Vol 2 – Issue 1 by Catalyst

Author:Catalyst
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-08-25T20:39:52+00:00

Social Reproduction

Social Change

Reflexivity

Appendix on Scholarship

Class Theory

My article drew primarily on Distinction to show that Bourdieu’s class theory is not explanatory. I raised three main problems. First, I argued that Bourdieu “fails to specify . . . an empirically tractable meaning of the term ‘class.’” Instead Bourdieu either inflates the concept to such an extent that it becomes equivalent to any social difference, so that no pattern of survey responses could fail to show “class differences in taste”; or he includes habitus in his definition of class, thereby rendering any attempt to demonstrate a relationship between class position and disposition (i.e., habitus) meaningless. This latter problem is especially severe in the case of cultural capital, which according to Bourdieu can assume an “embodied” form and therefore is a type of habitus.

Second, I argued that whatever one thinks about class, Bourdieu’s empirical evidence does not demonstrate the existence of habitus, whether class-determined or otherwise. Bourdieu’s evidence shows some “class” differences in some domains of taste. But he does not show similar differences across different domains of taste, which is the crucial point for habitus.

Finally, I argued that Bourdieu implicitly employed two models of the relationship between class and taste in Distinction; one, in which each class has its own habitus, and a second in which habitus is shared across classes. But these theories are not only different; they directly contradict one another.4

How do my critics respond to these claims? Heilbron and Steinmetz’s article does not address the first and third points and provides a weak response to point two, contradicted by a contribution to a book that they themselves reference. Burawoy also neglects to address the first point but does provide a substantial and thoughtful response to points two and three. Before responding to each critique in detail it is worth pausing over what my critics admit (in Heilbron and Steinmetz’s case implicitly, in Burawoy’s explicitly): that Bourdieu’s theory of class and taste is, as Burawoy puts it “tautological” and not “accessible to empirical examination” (5). To me this seems like a substantial surrender at the very outset. Let me now turn to a more detailed examination of the responses.

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