Will Atkinson

From Sociological Fictions to Social Fictions: Some Bourdieusian Reflections on the Concepts of 'Institutional Habitus' and 'Family Habitus'

This paper expresses serious reservations regarding the increasingly popular Bourdieu‐inspired notions of ‘institutional habitus’ and ‘family habitus’ in education research. Although sympathetic to the overall theoretical approach and persuaded of the veracity and importance of the empirical findings they are used to illuminate, it argues that, from a Bourdieusian point of view, they actually present several difficulties that threaten not only to overstretch and reduce the explanatory power of the French thinker’s concepts but to stifle analysis of the kinds of struggles and complexities that both he and, somewhat contradictorily, the researchers in question spotlight. Bourdieu had his own ways of making sense of the themes raised, and although there is indeed a need to push him further than he went, to say what he did not and to emphasise what he would not, this has to be guided by consistent logic and not simply pragmatic empiricism.

Not all that was solid has melted into air (or liquid): a critique of Bauman on individualization and class in liquid modernity

Whilst theories of individualization are usually perceived as posing a severe challenge to the oft-disputed concept of class, the recent work of postmodernist-turned-liquid-modernist Zygmunt Bauman in this vein has generally escaped the attention of faithful class analysts keen to defend their object of study. Indeed, in places Bauman has been mobilised to critique the cognate ideas of Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, despite the fact that the intellectual affinity between the three is patent and has been rightly flagged by others. This paper seeks to remedy the treatment of Bauman thus far by tracing his precise views on class as they have developed over his extended career and clarifying his current position on its decline in the face of the sweeping individualization brought by liquid modernity. It then provides a critique of his views by pulling out the contradictions and errors besetting them and, in the process, attempts to render less credible his claim that class is no longer a significant sociological tool.

The myth of the reflexive worker: class and work histories in neo-liberal times

Several influential social theorists contend that the increased insecurity injected into the labour market by neo-liberal economic policies, coupled with a discourse of flexibility concretised in lifelong learning initiatives, have contributed to the withering of class in contemporary society. Careers and job shifts now follow a ‘de-standardised’ pattern, they argue, in which people incessantly switch between divergent occupations, education, training and benefits, all propelled by a socially-induced reflexivity that knows no class bounds. Empirical assessments of this bold assertion have, so far, been far from supportive but, being chiefly quantitative in orientation, leave many important questions unanswered. This paper, starting out from a theory of class indebted to the late Pierre Bourdieu, draws on a qualitative research project examining the life histories of 55 individuals to fill in the gaps and demonstrate how work trajectories, despite changes that have taken place, are still driven along class tracks by class motors.

Phenomenological Additions to the Bourdieusian Toolbox: Two Problems for Bourdieu, Two Solutions from Schutz

In constructing his renowned theory of practice, Pierre Bourdieu claimed to have integrated the key insights from phenomenology and successfully melded them with objectivist analysis. The contention here, however, is that while his vision of the social world may indeed be generally laudable, he did not take enough from phenomenology. More specifically, there are two concepts in Alfred Schutzs body of work, which, if properly defined, disentangled from phenomenology, and appropriated, allow two frequently forwarded criticisms of Bourdieus perspective to be overcome: on the one hand, a particular interpretation of the concept of lifeworld can remedy identified weaknesses on the problem of individuation; while on the other hand, Schutzs notion of the stock of knowledge can rectify Bourdieus overly nonconscious depiction of agency. Given my overall support for Bourdieus scheme and the fact that the extant criticisms on these two grounds are often excessive and obfuscatory, both the suggested elaborations will be prefaced by a clarificatory partial defense of his position.

Rethinking the Work—Class Nexus: Theoretical Foundations for Recent Trends

The sociology of class and the sociology of work have, historically, occupied two sides of the same coin, sharing foundational studies such as the Affluent Worker series and Braverman’s vivisection of the labour process. Recently, however, the par tnership has been questioned. Though the seeds of the split were sown by Erik Wright and John Goldthorpe, the overdue de-hegemonizing of Marx and Weber in research on class with the growing influence of Pierre Bourdieu and the broader ‘cultural turn’ in sociology has weakened the bond and forged a new alliance between class and the sociology of culture. This is, by all means, a positive development, but the connection between processes in the sphere of work and class has become less clear. This ar ticle therefore seeks to explore the new theoretical nexus between class and work, demonstrating that a Bourdieusian approach fruitfully reverses the connection put in place by Goldthorpe and Wright.

Class Habitus and Perception of the Future: Recession, Employment Insecurity and Temporality

This paper examines the consequences of the recent economic downturn and UK government spending cuts, as exacerbations of prevailing trends in neoliberal employment policy, on temporal perception, specifically as it relates to the adaptation of subjective anticipations of and projections into the future to objective prospects of unemployment by class. Grounded in a phenomenologically-minded Bourdieusian conceptualization of class and time and contextualized by statistics on chances of job loss, it draws on qualitative research with 57 individuals from across the class structure to chart differing dispositions toward the future. In particular, it distinguishes three orientations - the future as controllable, the future as uncontrollable and the future as reasonably controllable - which appear to correspond with resources possessed.

Reproduction revisited: comprehending complex educational trajectories

Pierre Bourdieus famous theory of educational reproduction is often depicted by critics in simplistic terms: individuals either have plenty of cultural capital, and thus symbolic mastery and school success, or they do not and develop practical mastery and vocational interests instead. Social mobility, deviant trajectories and resistance, on the other hand, are seemingly impossible. The nature of Bourdieus writing fuelled this perception, but implicit in his early work, and elaborated in his later writings, is the idea that class and capital possession are fully relational, gradational and refracted by family dynamics, thereby suggesting the existence of all manner of possible shades of difference between the two poles of reproduction. This paper, whilst acknowledging that reproduction is still the major feature of the education system in the UK, thus revisits Bourdieus thesis and sketches some of the manifestations of this intermediate zone of educational performance, namely social space travel, the Icarus effect, recovered trajectories and pathways born of dispersed family fields. In so doing it draws on a qualitative research project examining the life histories of adults from a variety of class positions in Bristol.

Economic Crisis and Classed Everyday Life: Hysteresis, Positional Suffering and Symbolic Violence

Economic crises, according to Marx’s fundamental law of capital accumulation, undermine the condition of existence of the dominated class — the proletariat — that is to say, their capacity to sell their labour, by relegating ever greater numbers to the impoverished reserve army of industrial labour.1 From a Bourdieusian point of view, however, the classed consequences of the ‘business cycle’, as it is euphemistically dubbed, are somewhat different. For if class is indeed defined by shared conditions of existence, then these are constituted not merely by ownership or not of the means of production, even if, as economic capital returning economic capital, that undoubtedly contributes to them, but by relative distance from material necessity given by possession of multiple forms of capital — economic but also cultural and social capital.2 This relative distance from necessity, yielding probabilities of access to particular goods, services, powers, experiences and regions of the class structure, produces a habitus, or system of dispositions attuned to those probabilities which, making a virtue of necessity — as all humans seek to find a principle of recognition in the lifeworld into which they are thrown — translates them into tastes. The differential distribution of resources, however, endows differential capacity to impose one’s own tastes as legitimate — as what all should strive to be and do — through the fields of cultural and ideological production, meaning that, far from being considered ‘different but equal’, classed tastes are hierarchised and venerated or vilified depending on which position one is looking at and from.

Where Now for Bourdieu-inspired Sociology?

The incredible breadth of Pierre Bourdieu’s influence on global sociology may not be contested, but the precise character and utility of it certainly is. With the man himself no longer around to authoritatively update his older arguments, respond to particular readings and criticisms and apply his conceptual tools to new topics, a site of intense struggle has opened up within this intellectual universe defined by explicit or implicit, developed or concise, catholic or selective embracement or rejection of the French thinker and manifest as much in the empty references of empirical pieces comprising the academic equivalent of ‘passing’ as in the heated defences and polemical critiques. Such conflicts usually find direct material incarnation in the form of edited collections and journal special issues detailing the ‘state of play’ (from a certain perspective), and so a lengthy train of volumes assessing the sociological world post-Bourdieu, with this or that particular emphasis, has emerged in the last few years. The most recent offering of this ilk, however, is a little different. Elizabeth Silva and Alan Warde’s book, the product of a concluding symposium flowing from the productive Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion project, boasts an impressive gathering of celebrated (UK, US and French) names, Review Essay

Class and Cuisine in Contemporary Britain: The Social Space, the Space of Food and Their Homology

Thirty-five years ago Pierre Bourdieu asserted that food preferences, as much as any other element of culture, are distributed within a space of difference more or less homologous with the social space of class positions. Plumbing data on annual spends on all manner of food items, he detected two key oppositions – a taste for the light versus a taste for the heavy on the one hand and a taste for rich foods versus a taste for healthy and exotic foods on the other – and located their generative principles in differences of volume of capital and composition of capital respectively. Deploying a correspondence analysis of similar data using the 2010 Living Costs and Food Survey, supplemented by data from the 2008 British Social Attitudes survey and the 2003 Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion Survey, we seek to examine whether comparable differences in expenditure and preferences are observable in contemporary Britain and, consequently, to illuminate the current structure of the food space and its homology with class. Ultimately, we conclude that Bourdieus general model is essentially transposable from 1960s France to the UK at the dawn of the 21st century, though we put additional emphasis on the ethical dimension of food consumption, and reflect on the prevalent instances of symbolic violence it underpins.