Viewpoints and points of view: situating symbolic boundary drawing in social space

ABSTRACT

This article demonstrates how Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of social space and Michèle Lamont’s concept of symbolic boundaries can be fruitfully combined in cultural-stratification research. Focusing on the case of Stavanger, Norway, the analysis also shows how Multiple Correspondence Analysis is compatible with other research techniques, such as qualitative in-depth interviews. The approach adopted provides a practical application of Bourdieu’s double reading of social relations. It combines the first, objective moment of situating 46 individuals subjected to qualitative interviews in the local social space (i.e. a system of relations between individuals’ possessions of cultural and economic capital) with the second, subjective moment of mapping the interviewees’ evaluations and classifications of other people’s lifestyles. It is shown how intertwinements of various discursive repertoires of evaluation (cultural-aesthetical, moral-political and socio-economic) work in both contradictive and reinforcing ways to construct symbolic boundaries between classes and class fractions. The findings draw attention to both the capital volume and the capital composition dimensions of social space in that symbolic boundary drawing takes on different forms along these dimensions.

KEYWORDS:

• Bourdieu
• class
• cultural capital
• Lamont
• lifestyle
• Multiple Correspondence Analysis
• status

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Lennart Rosenlund for helping me to project my respondents onto his model of the social space, as well as Magne Flemmen, Johs. Hjellbrekke and two anonymous European Societies reviewers for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Vegard Jarness is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Bergen. His research interests include social inequality, class and cultural stratification. Recent publications have appeared in Sociology, British Journal of Sociology, Poetics and The Routledge Companion to Bourdieu’s ‘Distinction’.

Notes

1 According to Lamont, ‘moral boundaries’ are drawn on the basis of moral character and qualities such as honesty, one’s work ethic, personal integrity and consideration for others; ‘socio-economic boundaries’ are drawn on the basis of judgements concerning people’s social position as indicated by their wealth, power or professional success; meanwhile, ‘cultural boundaries’ are drawn on the basis of education, intelligence, manners, tastes and one’s command of high culture (Lamont, 1992: 4).

2 A somewhat similar strategy was employed by Bennett et al. (2009). However, since they only constructed a space of lifestyles, and not a social space, the interviewees’ position in the latter could not be located.