Abstract
Between 2003 and 2007 the authors of this paper contributed, in various ways, to a major research project in the UK, Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion, designed to explore how far the structure of cultural capital in Britain varied from that which Bourdieu famously analysed in Distinction. We had somewhat different theoretical perspectives and methodological skills, yet were all struck by the fact that despite the influence of Bourdieu in British sociology and cultural studies, there were no sustained studies of the nature of cultural taste and participation which permitted an informed consideration of the extent to which the structure and organisation of cultural capital in Britain might vary from the French version distilled by Bourdieu. The project led to extensive publications (see notably Bennett et al 2005 and 2009; Le Roux et al 2008; Silva and Warde 2010), and has attracted considerable international interest, with allied and comparable projects in Denmark, Norway, Finland and France (see Bennett and Silva 2011, and Prieur and Savage 2011, for overviews). Given space limitations, we provide only the most basic account of our findings, which we relate to Bourdieu’s original conception of cultural capital. We do so be describing the patterning of cultural life across the seven fields which our project examined – music, reading, visual arts, television, film, sport and culinary practices. We also delineate systematic cultural cleavages and divisions over attachments to cultural activities germane to the operation of cultural capital.
Translated title of the contribution | Re-visited differentiation : the space of the styles of British life in 2003 |
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Original language | French |
Title of host publication | Trente ans après La Distinction de Pierre Bourdieu |
Editors | Philippe Coulangeon, Julien Duval |
Place of Publication | France |
Publisher | La Découverte |
Pages | 179-205 |
Number of pages | 27 |
ISBN (Print) | 9782707176677 |
Publication status | Published - 2013 |