Class and politics in twenty-first century Norway: a homology of positions and position-taking

ABSTRACT

This article draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s rethinking of social class to investigate the connection between class and politics in contemporary society. We introduce a new class scheme that incorporates an often neglected hallmark of Bourdieu’s approach, namely the distinction between class fractions based on the preponderance of economic or cultural capital possessed. By relating our two-dimensional concept of class to a two-dimensional political space, we will show that the relationship between class and politics is homological – the systems of class divisions and political divisions exhibit a corresponding structure. The hierarchical dimension of class is associated with the divide between liberal and anti-liberal views on what is sometimes dubbed ‘new’ politics, whereas the capital composition dimension is connected with the classical left vs. right divide in terms of issues of redistribution, social spending and government interventions in the economy. We conclude by discussing whether political attitudes should be seen as a form of taste and as such on par with cultural tastes.

KEYWORDS:

• Class
• cultural capital
• homology
• politics
• social space

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Magne Paalgard Flemmen is post-doctoral research fellow in sociology at the University of Oslo. His research interests lie in the areas of class analysis, class theory, social stratification and inequality more broadly, with particular attention to the empirical and theoretical relevance of the Bourdieusian model of social space. His recent work focuses on social mobility in the upper classes and the cultural and political aspects of class divisions.

Hedda Haakestad is a researcher at FAFO and a Phd candidate at the Centre for the Study of Professions at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences.

Notes

1 Since the data used in this paper were collected, the Green Party has grown and its electoral popularity is comparable to that of the other small parties.

2 We adhere to Bourdieu in considering political attitudes as analytically analogous to lifestyles, both considered forms of position-taking in various fields.

3 This is slightly problematic as occupational codes refer to the individual, whereas household income does not. The data, however, left us with no other option.

4 This refers to rates of modified eigenvalues as raw eigenvalues in MCA become unduly small (Le Roux and Rouanet 2010: 39–40).

5 For this we use ‘explaining points’: categories with above average contributions to the axis in question. It is these we comment on here.

6 The analysis appears stable in that the general structure of the space is not very sensitive to changing specific questions. We have also found the same structure in other analyses and with other data.

7 Le Roux and Rouanet suggest that distances above 0.5 standard deviations should be regarded as notable and above 1 as large.

8 This amounts to hierarchical agglomerative clustering of the cloud of individuals (Le Roux and Rouanet, 2004: 106–14).

9 Using the full dimensionality of the MCA solution produces a number of clusters reflecting minor subdivisions among the anti-liberal rightists based single questions, like attitudes to environmental care.

10 This interpretation is guided by t-tests of the 5 clusters of the active questions from the MCA.

11 Such a comparison cannot readily be made with the British case.