Culture, Class, Distinction

Many books are being written about Pierre Bourdieu, turning him into a theoretical "classic". But Bennett, Savage and their colleagues have written a book to read alongside Bourdieu, using his work as a model and stimulation for continuing empirical inquiry. With rich new data they tackle the question of how specific Bourdieus famous analysis of Distinction is to France. They show tastes are different in Britain, but that the analytic framework linking tastes to class, cultural capital and habitus is not only transportable but effective and revealing. This is an important book. Craig Calhoun, President of the Social Science Research Council Culture, Class, Distinction/ defines the new research frontier in the sociological understanding of the intersection of culture and inequality. Resolutely empirical in orientation, the authors creatively build on and go beyond the seminal work of Pierre Bourdieu to consider simultaneously symbolic boundaries in the context of racial and ethnic diversity, gendered patterns of cultural preferences, specific fields of cultural practices (reading, music, the visual arts, the body), and much more. Social scientists within and beyond the UK have much to learn from this ambitious and path-breaking collective research. Michle Lamont, Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. A superb achievement: at once a cogent theoretical reappraisal of Bourdieu's masterwork of 20th century sociology, and a uniquely wide-ranging study, offering powerful insights, into the changing contours of culture in British society today. Like Distinction, this book will remain a centrepiece of international sociology Georgina Born, Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Music, University of Cambridge Culture, Class, Distinction is the most sophisticated mapping of British cultural practices and preferences ever undertaken. Using cutting-edge techniques of statistical analysis and engaging critically with the sociology of culture developed by Pierre Bourdieu, it explores the cultural dimensions of class, gender and ethnicity across a range of fields. This is a major contribution to understanding the roots of social inclusion and exclusion in British life, and a complex and subtle piece of social theory. John Frow, Professor of English at School of Culture & Communication University of Melbourne The amount of labour that has gone into this work is nothing short of impressive. One can only be grateful for the information produced by the authors concerning the relation between social location and cultural practice in Britain today. But the book does a lot more than this. It offers a highly nuanced analysis of this information. It is an excellent example of how one can innovate theoretically while doing empirical research. Ghassan Hage, Professor of Anthropology and Social Theory, University of Melbourne

The book is co-authored by Tony Bennett, Mike Savage, Elizabeth Silva, Alan Warde, Modesto Gayo-Cal, David Wright. The book arises out of research conducted at the Economic and Social Research Council Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change (CRESC), a major international cente for the analysis of socio-cultural change. Tony Bennett is Research Professor of Social and Cultural Theory in the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney, and a Professorial Fellow in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. Recent publications include Pasts Beyond Memory: Evolution, Museums, Colonialism; New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society (edited with Larry Grossberg and Meaghan Morris) and Handbook of Cultural Analysis (edited with John Frow). Mike Savage is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester and Director of the ESRC Centre for Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC). His interests are in social stratification, urban, and historical sociology. Elizabeth Silva is Professor of Sociology at the Open University and a member of the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change (CRESC). Her current research interests include social divisions, gender, cultural sociology, everyday life and qualitative methods. Alan Warde is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. His current research interest include the sociology of consumption, with particular emphasis on food, cultural sociology, social stratification and economic sociology. Modesto Gayo-Cal was a research fellow at CRESC and the Department of Sociology at the University of Manchester while working on the Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion project. His areas of interest are: theories of nationalism, political behaviour, middle classes, and cultural consumption. He is also interested in the application of statistical methods in the social sciences. He is now a Profesor Investigador at the Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago de Chile. David Wright has published extensively in the field of cultural sociology and is an Assistant Professor in Cultural Policy Studies at the University of Warwick. He was a research fellow on the Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion Project at the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change (CRESC), based at the Open University.

Introduction Part 1: Situating the Analysis 1. Culture after Distinction 2. Researching Cultural Capital: Questions of Theory and Method Part 2: Mapping Tastes, Practices and Individuals 3. Mapping British Cultural Taste and Participation 4. Individuals in Cultural Maps Part 3: Cultural Fields and the Organisation of Cultural Capital 5. Tensions of the Musical Field 6. Popular and Rare: Exploring the Field of Reading 7. A Sociological Canvas of Visual Art 8. Contrasting Dynamics of Distinction: The Media Field 9. Cultural Capital and the Body Resum: Cultural Fields: Tensions and Dynamics Part 4: The Social Dimensions of Distinction 10. Cultural Formations of the Middle Classes 11. Culture and the Working Class 12. Gender and Cultural Capital 13. Nation, Ethnicity and Globalisation 14. Conclusion Methodological Appendices