The politics of consumption : positioning the nation

In Distinction, Bourdieu draws out the strong, but mediated, relations between pol­itics and cultural tastes, and the issues through which they are expressed – the right to speak, moral order and class consciousness. While Bourdieu’s analysis was framed by an emphasis on French class politics, we adopt a broader sense of the political, focusing less on the political sphere than on the processes through which people position themselves in relation to the state and civil society. Discussions of con­sumption during the Australian Cultural Fields (ACF) interviews drew people to issues around national identity, social cohesion and globalisation, demonstrating the ways in which political subjectivities are mediated through cultural practices. These interviews illustrate the complex forms of position-taking that interviewees under­take and the political dispositions that they reflect. This chapter is particularly con­cerned with participants’ enunciation of the relations between their cultural preferences and ideas of national culture, the array of stances towards the nation that they voice, the challenges to a traditional politics of nation posed by the growing recognition of Indigenous and migrant cultures, and the threats and prom­ises of globalisation.