Elizabeth B. Silva

Field Analysis in Cultural Sociology

The idea of field analysis has been championed as an alternative to ‘variable based’ accounts of social life, and offers the potential for cross-fertilization with complexity theory and forms of ‘descriptive’ research. Yet, the Bourdieusian roots of field analysis pose challenges as well as advantages, given the widespread critique of reductionist elements in Bourdieu’s thinking. This introduction to the special issue lays out how Bourdieu conceives of field analysis and some of the ambivalences this might give rise to. The papers in this special issue explore through worked examples how field analysis might be radicalized and made more dynamic. We focus on three main issues: (1) understanding emerging field dynamics which challenge the influential model that Bourdieu uses in Distinction, (2) showing the potential for comparative analysis and (3) recognizing the role of materiality in cultural relations. The papers collected here allow for varied engagements with the theoretical underpinnings of the classical formulations of field theory, via empirical analyses of both ‘established’ and ‘new’ fields to explore the trajectories of possible developments in field analysis.

Distinction through visual art

Visual art is one of the fields where, according to Bourdieu, culture is used to reproduce the class structure. Like other items in the cultural repertoire, paintings, as major examples of visual art, imply social divisions in how they are engaged with by artists, critics and audiences. Within the Bourdieusian framework, cultural engagements with paintings are interpreted as indicators of social position, since appreciation depends on a trained capacity in the family and the educational system, which is often inaccessible to less powerful sections of the population. This would imply that the sorts of paintings favoured by working-class people differ from those preferred by the middle or upper classes. More recent studies have contested the view that a gulf exists between the art tastes of different classes in ways that reproduce the class structure. The argument of the omnivore thesis that distinctions between more popular and legitimate tastes have become blurred has predominantly been based on empirical references in the field of music. This article explores this thesis on the basis of data about visual arts in the Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion project. While some differences continue to be connected to social divisions of income, education and occupational groups, important similarities are found across the board, and certain significant differences appear to relate to factors other than social class, such as ethnicity, age and gender. It is also significant that some people appear disconnected from and disinterested in paintings.

The cook, the cooker and the gendering of the kitchen

This article combines the approaches of actor-network theory and poststructuralism to consider how a household technology has interacted with patterns of gender hierarchies over time. Two major innovations in cooking technologies are analysed in relation to cooking activities and the related conceptions of womens roles in families, which are central to these concerns. The first technological development is the thermostat oven control, introduced in the 1920s and 1930s; the second is the microwave oven, introduced in the late 1980s and 1990s. Important conceptions of the cooks performance are examined and various implicit roles that have been tacitly assumed by innovating agents in the use of cookers are made explicit. The study contributes to discussions of gender and technology in the context of domestic life.

Cultural capital and inequality: policy issues and contexts

In this special issue of Cultural Trends we report on selected and provisional findings of a large-scale research inquiry into cultural tastes, knowledge and forms of cultural participation in contemporary Britain, considered in their relations to some of the key indicators of social divisions and differences: class, gender, ethnicity, education, residence, income etc. The inquiry - Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion: A Critical Investigation (CCSE) - was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), and was conducted via a rich mix of quantitative and qualitative research methods which we will discuss in more detail shortly.1 We begin, though, in the first two sections, with a review of some aspects of the histories of the concepts of cultural capital and social exclusion in order to identify the terms on which these have come together in the context of New Labours policies for promoting access to culture as a means of combating or offsetting the effects of social exclusion. We then return to describe more fully how the research was conducted, and to outline the design of our research instruments and the basic analytical processes we have undertaken. The main findings and conclusions of the articles brought together in this issue are then reviewed.

What's (Yet) to Be Seen? Re-Using Qualitative Data

This paper considers current debates about re-using qualitative research data by reflecting on its implications for the nature of social science knowledge created in this process and the ways in which the disclosure of researchers’ practices are linked with the making of professional academic careers. It examines a research project using two different approaches – a ‘virtual’ and a ‘classic’ ethnography – to argue that issues concerned with re-use of data depend on the methods employed and the overall processes of investigation. The paper argues for an appreciation of the contexts involved in the generation of research material which takes into account both the development of the study and related fieldwork processes as well as the academic context in which knowledge is produced, particularly those involved in the construction of academic selves and professional careers, which are part of a wider situation bearing upon scientific enquiry.

Homologies of Social Space and Elective Affinities: Researching Cultural Capital

This article discusses homologies of social space by considering the coherence of elective affinities identified in research on cultural capital when the same person was asked for similar sorts of information in both a survey questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. It shows the methodological complexities of situating individual lives within social contexts, by considering the processual and fluid accounts of social space emerging in the study. The discussion challenges Bourdieu’s views of homogeneous social worlds, considered as ‘spaces of lifestyles’. The coherent pattern he envisaged is not always found because significantly dissonant cases exist. Moreover, different affinities can be emphasized depending on the research methods and contexts. Consequently, the article also engages with the argument that different research methods contribute to different sorts of knowledge about the social world, stressing the influence of ontological politics in research findings and the privileged perspective of a multiple-methods approach.

Using Mixed Methods for Analysing Culture: The Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion Project

This article discusses the use of material generated in a mixed method investigation into cultural tastes and practices, conducted in Britain from 2003 to 2006, which employed a survey, focus groups and household interviews. The study analysed the patterning of cultural life across a number of fields, enhancing the empirical and methodological template provided by Bourdieus Distinction. Here we discuss criticisms of Bourdieu emerging from subsequent studies of class, culture and taste, outline the arguments related to the use of mixed methods and present illustrative results from the analysis of these different types of data.We discuss how the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods informed our analysis of cultural life in contemporary Britain. No single method was able to shed light on all aspects of our inquiry, lending support to the view that mixing methods is the most productive strategy for the investigation of complex social phenomena.

Materials in the Field: Object-trajectories and Object-positions in the Field of Contemporary Art

The paper explores the central role of artworks in the field of contemporary art. It is based on an ethnographic study of the conservation laboratory at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and draws from three detailed case studies where the temporal and spatial trajectory of artworks led to processes of competition, collaboration, and repositioning among the agents involved in the acquisition, exhibition and conservation of these artworks. The study demonstrates the importance of artworks qua physical objects in the field of contemporary art, claiming attention to materiality in field theory and engaging with an object-oriented methodology in field analysis. Artworks are shown to intervene in field processes, both reproducing divisions and re-drawing boundaries within and between fields, and actualizing positions of individuals and institutions.

Time and emotion in studies of household technologies

In this article I situate studies of household technologies within the overall context of technological studies, in particular in relation to time and the significance of the labour of women in the home. I then discuss the classic studies of household technologies. This perspective was developed mainly in the USA in the 1970s and 1980s. It emphasizes the conservative power of technologies, asserting that they have had no positive impact on housework and home life. I then look at a second emerging perspective of studies of household technologies which shows a model in transition, indicating new patterns of living in families are emerging and that the work of women and men is shifting households and their technologies towards new ways of organizing domestic everyday life. Finally, I explore the connections between these new ways of living and the need for further research in understanding contemporary domestic living with technologies.

Researching Cultural Capital: Complexities in Mixing Methods

This paper reflects on the relationships between methods and meaning-making in social research. It focuses on two core issues: (1) the problems with the generation of data inherent in quantitative and qualitative methods themselves, accentuated and revealed by processes of mixing them, and (2) the implications of the asymmetrical relationship between research categories used and the lived experience of the investigation. These foci inform an exploration of the processes of the construction of the research object, as implied in the work of Pierre Bourdieu, and of more recent concerns about how research makes sense of the complexity of social worlds within social sciences. The paper engages with empirical and theoretical aspects of researching cultural capital in contemporary Britain, as part of the Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion project, a large scale, mixed-method empirical inquiry into the nature of cultural capital in the UK.