Notes on:
Harrits, G. (2013) 'Class, culture and politics:
on the relevance of a Bourdieusian concept of
class in political sociology'. The
Sociological Review, 61: 172-202. Doi:
10. 11111/1467-954 X. 12009
Dave Harris
Lots of people have argued for the decline of
class, including Pakulski and Waters, and even
Goldthorpe has wobbled when it comes to political
analysis. However there has been a recent
revival, including the
Bennett team, with a renewed emphasis on
culture and its interdependence with class.
Cultural practices have tended to be over
represented, however especially in the form of
cultural consumption, all the relations between
cultural practices and education. Politics
and political practices remain largely unexamined,
and, correspondingly, the concept of class is
almost absent within political sociology.
However, Bourdieu can be used to rectify this
situation and analyze political practices.
Bourdieu himself did analyse such practices,
including work on the state, and a number of his
followers have developed political sociology as
well, including Wacquant [and a long list on
173]. Politics can be seen as a field and a
practice, and he has a dimension of
consumption. The article also includes a
multiple correspondence analysis between class
relations and political practices in Denmark.
Class analysis can be seen as having two main
elements - social relations and how they appear in
modern society, and secondly, the relationship
between class and practices. The first
element leads to concepts 'such as capital, social
space and class'(174), whereas the second element
leads to 'field, symbolic space, and
practice'. Culture appears in both, in the
first context as capital, or social resource, and
in the second as 'meaningful symbolic practices,
and lifestyles, identities and discourses' which
contribute to the maintenance of social
relations. There is also a distinction
between the fields. The field of cultural
consumption is described in Distinction
and elsewhere, but the relationship between social
classes and symbolic practices involves an notion
of production - 'fields are always both fields of
forces and fields of struggle' here.
Class is a matter of the accumulation and use of
various types of capital. This seems to
appear to be an improvement on Marx, which reduces
the many forms to the economic. Cultural
capital like the others have an effect in their
own right and produce structures of power, which
can even compete among themselves. Cultural
capital is also affected by the development of
'cultural or informational fields' (175), through
such matters as printing presses, universities
issuing credentials and so on. The strongest
capitals produce social spaces, and empirical
analysis suggests that it is economic and cultural
capitals primarily, and then a social and symbolic
capital which are the most important. Both
volume and composition of capital structures
social space.
The notion of class is relational, depicted
visually by the maps showing positions in social
space. Overall volume of capital
distinguishes the primary classes, and the
composition of capital distinguishes class
fractions. Occupational groups are only used
in the empirical construction of social space, as
an indicator of position. Overall the effect
is multidimensional, to do with relational
positions and allowing for the impact of different
forms of capital and interactions between
fractions. The actual map in France is only
'empirically derived and thus temporary', however.
Class produces similar 'objective social
conditions' and a class habitus which further
produces dispositions and practices. They
may persist 'on paper' before developing symbolic
labour to constitute their boundaries. They
can also be studied empirically by looking at
lifestyles, 'classes misrecognised' (176).
Agents need not be conscious of the class
character of their practice is all dispositions,
and Harrits says this Weberian. At this
point, the distinction between spaces and fields
gets 'blurred', and practices like political ones
are sometimes allocated to both.
It is possible to clarify the distinction,
however. A field is 'a relational
configuration of specific resources (capital) and
practices, which unites people struggling to
accumulate capital. An 'endless number of
fields exist' empirically. However, the
field really means 'production field', a term used
by Bourdieu himself. These feature struggles
by experts or professionals united in a common
struggle for power and legitimacy, and 'sharing
the same illusio... and doxa'.
Consumption fields are different. These are
'spaces of symbolic practices' often connected to
production fields, but consisting of lay people or
consumers who are united in the consumption of
products or specific forms of practice.
There is an 'overall (structural and functional)
homology between the social space of classes and
almost any field', but the effects of class may
vary, and sometimes have no effect. Some
fields are homologous to the social space, and
some are even 'structured autonomously by their
own principles'[like university academics, but
this is a licensed autonomy]. The political
production field might be one where professional
politicians are relatively autonomous, where
'field illusio and doxa'a more important than
class habitus. However, in the
consumption space, 'the political illusio is
not very strong', so class habitus and position
'expectedly codetermine citizens political
practice', together with 'some field
effects'. Thus class works to produce
homologies especially in consumption spaces.
Bourdieu's actual analysis depend on the
relational approach, where there are no
independent social elements, causal contributions
or singular factors. For example, the
affects of the level of education depends on its
total distribution among the population and the
existence and distribution of resources competing
with cultural [educational] capital. This is
what underlies multiple correspondence analyses,
to find the empirically important dimensions and
relational configurations of both individuals and
'modalities (i.e. categories of each
variable)'(177). Even so, we get a map of
the social space of classes, which needs a further
step - 'Bourdieu calls it "structural
causality"'(178). This is not explained
well, but it means that there is a causal
relationship 'between the total social space and
the total symbolic space' operating at the level
of fields or spaces. Homology here means
'similar structuration'. Multiple
correspondence analysis can be used to explain
this notion, by comparing different spaces
empirically, and visually.
When discussing political practices, Bourdieu
tends to focus on attitudes and alignments, but
there is also an argument that working class
respondents are effectively excluded, because they
display so many 'don't know' responses, so 'the
tendency to form political opinions [in the first
place] varies with class', and class affects the
ability to participate. This particular
study accompanies the frequent attempts to connect
class with participation, by examining the
relation with political culture, and looks at
political resources separately from
participation. 'Traditional indicators of
these two concepts' are used in the study on
Denmark [which follows. I have leapt
straight to the conclusions. There is some
excellent discussion of what correspondence
analysis is and how it works, and some nice
maps].
To test homology in particular, you have to
compare the categories from one space to the other
spaces, and thus to the social space, constructing
separate maps first to show the main structuring
dimensions. Then you include the categories
of the social space overall as supplementary
points, to help visualisation and comparison of
the categories within the political spaces.
Visual comparisons of configurations have 'been
called "visualised regression"'(187)]
The conclusion overall is that there seem to be
two structuring principles, one depending on
resources of action and political activity, and
one referring to knowledge resources and political
discussion, possibly reflecting the difference
between conceptions or 'principles' of politics as
a struggle for power, and as a matter of ideas and
ideologies. The social space shows the usual
distributions according to amounts of capital,
both economic and cultural. The
supplementary points referred to above appear as
'nine empirical class fractions' based on a prior
analysis of social space in Denmark and producing
its own map. Apparently,a 'strong'
homology can be seen with political participation
and political resources, and composition of
capital 'runs parallel to the dimension
differentiating...the two [conceptions of]
politics'(196).
However there also some 'reconfigurations' - for
example the social space does not feature as much
dispersion as the political maps of capital or
practice, suggesting some degree of autonomy for
political practice. There also seems to be a
particularly active group, not so well explained
by social class or capital. There is also a
suggestion that cultural capital affects political
consumption more than economic. Overall,
several indicators appear to support the homology,
when considering both volume and composition of
capital, but there are other factors, including
very active individuals which suggest that there
are some particularly influenced by an autonomous
doxa and illusio of the political production
field. All these provisional conclusions
need more work.
Overall, highly and active individuals are not
well explained by the distribution of social
spaces, there is also some autonomy for middle
class positions which could be field autonomy, but
also excessive individualization, or social
autonomy and weaker class dispositions, in
cultural generally [referring to the Bennett team,
Savage in particular]. The extent of
autonomy could also be a feature of the specific
social space examined, and social or symbolic
capital might be required in future.
Finally, this is only a snapshot of the underlying
structures and practices, further research might
be required to test habitus in particular,
possibly by researching political boundaries
between groups.
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