On culture and inequality: distinction, omnivorousness, status and class

Key takeaways

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Reading notes

Imported on 2024-06-10 13:08

⭐ Important

• & These are central questions for many sociologists: how, and how much do class-linked cultural practices work to legitimize or reproduce inequality? How separate or separable are the material (class) and symbolic (status/ culture) aspects of social stratification? Is class continuous or categorical, really-real or an analytic production? (p. 780)
• & The first article is by Tak Wing Chan, ‘Understanding Cultural Omnivores: Social and Political Attitudes’. Here, Chan extends his work with Goldthorpe, and argues that ‘omnivorousness is an expression of cosmopolitan postmaterialism rather than a new form of distinction’. This claim, that omnivorousness is opposed to the kind of distinction, discrimination or snobbishness that Bourdieu saw among those with highbrow tastes in Distinction, is a subject of much contestation by many of the commentaries. FJR’s response to Chan’s lead article is directly after it. (p. 781)
• & The second lead article is ‘Class and Status: On the Misconstrual of the Conceptual Distinction and a Neo-Bourdieusian Alternative’, by Magne Flemmen, Vegard Jarness, and Lennart Rosenlund (FJR). Here, the authors have written a piece engaging Chan and Goldthorpe’s earlier work head-on; they argue that Chan and Goldthorpe’s approach to separating status and class is ‘unconvincing’ and that their own interpretation of Bourdieu provides a solution. Chan’s response to their critique follows. (p. 781)