reclaiming its meaning as part of human diversity; a condition of life that deserves to be recognized and celebrated in the public space. From a qualitative perspective and from an ethnographic approach, the symbolic productions of the Mad Pride marches held in Santiago between 2015 and 2018 are analyzed. Regarding the meanings of diversity, protest and carnival, the scope of this initiative is described in the field of political participation and citizen expression in contemporary Chile. ; El presente artículo considera la determinación cultural de la salud mental y el papel conferido al lenguaje en la construcción social de la locura. Desde una perspectiva histórica, se examina el origen de organizaciones de «expacientes y sobrevivientes» de la psiquiatría junto a la emergencia del Orgullo Loco como movimiento que desafía el estigma, los prejuicios, la discriminación y la violencia del cuerdismo como forma de opresión. En esta tradición, se resignifica el uso del término loco/a, una palabra que originalmente dañaba recuperando su sentido como parte de la diversidad humana; una condición de vida que merece ser reconocida y celebrada en el espacio público. Desde una perspectiva cualitativa y de enfoque etnográfico, se analizan las producciones simbólicas de las marchas del Orgullo Loco realizadas en Santiago entre los años 2015 y 2018. En torno a los significados de diversidad, protesta y carnaval se describen los alcances de esta iniciativa en el terreno de la participación política y la expresión ciudadana en el ...

Rather than being just abstract notions scholars write about, pa¬triotism and cosmopolitanism are used by social actors in ongoing social life. Whether employed to name "us" and exalt the values of one's own group, or to name "them" and stigmatize what the opponents stand for, the two terms have long served as potent discursive weapons in the struggle for various kinds of power in Serbia. While they retain some significance to this day, the peak of their intensive and consequential employment in public discourse occurred between 2005 and 2010. In this paper we aim to reconstruct the symbolic battles over the foundations of Serbian political community, based on critical discourse analysis of the discursive material produced by intellectuals and made public via Peščanik and Nova srpska politička misao media outlets.

This contribution links the study of populism as a stylistic repertoire with Bourdieusian class analysis. The starting point is Ostiguy and Moffitt's observation that the populist repertoire draws on symbols of the 'sociocultural low' and 'the popular' produced in non-political fields like food and leisure. Borrowing from Lévi-Strauss and Bourdieu, the article proposes to view these elements as metaphors for positions in vertical and horizontal class relations. Metaphorical signification rests on homologies between the symbolic sphere ('culture') and politics grounded in the divisions of social space ('the class structure'). This perspective allows us to situate the populist repertoire in social structure and analyze its entanglement in struggles over the classification of groups, or symbolic class struggles.