Class Analysis and Social Differentiation

An Approach to Contemporary Class Divisions

This is an online version of the thesis. The file includes the introductory chapters and hyperlinks to the published papers. Page numbers are identical to the submitted version of the thesis.

Magne Flemmen Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD Department of Sociology and Human Geography University of Oslo Submitted June 2013

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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my two supervisors for excellent mentoring. Their efforts have doubtlessly improved the quality of the present work in innumerable ways. The weaknesses and short-comings of the present work can probably be attributed to my own failing to follow their sage advice and suggestions. My main supervisor Marianne Nordli Hansen has taught me more about doing sociology and class analysis than I can account for. She has also very promptly read and criticised numerous drafts and consistently provided extremely insightful and helpful comments. Her commitment to doing theoretically and empirically rigorous sociology on issues that really matter is a continuing source of inspiration. My co-supervisor Johs. Hjellbrekke has generously lent me his expertise in all things related to Bourdieu, data analysis and a range of other issues. He has patiently replied to tons of untimely e-mails, telephone calls, SMSes, Facebook chats and curious questions over a pint. He also invited and arranged for me to participate in the SCUD network and facilitated my stay in Bergen in 2009. For all this, and much more besides, I owe him my gratitude. Vegard Jarness, my sociological brother in arms and dear friend, has shared selflessly of his thoughts, knowledge and reflections with me in numerous long discussions, careful readings of manuscripts as well as various telecommunications functioning almost as a third supervisor. Thank you! Jrn Ljunggren has done well in interrupting my eremitic working habits to chat about anything class, sociology, academia and luckily life on the outside. Patrick Lie Andersen has been an excellent colleague and co-worker, not least in our collaborative teaching. All mentioned thus far partook in the Elites an egalitarian society project, alongside Marte Mangset, Janne C. Johansen and Tanja Askvik, under the leadership of Olav Korsnes. The workshops and seminars of this project gave room for good discussions and company. I would like thank all the participants of the SCUD network for a number of exciting seminars and workshops, and especially Annick Prieur for making the whole network happen and allowing me to participate. The meetings with the SCUD group meant a lot to me and gave me important inspiration and a number of ideas, and introduced me to a range of great sociologists and people. iii

The Department of Sociology and Human Geography provided me with excellent working conditions and extremely instructive teaching tasks. Doing lectures and seminars proved a very welcome and stimulating variation from being hunched over statistical software and a word processor behind piles of books in the solitude of my office. On that note, I want to thank the whole midvit group and especially everyone who took it upon them to arrange our monthly midvit l. Thanks also to Geir O. Rnning for many interesting conversations, and not least for the opportunity to write two excessively long book reviews for Agora, in which it turns out that core ideas animating this thesis were first developed. Last, but most, I want to thank my beautiful partner Ellen for everything. She has endured more rumination and rants about social theory, methods, class analysis and sociology in general than any ecotoxicologist could reasonably be expected to. She also put up with and managed my absent-mindedness in the final weeks of finishing the dissertation remarkably well especially given the context of being close to nine months pregnant and having our apartment totally damaged by fire. More than that, she has been a source of joy and support through the existential roller-coaster the work behind this thesis proved to be. During its production, we had a wonderful daughter together and our son is due the very day I am writing this. I dedicate the thesis to Ellen and my two children, in the faint hope that the need for class analysis should prove less pressing in their life-time.

Magne Flemmen Oslo, June 18th, 2013

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. iii Table of contents.................................................................................................................. v Summary ............................................................................................................................. vi 1. Introduction...................................................................................................................... 1 2. Theoretical perspective .................................................................................................... 8 2.1 Class analysis at a crossroads .................................................................................... 8 2.2 Class, capitalism and the inheritance of classical sociology ................................... 11 2.2.1. Marx theory of classes .................................................................................... 11 2.2.2 Max Weber on class and stratification.............................................................. 13 2.2.3 European class theory (ECT) ............................................................................ 17 2.4 Pierre Bourdieu on class .......................................................................................... 30 2.4.1 Bourdieu, Marx, Weber .................................................................................... 44 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 51 3. Methodological relationism and multiple correspondence analysis .............................. 52 3.1 Bourdieu and quantification .................................................................................... 53 3.1.1 The methodological rupture of Distinction....................................................... 54 3.1.2 Correspondence analysis .................................................................................. 56 3.2 Multiple correspondence analysis: A brief introduction ......................................... 57 3.3 Correspondence analysis and methodological relationism ...................................... 61 3.4 Research strategy and the philosophy of data analysis ............................................ 65 3.5 Methodological bracketing ...................................................................................... 67 4. The three papers in summary ......................................................................................... 70 4.1 The Structure of the Upper Class: a Social Space Approach .................................. 70 4.2 The Politics of the Service Class: the Homology of Positions and Position-takings .............................................................................................................................................. 72 4.3 Putting Bourdieu to work for class analysis: Reflections on some recent contributions ......................................................................................................................... 74 5. Concluding discussion ................................................................................................... 76 References.......................................................................................................................... 85

Article 1: The Structure of the Upper Class: a Social Space Approach (Available online from Sociology: goo.gl/OF8FQ4) Article 2: The Politics of the Service Class: the Homology of Positions and Position-Takings (Available online from European Societies: http://goo.gl/krJuyA)

Article 3: Putting Bourdieu to Work for Class Analysis: Reflections on Some Recent Contributions (Available from The British Journal of Sociology: http://goo.gl/fVBGc9)

Summary
This thesis is concerned with the social differentiation of class relationships. Changes in the structure of capitalism over the last century or so paved the way for larger corporations with complex bureaucratised divisions of labour. In addition, modern societies undergo continuing struggles over the relative autonomy of various fields for instance, the extent to which cultural production the arts, science, etc. should be governed by political leads or subject to market forces, or be free to establish their specific rules. All of these processes imply that class relationships become more complex and differentiated in sharp opposition to expectations fostered by the writings of Marx. The thesis addresses itself to the analysis of such differentiation of classes. Its principal approach lies in the application of the concepts of social space and forms of capital, drawn from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, to model and analyse the differentiation of the upper and middle class of Norway. In this, it operates in an intersection of the ideas of Bourdieu with the classical formulations of class in the Weberian and Marxian traditions what I call European class theory The thesis consists of three articles and an introduction. In two of the articles, I study classes defined with explicit reference to European class theory. The upper class refers to a category of broadly two types of class situations: those making their living off of some form of property ownership, and those making their living as high-level employees partaking in the control and management of corporations. By constructing what Bourdieu called a social space of these classes, internal differences in terms of their type and amount of capital are uncovered. The upper class is found to be principally differentiated by the volume of inherited capital that is to say, resources pertaining to their social class background and by the source of economic capital, opposing property-owners from employees. The middle class is operationalised by using John H. Goldthorpes concept and categorisation of the service class professional, administrative and managerial employees on higher and lower levels, distinguished from other employees by the amount of institutionalised trust placed on them by employers. The differentiation of the service class is investigated with reference to their political attitudes. The principal line of division in the service class is found to be by the form of capital they primarily possess economic or cultural and this correspond to some extent with their principal political division socialist vs. laissez-faire vi

attitudes on economic issues. The secondary divide by the amount of capital the service class members have correspond to a division between liberal and anti-liberal attitudes. These papers support a broadly Bourdieusian view of class differences, but connects it to the view that class divisions are based in the property and market relations of capitalist economies. In the third paper of the thesis, I shift attention to discuss recent contributions to Bourdieusian class analysis. Several British authors have attempted to effect a serious reorientation of class analysis away from such an emphasis on production and markets and over to the distribution of capitals and the workings of fields. In the paper, I argue that, notwithstanding the power of the approaches these authors advocate, such a fundamental reorientation should be rejected. Instead, what is called for is a systematic connection of the Bourdieusian ideas with the fundamentals of class relationships. The three papers are prefaced by a long introduction which presents the research question of the thesis; gives a thorough exposition of the theoretical perspectives informing the work; introduce the particular method and methodology applied in the quantitative papers; present brief summaries of all three papers; and offer a concluding discussions which sums up the findings and also outline the main theoretical implications and arguments raised by the work as a whole.

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1. Introduction
There are other things that need to be taken into account here []. You can't just lump everything into these two categories and then just deny everything else. Donnie Darko (2001)

This thesis addresses itself to the problematic relationship between social differentiation and class analysis, with special attention to the higher classes of contemporary Norway. In the context of central changes in capitalism connected to the rise of the joint-stock ownership form and the growth and bureaucratisation of firms that this facilitated how can the internal class divisions of the upper and middle classes be approached? In the thesis, I explore the potential of Pierre Bourdieus concept of multiple forms of capital and social space to model, analyse and interpret internal class divisions. In one paper, I seek to identify some important limitations of recent attempts at installing Bourdieus approach as a new foundation for class analysis. The thesis advances the argument that, while capitalism as such is premised on basic, abstract class divisions in terms of property relations and market capacities the structuration of these into social classes is contingent and fragmented by (among other things) the working of different social fields. The work of Bourdieu bequeaths us theoretical and methodical tools to deal with these complexities. It is widely recognised that the development of capitalism in the 20th century served to differentiate and complicate class divisions, both generating new classes as well as diversifying the old ones. Certain problems arising from these developments, in tandem with some more fundamental issues in class analysis, serve as backcloth for the empirical work. At the outset, they can be stated as follows: processes creating social differentiation, to be discussed below, generated both descriptive and analytical problems for class analysis in comprehending the power, position and politics of upper and middle classes. These fed into other fundamental issues, to do with the very conceptualisation of class and the nature of the theoretical-methodological framework in which class analysis was conducted. Much of sociological analyses of class have been carried out with a two-class model. Within mainstream sociology, this was in the form of a distinction between manual and nonmanual work. In Marxism, the two-class model took the form of the famous bourgeoisie and proletariat divide (see the excellent discussion of this in Parkin 1978). This necessarily involves some degree of glossing over internal heterogeneity. Of course, that does not have to

be a problem, but at least according to one commentator, class analysis lacked proper conceptual tools to deal with it. Sociological class analyses held that classes were constituted by systemic principles, like ownership or authority relations, or the division of labour.
Divisions within classes on the other hand are not usually construed in terms of similar systemic principles, and least of all are such divisions represented as an extension of the same principles that govern inter-class relationships (Parkin 1979:29).

This resulted in the application of various ad hoc approaches to intra-class relations, and furthermore a curious neglect of conflict within classes, while conflict was the order of the day between classes (Parkin 1979:29-30). By adopting the concept of social space from Bourdieu, intra-class relations can be constructed in exactly the same terms as the manifest class structure itself (as in Bourdieu 1984).1 Just as the differential distribution of capitals, and relationship between them, form both the point of departure, the weapon and the stake in the struggles between classes, the internal schisms and struggles of the different classes can be construed in the same terms (Bourdieu 1988a, 1996). This, I argue, is no small strength. While much class analysis was based on the premise that either two or three classes would suffice, the development of capitalism through the 20th century severely undermined that assumption. Of central importance is the emergence of the joint-stock ownership form. The early sociological theories of class were formulated in a context of entrepreneurial capitalism. The bourgeoisie that Marx wrote of was composed primarily of individuals or family owners of the means of production. With the dominance of the joint stock company, such ownership became more dispersed. This facilitated a considerable growth of firms and corporations to sizes beyond anything found in the times of Karl Marx or Max Weber. For present purposes, this had two consequences of particular relevance. One was the transformation of the capitalist class from a class of entrepreneurs to a more differentiated and heterogeneous class of rentiers, finance capitalists, chief executives and the remaining entrepreneurs (Scott 1997). Thus, while the old-style entrepreneurial capitalists continued to thrive, or at least survive, they co-exist in complex relationships with groups whose power and privilege is based on a more mediate relationship to either profit or control (or both). The second concerns changes in what constitutes the middle class or classes. What is often referred to as the old middle class, or petite bourgeoisie in Marx, consisted of the

Parkin held that this was resolvable by basing class theory on his own extended Weberian concept of social closure.

self-employed that is, groups who were neither exploited nor did exploit others. The new middle class(es) consisted instead of employees whose role in the production process, market and/or work situation differed markedly from the traditional manual working class (see the classic account in Lockwood 1958). The growth of corporations facilitated by the joint stock form spawned a more complex division of labour within the firm through processes of bureaucratisation. This created the space for groups applying types of specialised knowledge, and various managers that handled tasks of control and supervision on behalf of owners (Goldthorpe 1982). These two are, obviously, related changes to the class structures of capitalist societies: the new middle class emerged out of the exigencies created by the ever larger organisations, which itself was spawned by the expansion facilitated by the relative dispersion of ownership. The managerial sections of the new middle class were, at least in part, a product of the same processes that were transforming the upper class. Its professional sections had their basis in many of the same developments, but in connection with increased demand for expertise in fields like law, finance, accounting, technology and information. Furthermore, middle-class expansion is promoted by the growth of the public sector and welfare-state services. To be sure, there is considerable national variation in both the historical genesis and degree of these changes, as well as the resultant system of corporate governance and class structures (Giddens 1981a:177-97; Scott 1997). To complicate things further, there was little consensus in sociology about what the relevant developments in fact were, and especially what to make of them. Many considered a separation between ownership and control crucial, but again differed on what this would mean. Were we witnessing a full-blown managerial revolution that ousted the capitalist class from power, installing a new class of managers and experts in their place (Burnham 1941)? Was this new class in power less susceptible to the pressures of short-term profit-making and more attuned to broader social considerations (Berle 1959)? And would this ultimately constitute the coming of post-capitalist social order (Dahrendorf 1959)? These managerialist authors thought so. These views were embedded in a broader theory of industrial society as opposed to a theory of capitalism (Scott 1979:15-29). The writings of Marxist authors constituted the main alternative description and interpretation. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, their assessments were considerably less optimist. Marx himself witnessed only the early days of the joint stock company, and provided no full 3

analysis of it (Marx 1981). Renner held that the joint-stock form implied problems of control, since the day-to-day operation of these corporations were not overseen by the classical capitalists, but to some extent left to managers (Renner 1949). According to Hilferding (1981), this was coupled with a fusion of banking and industry into what he called finance capital, which further removed shareholding capitalists from the actual production. In Lenins view this amounted an empowering of the banks, in an alliance with industry through shareholdings, credit relations and interlocking directorships (Lenin 1953).2 Of course, for Marxists, the proper post-capitalist social order was a proletarian revolution away. As Nichols pointed out, these debates have to a noticeable extent been coloured by [] value preferences (Nichols 1969:12). This would seem to be no less true of the debates on the middle classes, of which a brief review is given in one of the papers of this thesis. I will elaborate a bit on this in the following chapter. It is important to note how all of this fly in the face of what Marx probably, and most early Marxists certainly, expected. Marx and Engels famously held that class divisions were becoming increasingly simplified, and this connected to important aspects of their view of capitalism. While pre-capitalist societies were characterised by a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank, capitalism has
this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat (Marx and Engels 2002 [1888]:219-20).

This, of course, was not what happened. What more, Marx and Engels views seem to express a mode of understanding which has haunted class analysis since, namely the relative neglect of sources of social divisions other than those constituted in the capitalist mode of production gender and ethnicity being conspicuous cases in point. Put in other terms, Marxism tended to neglect other bases of power and domination than those which flowed either directly or indirectly from the ownership of the means of production. This ranks among its major inadequacies (Giddens 1981b:242) . Weber is frequently held up as the promising alternative; with his logically infinite number of class situations and the cultural and political dimensions of stratification Stand and party he would be the obvious choice for any student of class concerned to avoid any overemphasis on relations of production. In recent years, however, the leading exponent of a
2

The presentation here owes much to Scotts discussion, especially in Sco tt 1997.

multidimensional approach to class that gives culture its due has rightfully been Pierre Bourdieu. While Bourdieu may be credited with recognising class inequality in more than one dimension by introducing the multiple forms of capital, it is equally important to recognise that one of Bourdieus major innovations is the introduction of the notion of field. In fact, these are intrinsically connected in his sociology, since the different forms of capital rely on different fields. The importance of the notion of field in this context is that it opens up for a sociology of class stratification that fully recognises the importance of social differentiation. Modern societies undergo continuing struggles over the relative autonomy of various fields for instance, the extent to which cultural production the arts, science, etc. should be governed by political leads or subject to market forces, or be free to establish their specific rules. Not only do modern societies exhibit an empirically variant social differentiation in which different activities are played out under distinct rules, but these fields are veritable structures of power and arenas of struggle over scarce resources. In this, they make up microcosms of stratification in their own right, but which also serves to differentiate the overall structure of stratification. Furthermore, fields mediate the effects of class divisions on social outcomes. The workings of capitalist economies impact life-chances, culture, politics and state-formations through the workings of these relatively autonomous microcosms of action. A telling example is Bourdieus study of the field of cultural production, in which the hierarchy of value becomes reversed, in what appears as a negation of the principles of market economies. What confers power and status in this field is not sales or other indices of economic success, but their negation in art for arts sake (Bourdieu 1993b). Conversely, the economic field evades rules from the religious, moral or political field by a similar tautology, business is business. On this logic, the privileges accruing to upper-class successors in the field of cultural production may work through a local inversion of the hierarchy: sons and daughters of wealthy families can afford to renounce the value of monetary success and pursue the purity of culture. Hence, the effects of class are mediated by the field. The differentiations of social fields thus intersect with the differentiation of class relationships engendered by the changes in capitalism over the last decades to produce a highly complex and differentiated structure of class stratification. Through the concept of

fields, Bourdieu could offer a class analysis of contemporary society which could deal with this complexity and steer clear of class reductionism without abandoning the importance of class altogether. This makes Bourdieus approach particularly suited to deal with the complexities of contemporary patterns of power and stratification. In this thesis, I seek to exploit aspects of this perspective to deal with intra-class relations, but also to argue that contemporary class analysis needs to stay attuned to the fundamentals of class relations namely the forms of domination and stratification that is built into its production and market relations. Theoretically, I propose to integrate these different points of view via a reworking of the concept of class structuration (Giddens 1973) This aim is endeavoured achieved through two strategies over three papers. On the one hand, I take as my object of study two different classes constructed with explicit reference to such production and market relations. On the other hand, I offer a theoretical or conceptual critique of recent applications of Bourdieu to class analysis. These strategies are pursued in the following three papers: 1) The structure of the upper class: a social space approach, published in Sociology, vol. 46 no 6, 2012. 2) The politics of the service Class: the Homology of Positions and Position-Takings, accepted for publication in European Societies (published online July 24th). 3) Putting Bourdieu to Work for Class Analysis: Reflections on some recent contributions, published in The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 64 no 2, 2013. The rest of this introduction proceeds as follows. In chapter 2 I provide a thorough presentation of the theoretical perspectives which inform the thesis. This concerns principally the approaches to class advanced by Marx, Weber and Bourdieu, and secondarily other contributions. In chapter 3, I discuss Bourdieus methodological approach, which I adopt; present the technique of multiple correspondence analysis; discuss its relationship to the methodology of Bourdieu; and conclude with some notes on research strategy. Chapter 4 gives brief summaries of the three papers. Chapter 5 provides a concluding discussion which sums up empirical contributions and spell out theoretical and methodological implications. Special attention is given to the question of how the Bourdieusian approach to class can connect with European class theory. In that section, I pick up on the suggestion in the

Politics paper to deal with this as a problem of class structuration (Giddens 1973). That outlines a program for further theoretical work.

2. Theoretical perspective
The work in this thesis is done in what may be thought of as an intersection of a Bourdieusian approach to class and stratification, and a more conventional approach to class analysis. In the two empirical papers, I study the internal differentiation of classes defined with explicit reference to what I call European class theory (ECT) that is, the body of class theory that stands in fairly direct connection to the founding statements of Marx and Weber.3 Internal differentiation of classes is analysed by applying Bourdieus concept of forms of capital and that of social space. This combines two different approaches to class and stratification, arising out of my own conceptualisation of how they might be combined. I will first give a general introduction to European class theory and specify in the ways in which I draw on this tradition I also introduce Giddens concept of class structuration in this context. then go on to present Bourdieus approach to class, which necessarily involves consideration of more general aspects of his sociology. I conclude that section with some brief reflections on Bourdieus relation to ECT.

2.1 Class analysis at a crossroads

There shall in that time be rumours of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are () At that time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer, and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight o'clock. -Boring Prophet, in Life of Brian (1978)

The concept of class has a strange standing in sociology. It was a core concept for two of its founding fathers, Marx and Weber, whose followers have insisted upon its centrality to the discipline. Some argue that it was the emphasis on class relations that made sociology distinct among the social sciences: class was the only independent variable in the discipline (Arthur Stinchcombe, quoted in Wright 1979:3)4; and class and class conflict was the question of sociology (Giddens 1973:19, italics in the original). Allowing for some hyperbole, all of this sounds anachronistic today. Class was doubtlessly central to the founding fathers of sociology the most for Marx, but also for Weber and arguably less so for Durkheim but it would
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This, of course, implies that Bourdieus approach stand in a less direct relationship to Marx and Weber, which I think to be the case. Bourdieu was of course quite heavily influenced by both, and by a wide range of other figures. Compared to the work of, say, Wright or Goldthorpe, the differences in the nature of this influence is quite pronounced. While Wright and Goldthorpe both develop their views in fairly direct dialogue with the two founding fathers, Bourdieu is much less concerned with basing his own approach in some canonical figure. 4 Stinchcombe was being sarcastic, mocking his fellow sociologists lack of imagination, construing every social phenomenon only in terms of stratification. Regardless of how the remark was meant, it tells us something about the standing of these perspectives in the discipline, at least at that time.

seem that their descendants lost track of their heritage when confronted with the social changes of the 20th century. Whatever degree of centrality the concept of class may have enjoyed, it has always been surrounded by ambiguity and confusion. It would seem to be impossible to achieve anything approaching agreement on what exactly the term itself referred to (Crompton 2008), let alone its derivatives like class identity, class conflict, class power, class society, etc. This is surely not wholly the fault of the latter-day analysts of class: Marx and Weber alike were either unwilling or unable to offer concise definitions of the concept. Marx raises the question in the third volume of Capital (Marx 1981:1025-6). But when he purports to answer what makes a class, the manuscript breaks off after half a page much like in a detective movie where an informant dies just as the perpetrator is about to be revealed! Weber was better, on the face of it, as he offered a direct conceptual discussion on two occasions in Economy and Society. These two sections, however, exhibit somewhat contradictory definitions. Simultaneously, doubts or even assaults on the relevance of the concept of class have been in steady supply. Durkheim suggested that the maturing of the division of labour and the rise of organic solidarity would serve to abolish the hereditary transmission of property, so that social inequalities would come to perfectly express natural inequalities, those of individuals capacity and aptitude (Durkheim 1984 [1933]:313-16).5 This was amplified by numerous later sociologists, particularly those who adopted what has been called the (liberal) theory of industrial society. This emphasised that the distinctive trait of the modern age was not its capitalist mode of organising the economy, but its reliance on industrial technology and inanimate sources of energy. These authors Parsons, Dahrendorf, Aron, and Kerr heralded an imminent and immanent decline of class:
The theory of industrial society recognises the phenomenon of class conflict but holds that it is characteristic of the transitional phase in the emergence of industrialism out of traditional society and that it becomes transcended (read regulated or institutionalised) when the industrial order reaches maturity. In some versions including the original Saint-Simonian ones it is held that the very concept of class loses its relevance once the transition to industrialism has been achieved (Giddens 1982:57).

Whatever credence could be granted such beliefs in their heyday the long boom of the post-war period their influence waned as the moment passed, if only to be succeeded by a
5

Durkheim is ambiguous on how this would happen: he seems to suggest both that this represents a development that would be almost an unfolding of the inner logic of the social type itself; but also, some of his formulations seems to suggest that this would be brought about by reforms deemed necessary by some agency in order to protect the social type.

new wave of claims on the death of class. Several scholars emerged with grandiose claims about a fundamental transformation of modernity that rendered class obsolete again. Much of this struck a darker chord than the earlier theories of industrial society: there was no talk of increased affluence and harmony between what used to be classes, but new social divisions, fragmentation of the old ones, apocalyptic new risks and a shattering individualisation that smothered belongings and collectives to accompany rising inequalities (Giddens 1990; Beck 1992; Pakulski and Waters 1996; Bauman 2000; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002). 6 Meanwhile, notwithstanding its disagreement with itself and the at times hostile climate, class analysis developed and stacked evidence to show that the vintage class society was in fact alive and well. Particularly during the 1980s, the international comparative work of John H. Goldthorpe (Goldthorpe et al. 1987; Goldthorpe and Marshall 1992; Erikson and Goldthorpe 1993) and Erik Olin Wright (Wright 1979, 1985, 1997) had shown class analysis to be a viable and fruitful endeavour. Conceptually sound and empirically robust, the work lead by Goldthorpe and Wright (either directly or by example) demonstrated that class divisions were not dissolving and continued to shape social life and political conflicts in the advanced societies. This, felt the stalwarts of class analysis, should expose death of class as data-free punditry (see the scathing attack in Goldthorpe 2007a:91-116). The latter theories were indeed discredited among the ranks of the true believers in class analysis, but the rest of sociology seemed less impressed. In the hands of Goldthorpe, Wright and their respective co-workers and followers, class analysis obtained a considerable technical sophistication and prosperity in terms of research output. A premise of this success was that the grander claims of class analysis whether of the philosophy of history kind or totalising social theory were dropped in favour of more modest proposals amenable to standard research procedures (Goldthorpe and Marshall 1992; Wright 1997). Critics felt, however, that this approach represented a serious attenuation of class analysis (Morris and Scott 1996). Others took an even more critical stance and decried this approach as minimalist, economistic and reductionist, and lamented its restrictive focus on quantitative analyses. All of this eclipsed or even excluded considerations of history, subjectivity, identity and culture more generally, resulting in the marginalisation of questions of class, inequality and

This is in a way slightly misleading, since at least Giddens seems to anticipate certain new prospects for freedom in this new phase of modernity. That being said, it is a clear difference in the general thrust of this wave of decline of class as compared to the previous one.

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domination to the discipline of sociology as a whole (Devine and Savage 2005; Atkinson 2011). This is the context of the popularity of Pierre Bourdieu in the field of class analysis. His was an approach to class that restored issues of culture and meaning to the core of what class is all about. The multiple forms of capital, the notion of field, the sophisticated theory of practice and the broad scope of themes Bourdieu himself investigated proved to be a valuable source of inspiration. The theoretical ambition of this thesis is to address aspects of how Bourdieus ideas can be put to use to tackle certain empirical and theoretical issues in class analysis. This implies a retaining of certain elements of the framework of pre-Bourdieu class analysis.

2.2 Class, capitalism and the inheritance of classical sociology

I use European class theory (ECT) to refer to the broad tradition of theorising class that is in some crucial sense based on Marx, Weber or both. I will first present Marx and Webers theorisations of class, with a view to spelling out the differences that have been seized upon by later writers. These later writers are discussed somewhat more briefly and in a sense illustratively in my delimitation of ECT except for the concept of class structuration leading up to a specification of how I apply the concept of class. 2.2.1. Marx theory of classes I noted above that the manuscript breaks off just as Marx announces he will answer the question of what constitutes a class. Subsequent authors have worked to develop a concise account of "class in Marx" based on his various comments on it. The absence of a concise and definitive treatment on Marx' own part paved the way for series of interpretative controversies. Some of these are caught up in more general disagreements on the nature of Marx' "metatheoretical" views, or his social theory, which translates into questions of the mode of existence of social classes. In what follows, however, I'll map out the most general aspects of his class theory, The point of departure for Marx' view of classes is the centrality accorded to economic production in his overall theory. For Marx, the primary defining feature of a given social order is how it organises its production, since meeting of material needs is of fundamental importance to human existence. Since the way production is organised is of such central importance, so are the particular divisions that originate within it (Marx 2000 [1932]).

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For Marx, a characteristic feature of capitalism is that it organises this production through private ownership of the means of production, and its corollary in the formally free labourpower. The owners of these means of production make their living by way of the surplus value created in production. This is facilitated by the simple fact that the work put in by the labourers produce values that exceed what they receive in wages. This, in simple terms, is at the heart of what Marx' calls exploitation (Marx 1976). This is a subject surrounded by extensive debate (Steedman 1981), which I do not want to visit here. The basics of Marx' position is relatively straight-forward. The source of value is labour: The materials brought into, say, a factory could not be sold for the same amount as the finished product. The transformation of materials into a finished product is what creates its additional value. A book-shelf may be sold for more than the value of the required wood, nails and screws because these materials have been worked upon to create the shelf (Marx 1976:127-31). Labour under capitalism is treated like any other commodity, as a product to be bought and sold on the market. More precisely, what the worker sells is hers or his capacity to labour, or labour-power. It is this capacity which is assessed in quantitative and monetary terms, like ordinary commodities or product of labour. As a commodity, labour-power has a certain cost of production: this corresponds to the cost of providing the worker with sufficient returns to produce and reproduce her/himself i.e., subsistence (Marx 1976:274). Wages are thus meant to cover the workers subsistence, and hence the reproduction of labour-power. The difference between the exchange value of the commodity produced such as a book-shelf and wage is the source of surplus value. The surplus value covers other expenses of the capitalist firms, such as distribution, and constitutes the source of the profits of the firm. The legal arrangements surrounding private property entails that the surplus value, and accordingly also profits, belongs to the owners of the firm. Marx calls this exploitation primarily because it involves unpaid work by labourers. The fruits of the labour do not fall to the labourer, but are instead appropriated by the capitalist by virtue of their legally guaranteed possession of the means of production involved (and, of course, the raw materials). This does not mean that the worker is cheated in the bargaining encounter; the exploitation is built into the very constitution of capitalist wage labour.

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All of this could be extended and laid out in more technical terms. Several important points can be seen to follow from this, but two are particularly crucial for present purposes. Firstly, on this account, classes can be seen as entirely relational phenomenon. What makes a class is the exploitative relationship between groups. Classes are thus not to be identified in terms of particular characteristics of its members like income level but strictly in terms of the relationship. Secondly, in Marx scheme, classes, in the abstract, are tied to the core features of what capitalism is. As a mode of organising economic life, capitalism necessary involves class divisions. In fact, it is so almost by definition: to say that there are classes in capitalism is not very much more than saying that capitalism is a system in which production is organised through the private ownership of the means of production, and the employment of formally free labour power. This usage of class in Marx is clearly abstract. It makes no sense, of course, to say that actual social collectives exist by definition with reference to a certain institutional make-up. This in turn connects with the familiar problem of whether this two-class model is in fact a satisfactory description of class structures. It is commonly noted that in his own studies, Marx recognised a plurality of classes and fractions. How does this fit with his instance on the basic dichotomous model? As Giddens notes, [m]ost of the problematic elements in Marxs theory of classes stem from the application of this abstract model to specific, historical forms of society that is to say, they turn upon the nature of the connections between the abstract and the concrete models of class (Giddens 1973:30).7 2.2.2 Max Weber on class and stratification The literature dealing with the similarities and dissimilarities between Weber and Marx is already vast. For present purposes, two important points, common enough in the literature, are central: Webers definition of class as rooted in market relationships, as well as his famous distinction between class, status and party. Both are presented in fairly brief segments in Economy and Society (Weber 1978:302-10, 926-939). The definition given of class is somewhat different in these two segments. In the segment appearing first, Status Groups and Classes, a somewhat loose and encompassing definition opens the essay:
Class situation means the typical probability of:
7

This problem is precisely what Giddens coined his concept of class structuration to deal with (Giddens 1973:105)

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1. procuring goods 2. gaining a position in life and 3. finding inner satisfaction, a probability which derives from the relative control over goods and skills and from their incomeproducing uses within a given economic order. Class means all persons in the same class situation (Weber 1978:302).

On this account, a class is made up of people who are similar in the ways in which their possibilities in life depend on using goods and skills to gain income. In this essay, Weber contrasts this to status groups by defining status as an effective claim to social esteem, typically founded on style of life, education, or hereditary or occupational prestige (Weber 1978:305-6). Class would thus refer to the economic determination of life-chances, seemingly of whatever kind, whereas status concerns prestige, evaluations of honour. His earlier formulation, appearing first in English as Class, Status, Party in the Gerth and Mills collection (Weber 1946) and in the second volume of Economy and Society (Weber 1978:926-39), offers a clearer exposition, and is the general point of reference for discussions on Webers conceptualisation of class. In what follows, I use the recent Zeppelin University translation, as this seems to bring out certain nuances of Webers views neglected in earlier translations (Waters and Waters 2010).8 The point of departure in this essay is that classes, Stnde and parties are phenomenon of the social distribution of power. Weber states that we may speak of a class
1. when a large number of people have a specific causal component of their life chances in common, and 2. when this causal component is represented exclusively by economic interests in the possession of goods and the opportunities of income, and 3. when the causal component is represented under the conditions of the commodity or labor markets (class situations) (Weber 2010 [1922]:138).

This definition ties class specifically to market processes, so that class refers to similar positions within commodity and labour markets. The general distinguishing traits of classes are accordingly what types of goods and opportunities of income they can bring to the market to secure their life chances. The most basic delineation is the possession of property: Property and assets and lack of property or assets are therefore the basic categories of all class situations (Weber 2010 [1922]:139).

A central point here is that Stand is left untranslated. Earlier translations replaced it with status or status group, but this does not capture the historical sense of Stand as it is used by Weber.

14

The propertied and the property-less alike are, however, differentiated by a number of factors. The sheer range of these is indicative of the way in which Webers view of class differ from that of Marx:
All of the following property distinctions differentiate the class situations of the propertied as well as the meaning they can (and do) give to the utilization of their property, especially liquid assets which are easily converted to cash: - ownership of residential houses, factories, depots or stores, agriculturally usable land, all this in large or small holdings which means there is a quantitative difference with possibly qualitative consequences - ownership of mines, of domestic animals, people (slaves), - disposition of the mobile tools of production, or acquired capital goods of any kind, especially money or goods, that easily and at any time can be exchanged for money, - ownership of products of ones own labor or of strangers labor differing according to their level of desirability, or of marketable monopolies of any kind (Weber 2010 [1922]:139).

The property-less are, in line with the last point quoted, differentiated by the type of services they offer, and furthermore whether they provide a continuous or discontinuous relationship to the recipient (Weber 2010 [1922]:139) which, under contemporary conditions, would probably mean whether they are permanently employed or not. All of this illustrates that with the definition of class as founded in markets, it comes to encompass a much wider range of economic phenomena and relationships than those that fall within the scope of the abstract model of Marx. Indeed, as can be seen from the quote above, even the ownership of people is a form of relevant property, and this refers to not specifically capitalist economic relations i.e. slavery. That aside, Weber echoes Marx in tying class to basic economic relationships of capitalist societies. For Marx, this involves the specific capitalist relations of production, while for Weber this is effected through connecting to a distinct, but equally central aspect of capitalism, its reliance on markets as a means of distribution and economic coordination: classes are created by economic interests which are connected to the existence of the market (Weber 2010 [1922]:140). While the economic relationships brought to the fore in Marx are those of exploitation in production, the relations implied by Weber are relationships between buyers and sellers, creditors and debtors and, of course, relations between buyers and relations between sellers. The buying and selling of labour-power thus appears as only a specific case of the more general phenomenon.9

Modulations of this point are frequent in Neo-Weberian theory, that exploitation in the Marxian sense is a special case of domination, exclusion or some other Weberian notion.

15

In his bid on the structure of social classes the totality of those class situations within which individual and generational mobility is easy and typical Weber outlines a four-class model:
a) the working class as a whole-the more so, the more automated the work process becomes, b) the petty bourgeoisie, c) the propertyless intelligentsia and specialists (technicians, various kinds of white-collar employees, civil servants-possibly with considerable social differences depending on the cost of their training), d) the classes privileged through property and education (Weber 1978:305).

This clearly bespeaks the centrality accorded to education as a factor in class divisions: what distinguishes class c) from a) and b) is education, and class d) is seen as privileged through both property and education. An important aspect of Webers work on class is that he maintains a distinction between what he calls class situation and social classes. Class situation is broadly equivalent to what Marxists refer to as class position, and denotes any precise position one can occupy in the relations of market exchange. It is the kind of chances in the market that determines the common conditions of the individuals fate. Class situation in this sense ultimately is market situation (Weber 2010 [1922]:139). This would seem to imply that the total number of class situations would approach the number of individuals being considered. Social classes, however, makes up the totality of class situations within which individual and intergenerational mobility is easy and typical (Weber 1978:302). Social class therefore refers to a demographically formed group of people in class situations bound together by mobility patterns. While I quoted Weber above as suggesting that status refers to successful claims to social esteem, his discussion in the earlier essay suggests a definition that puts it more on par with class. In contrast to class situation, which is purely determined by the economy, we want to characterise the Stnde situation as resulting from the typical integral part of life, in which the fate of men depends on a specific positive or negative social assessment of honor (Weber 2010 [1922]:142). This brings it into a closer equivalence with class situation, as both would then refer to specific causal components in affecting life chances: class working through economic exchange, and status situation through the evaluation of honour or prestige. This

16

interpretation is emphasised in John Scotts impressive formulation of a Neo-Weberian synthesis on class, stratification and the sociology of elites (Scott 1996).10 Party, as Scott notes, does not seem to be a directly comparable concept.11 Parties are basically any type of association that is geared towards changing laws and rules that are enforced by the state, or even, if possible, taking over the state and/or political institutions (Weber 2010 [1922]:149). Parties can represent both class and Stand interests, but not necessarily. The concept, however, sits uneasily with class and Stand since one cannot have a party situation in the same sense as a class or status situation. Scott solved this by replacing the concept of party with that of command, to denote power founded in organisations/bureaucracies, which can then be applied fully analogous with class and Stand (Scott 1996). 2.2.3 European class theory (ECT) I use ECT to refer broadly to what I consider the sort of common denominator of most work on class that follow on from Marx and/or Weber, that is the ambition to understand inequalities, power and conflict in connection the historically specific institutional arrangements that make up capitalism. From this, in turn, it follows that questions of class are fundamentally tied to the notion of modernity, itself crucial to sociology. Class, at least as understood in the way being discussed here, is a distinctively modern form of power and stratification, as opposed to pre-modern forms of stratification like, say, Stand society and slavery (Turner 1988). It should be noted here that I do not draw on or discuss the so-called Durkheimian approach developed by David Grusky and colleagues (Grusky and Galescu 2005). As is indeed stated by Grusky himself, the micro-class approach was not explicitly developed by drawing on Durkheim, and the neo-Durkheimianism seems indeed to be developed for the purposes of the volume edited by Wright (2005) in which they claim Durkheim as their ancestor. This is no way to belittle their contribution it might indeed be claimed a strength of their approach that they are unbound by the formulations of the forefathers! However, I should note that Goldthorpes questioning of whether their approach is indeed class analytical
10

In my Putting Bourdieu to work paper in this thesis, I place some special emphasis on understanding class and status as referring to specific causal components and processes. 11 One can suspect a certain conceptual sloppiness on Webers part here. He introduces the whole essay by describing classes, Stnde and parties as phenomenon of the distribution of power. But when he discusses the concept of party, he states that classes belong to the economic sphere, Stnde to the social sphere and parties to the sphere of power.

17

is warranted: how is that approach a case of class analysis and not one of occupational sociology (Goldthorpe 2002)? ECT basically corresponds to what John Scott, in his formulation of a comprehensive framework for stratification research, considers the proper domain of the concept of class (Scott 1996:48-92). On his reading, the Marxian analysis of class is compatible with the views that were later set out by Weber (Scott 1996:48). From the perspective taken here, this holds true at a somewhat high level of generalisation. That is, I consider Marxian and Weberian analyses of class as the two main variants of ECT sharing the view that classes are phenomenon of capitalist economies, but differing on how precisely this is so. Marx and Weber fathered enormous disagreements and protracted debates on that last question. For those who followed Weber, Marxian class analysis was flawed because it was caught up in indefensible notions of philosophy of history, economic reductionism and of course political radicalism. Weber himself offered many rather merciless remarks on the Marxists of his time, like Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht who founded the Communist Party of Germany: Liebknecht belongs in the lunatic asylum and Rosa Luxemburg in the zoological gardens (quoted in Giddens 1971:192). For the Marxists, the most general problem with Weberian theory is its sole focus on market processes at the expense of the productive relations considered to be the true heart of class relations. The problem is seen as that, in Frank Parkins (1979:3) sarcastic words, Weberian theory is pitched at the wrong level of reality. Much ink has been spilled, however, on the relative virtues of Marxian and Weberian class analysis. The differences among them are not crucial for the questions addressed in this thesis, although I would maintain that they should be recognised. Marxist class theory has generally distinguished itself from Weberianism by emphasising that classes are really shaped in the productive sphere, as Marx said, and not in the market encounter, as implied by Weber. In a forceful statement of a strongly Marxist view, Crompton and Gubbay argue that Weberian approaches are incomplete, and that attempts at synthesising Marx and Weber have led Lockwood (1958), Parkin (1972) and Giddens (1973) to (implicitly flawed) neo-Weberian conclusions (Crompton and Gubbay 1977:39)12. The most prolific contributor to neo-Marxist

12

It should perhaps be noted that Giddens has quite explicitly rejected both the terms and conclusions of this criticism, stating that he sees it as neither desirable nor feasible to synthesise Marx and Weber on class and that his own views are much closer to Marx than to Weber (Giddens 1981a:297).

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class analysis, Erik Olin Wright, made a similar point when noting how exploitation is the key concept for Marxists, whereas life-chances serves that purpose for Weberians:
Both exploitation and life-chances identify inequalities in material well-being that are generated by inequalities in access to resources of various sorts. Thus both of these concepts point to conflicts of interest over the distribution of the assets themselves. What exploitation adds to this is a claim that conflicts of interest between classes are generated not simply by what people have, but also by what people do with what they have. The concept of exploitation, therefore, points our attention to conflicts within production, not simply conflicts in the market (Wright 1997:33)

Spectacularly, however, Wright himself has been attacked by Gubbay (1997) for falling prey to the superficialities of Weberianism, failing to account properly for how surplus value is produced and pumped around the system. Marxists claims to encompass the broader perspective, and the implicit invitation to find their place in the scheme of things,13 have been flatly rejected by Weberians. For Parkin, for example, all of this rests on entirely flawed premises. The mode of production, so central to the concept of exploitation, is dismissed as too ambiguously defined to be of any theoretical or explanatory use (Parkin 1979:5-9). Similarly, the buzzword of exploitation, at least in its explicit Marxist sense, is seen as haunted by numerous fundamental ambiguities (Murphy 1985:225-33). Giddens too rejects the explanatory power of exploitation and suggests expanding it to a looser, more encompassing meaning: any socially conditioned form of asymmetrical production of life-chances (Giddens 1973:130, italics removed). Why would so much energy be spent on whether class is really about production or markets? Some of the energy of the debate probably stemmed from the different political implications that would emanate from these conceptions. If class divisions emerge in the relations of production, then any meaningful political tackling of them would imply that the relations of production would have to be fundamentally transformed hence, a more radical position. If classes are phenomena of the market place the distributive system, as the Marxists say then class divisions can at least be lessened through political regulations of market transactions and redistribution. This would seem more congenial to moderate political views. There is, then, no use in trying to cover up the considerable diversity inherent in what I refer to as ECT. The formulations of Marx and Weber respectively spawned quite different
13

Not all Marxist critiques of Weberianism have taken this inclusive tone. Gran Therborn, for example, was wholly dismissive of the Weberian approach to stratification: the conception of class, status and party is lambasted for falling prey to subjectivism and for an allegedly misguided reliance on marginalist economics (Therborn 1978:138-43)

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types of inquiry. Marx emphasis on the exploitative relations prevailing in the capitalist mode of production led his followers to focus on class relations in the productive sphere the concentration of capital, the organisation of contemporary firms or the production process (Braverman 1974; Poulantzas 1975; e.g. Bottomore and Brym 1989; Zeitlin 1989). Webers emphasis on life-chances produced more attention among his followers on the distribution of desired outcomes along class or status lines, and particularly an emphasis on social mobility. What is misleading, however, is the impression generated that one will have to opt for either one of these points of view. Marxists do not directly make that point, but rather imply that the Weberian concerns are simply more limited than their own, and hence, in some sense, fall within the scope of Marxism.14 This, however, is contradicted by the relatively weak emphasis on issues of life-chances in the Marxist tradition, as is, in a restricted sense, understandable given the emphasis on relations and processes of production (but see for example Westergaard 1995; Wright 1997). It is, therefore, broadly correct to see the Weberian tradition in class analysis as primarily concerned with the distribution of life-chances and the market processes shaping them, as distinct from the Marxist emphasis on production. It is, however, unproductive to maintain that contemporary class analyses have to opt for either one. In fact, class analysis proper will have to engage with production and distribution, property and market relations. To suppose that, in capitalism, product and labour markets can be severed from the process of production is simply foolish or doctrinaire (Giddens 1981a:299). All of this raises the question of how and in what ways their views are compatible. Scott indicates two broad ways. Firstly, the Weberian perspective emphasise the centrality of demographic processes in creating social classes out of bundles of class situations: The failure to incorporate demographic processes into the Marxian model is one its major analytical limitations. Secondly, Scott argues that Marx recognition of the differentiation of the basic social classes into fractions can be interpreted as based in narrower and more specific class situations than the basic class position of which they are fractional parts (Scott 1996:69). Class situations (Webers concept) are then differentiated by the type of market capacities that are usable in the market encounter Scott points to different types of capital (industrial, banking, commercial) and different types of labour power (highly qualified or not, for example). This suggests a rather unproblematic process of theoretical incorporation of
14

Scott opts for the exact opposite strategy from a neo-Weberian position, seeing Marxist analyses as too restricted in their sole emphasis on class, and thus integrates Marxist class analysis within his neo-Weberian synthesis (Scott 1996).

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Marxian views into his general Neo-Weberian project. This depends on the putting aside of more general features of the social theories of Marxism and Weberianism, which differ on a range of questions, not least in their analysis of power, the state and the role of bureaucracy. While these issues do not directly concern the formal properties of the concept of class, it remains important for the substantive issues and the role of class analysis in the broader analysis of modernity. I use ECT, then, to refer to what Scott in his strict terminology refers to as class, that is, forms of stratification and power that is rooted in property and market relationship, while recognising the plurality of more precise conceptions of this. I opt for a different and more specific label out of pessimism in the possibilities of terminological or conceptual policing. Of all the concepts used by sociologists for describing and explaining social relationships, social class is probably the most ambiguous, confusing and ill-defined (Scase 1992:1). While Scott shows that class can indeed be given a concise and consistent theoretical definition, there seems little prospect for substituting this for the variegated uses of the word, however unsatisfactory they may be. But why exactly European class theory? This is to differentiate it from the particularly American tradition of using class to refer to social inequalities conceived of as differences in prestige. Talcott Parsons installed this usage, defining stratification as the ranking of units [individuals or groups] in a social system in accordance with a common value system (Parsons 1954:388). In this scheme, stratification is basically produced by broadly shared normative evaluations of different properties of units, even if some conceptual space is allowed for power differentials, probably implying that some units have better possibilities for obtaining favourable evaluations (Parsons 1954:390-1). This is basically the view underlying the tradition of community studies, that mapped out class structures of smalltown America by having people evaluate the status of people around them (Warner and Lunt 1942; Warner 1949). The development of occupational prestige measures follow on from this, expanded to the national representative survey. For Frank Parkin, this approach embodies key assumptions underlying a subjectivist approach to stratification:
Occupational prestige scales are constructed by aggregating the status evaluations of a representative sample of the population. The ranking of positions which results from this exercise is then held to indicate the common view on matters of prestige. This is what might be called the moral referendum view of social honour; the assumption is that the prestige accorded to different positions derives from the sum total of individual assessments, rather in the way that the Top Ten music chart is constructed from the total selections of individual record buyers. Such a procedure thus leads to the view that the

21

distribution of social honour is regarded as legitimate (whatever may be felt about the distribution of material reward) because it rests upon popular evaluations of common worth (Parkin 1972:40).

In the influential work of Blau and Duncan (Blau et al. 1967), the status of occupations is measured by a objectively defined index of income and education. The particular index we used, however, was designed to give near-optimal reproduction of a set of prestige ratings (Blau et al. 1994 [1967]:205).The scale applied in their status attainment model was not constructed by aggregating prestige evaluations, but was designed to mimic them by reconstructing similar scales by the indexing socioeconomic variables. This was designed to apply such a scale to data lacking respondent evaluations. Even if their status scale is then not directly based on the moral referendum, that is what it is supposed to tap, and this constitutes their theoretical framework. That work formed the basis of much later research, and the Origin-Education-Destination model advanced by Blau and Duncan is still widely applied, even in work otherwise far removed from more fundamental elements of their theoretical orientation. The distinctive trait of this American brand of stratification research is that it is much more attuned to issues of the social distribution of honour, even if distributions of resources were mixed into it. This warrants Scotts treatment of it as being not about class in the strict sense, but in fact status (Scott 1996:93-126). These writers themselves, however, often employed the language of class when referring to prestige, generally respecting no distinction between class and status (as evidenced in the title of Warner 1949). While, of course, Parsons based his hugely influential theorising on classical European social theory (Pareto, Durkheim, Weber), it is clear that his was a rather original take on it. Importantly, in terms of his views on stratification, his work in important respects breaks with at least Webers thoughts. Hence, I use ECT to refer to modes of conceptualising class that are in a much more pronounced continuity with either Marx or Weber, or both. As I stated earlier, this conception of class sees it as a specific feature of capitalism as an economic system. The very organisation of capitalist economic activity simply implies classes, as it is based on the private ownership of the means of production and the selling and buying of labour-power in formally free markets. Capitalism thus is a class society in a very fundamental way, since the constitution of class divisions in fact is part and parcel of what capitalism is. This does not mean, however, that any society with basically capitalist economies will necessarily be heavily class stratified. The particular socio-demographic inequalities and mobility patterns around class divisions concern the contingent process of 22

what Giddens called class structuration. Economic class divisions only become actual social divisions in the case of convergence between what he calls proximate and mediate sources of structuration (Giddens 1973:107-10). According to this view, the question of class is tied to the understanding of modernity as a social form, of which capitalism is a core dimension (Giddens 1981b, 1990; Sayer 1991) 2.2.3.1 Class structuration The problem of how classes are formed is, of course, central to the whole literature of class analysis. Webers emphasis on mobility spawned much research on social mobility into and out class situations. To the extent that certain bundles of class situations are marked by restrictive mobility, this is interpreted as a sign of the class being formed and possibly be expected to act (Goldthorpe et al. 1980:28).15 A similar concern animates some Marxist research on class (Westergaard and Resler 1975; Wright 1997). All of these accounts share the Weberian emphasis on demographic processes in transforming economic divisions into social classes. Later in this thesis, I will make use of Giddens concept of class structuration to aid in the attempt to solve certain theoretical puzzles. Class structuration was coined by Giddens in order to deal with precisely how the problem of the above-mentioned translation occurs. Giddens stands out from much of this literature by the sheer range of factors he draws into the explanation, and we will see later that the concept seems particularly congenial to the type of position I want to elaborate. Giddens pinpoints a broad range of factors relevant to class structuration, giving due space to the centrality of mobility closure, as recognised by almost everyone. Furthermore, he argues that the division of labour, cultural distinctions (status groups) as well as broader demographic processes are crucial (1973:107-12). This, then, is opposed to the more narrow emphasis on demographic formation in the Weberian tradition, and is further differentiated from that lineage of thought by maintaining that Stand a concept rejected by Giddens (1973:80) for its conflation of estates in the historical sense and status groups as referring to shared life-styles and evaluations of honour in capitalist societies is a factor in class structuration and not just an independent dimension of stratification (cf. Scott 1996). This does not involve a refusal of independent or cross-cutting effects of status, but highlights the
15

Goldthorpe and colleagues note that they also study mobility out of a normative interest in social openness and the opportunity for everyone to fulfil their potential.

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significance of convergences of class and status in the bringing about of subjectively meaningful class divisions and social classes as groups. This brings us to the question of the subjective salience of class. Giddens introduces a distinction between class awareness and class consciousness. When the sources of structuration converge i.e. market capacities overlap with cultural divisions classes will tend to manifest common styles of life. When class is thus a structurated phenomenon, there will tend to exist a common awareness and acceptance of similar attitudes and beliefs, linked to a common style of life, among the members of the class. This does not involve a recognition that these attitudes and beliefs signify a particular class affiliation, or the recognition that there exist other classes, characterised by different attitudes, beliefs, and styles of life. That would be the domain of class consciousness. The difference between them is a fundamental one, as class awareness may take the form of a denial of the existence or reality of classes. Thus the class awareness of the middle class, in so far as it involves beliefs which place a premium upon individual responsibility and achievement, is of this order. Note that this point anticipates the recent emphasis on class disidentification (Skeggs 1997; Savage 2000; Faber et al. 2012) The crux of this position is that, even if the bases of status-groups and classes are different, the tendency to class structuration may receive a considerable impetus where class coincides with the criteria of status group membership (Giddens 1973:111-12). The effects of party is conceptualised as crucial to the development of class consciousness, since this hinges on the development and activity of organisations or agencies devoted to the advancement of class interests (and identity) (Giddens 1973:115). This point were also given central importance by certain Marxist authors, in particularly influential form by Lenin (Lenin 1988). A related point is, as we will see, also made by Bourdieu. 2.3.1 The use of class in this thesis Having clarified what I mean by ECT, and paid some attention to the qualifications the term demands, I will now turn to present how I apply insights from this broad camp of authors in my work. The two quantitative papers confront specific incarnations of ECT thus defined with the Bourdieusian approach. The theoretical paper takes an opposite approach of sorts, confronting some recent Bourdieusian contributions to class analysis with the emphasis of ECT. I will discuss the approach drawn from Bourdieu in the next section. Here I will turn to how more specifically I draw on ECT, and conclude with a few notes on the use of the term

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class. In the following subsections, I will therefore briefly expand upon how I employ concepts drawn from the somewhat amorphous tradition of ECT. This is intended to supplement the discussion of these concepts given in the respective papers, but with a view to show how they are precisely exemplars of ECT. 2.3.1.1The upper class In analysing the economic upper class, my ambition was to develop an operationalisation of this that would class-theoretical, that is, not simply descriptive, like the top 1% or something of that nature. This means trying to develop a category that would tap into class relations, in the ECT sense. I do so in a broadly Weberian way. That is to say, class in this sense is understood to refer to essentially market relationships, but under the understanding that market relationships are intertwined with relations of production. In the case of the upper class, for example, being identified as living off income-generating property also means having a certain position within relations of productions. This latter implication is however left vague or maybe even opaque in the paper, for the simple reason that the data does not allow further specification. In doing this, I drew on John Scotts work on the capitalist class (Scott 1997), even if my own take on this involves a considerably larger group than what he studied and is coarser in the specification of class situations. Scotts analyses indicate that, in contemporary capitalism, four broad types of capitalist class situations can be delineated: the remaining entrepreneurs, the rentiers, the finance capitalists and the chief executives (Scott 1997:278-9). The first three of these can be said to live off property in some sense, whereas the last are technically speaking employees. Using this deductively means devising criteria of operationalisation that can capture these positions. The data used were Norwegian registers, which on the one hand facilitates the analysis of very small groups in the population, but on the other hand is quite restricted in the range of variables that can be used. What is more, the different types of owner capitalists rentiers, entrepreneurs and finance capitalists could not be distinguished. That being said, the operationalisation, itself outlined in the paper, captured persons either 1) living off returns to property in some form, or 2) earning their income through working in the higher echelons of the control structures of capitalist firms. The first involves not directly measuring their market situation, but approaching it by their type of income, itself pointing to its source. For this I use information from the tax 25

authorities, merged in the registers. The core theoretical assumption is, accordingly, that people whose main income is either capital income (stocks, interest, property, etc.) or selfemployed income (i.e. deriving from personally owned enterprises and not join stock firms) can be said to live off of some form of property ownership. This, then, is opposed to earning wages or salaries, which indicates class situations in which labour-power, and/or skills, are the chief market capacities relied on. The executives, managers and business professional segment is conceptualised in simpler terms, by firstly selecting the relevant occupational titles, and thereafter selecting the small subsection of them that have comparatively high annual incomes.16 2.3.1.2 The service class Goldthorpes class scheme (Goldthorpe et al. 1980; Erikson and Goldthorpe 1993) has proved to be the single most influential attempt at providing a classification of social class for survey analyses. By implication, this renders his conceptualisation of the service class (Goldthorpe 1982) the most influential solution to the problem of the middle class(es). Goldthorpes approach to class departs from an emphasis typical of ECT, namely understanding class as fundamentally about property. Hence, he outlines three basic class positions: the employer, the self-employed and the employee, corresponding to the Marxian triad of bourgeoisie, petit-bourgeoisie and proletariat. Applied as such, however, the category of employee becomes very large. It is the differentiation of employees that received Goldthorpes attention (Goldthorpe 2007b). In its full version, the Goldthorpe class scheme has no less than eight classes of employees: agricultural workers, the unskilled workers, the skilled workers, lower technical and manual supervisory workers, two categories of routine non-manual workers and two categories of the service class (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1993:36). In his latest formulations, the principle of differentiation here is the type of contract that regulates the employment relationship. The traditional workers have labour contracts, which are short-term and specify a specific exchange of effort for wages, at piece or time rates. This works as long as work can be quite easily measured, either in terms of output or time spent. The service class, however, is in lines of work which does not involve such discrete exchanges of effort for salaries, since their effort is less easily quantifiable, such as filling
16

As specified in the paper, the limit is set to 1 million NOK. In retrospect, it would doubtlessly make more sense to apply a relative measure, like the top 1% of them, or something of that nature.

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leadership functions and the application of expertise. As this is less readily monitored and measured, they cannot be compensated per unit produced. Since the service class exercise delegated authority, and also apply specialised expertise, they require certain autonomy, but also a moral commitment to the employing organisation. The service contract involves longterm, relatively secure conditions of employment and also career prospects, and hence involves a form of institutionalised trust. Thus, the theory of the service class accounts for how these middle-class groups fit into class relations that are primarily shaped by property relationships. Employment relationships are shaped within this context, coordinated through markets (creating market situations). The bureaucratisation of the employing organisations, in tandem with technological change, created needs for other types of work, and this would have to be organised in efficient ways that served the overall purposes of capitalist firms. Hence what I refer to as the structural basis of the middle class, which I think is basically convincingly conceptualised by Goldthorpe. 2.3.1.3 Class power and domination
as a minister, I experienced the power of industrialists and bankers to get their way by use of the crudest form of economic pressure, even blackmail, against a Labour Government. Compared to this, the pressure brought to bear in industrial disputes by the unions is minuscule. - Tony Benn (1988:xiii), former UK minister of technology

Throughout the Putting Bourdieu to work paper, I refer to the types of power and domination that are founded in the basic institutions of capitalism. In the paper, I indicate that this is basically the important crucial point from ECT I would want to retain. In the paper, however, I give rather tentative comments on how this is to be understood. First of all, what are the basic institutions of capitalism? This is, of course, a huge question. For purposes of this thesis, I refer principally to the relations of production and market exchange. Productive relations in capitalism are organised through the private ownership of the means of production and the buying and selling of labour-power, which directly implicates market exchange. These core institutions rely on a state to, at least, enforce contracts and provide basic infrastructure and services. Furthermore, capitalism relies on banking and credit systems, which under present conditions take on a very particular significance, not least given the enormous role played by debt (Ingham 2008). For the purposes of class analysis, I emphasise primarily the production and market relations, in the tradition of Marx and Weber. 27

What types of power and domination are established in these institutional foundations? This, of course, hinges upon how power and domination are to be conceptualised. This is an issue fraught with controversy. I cannot visit this debate in anything approaching the detail it deserves. I use the concept in the following sense. In its most fundamental meaning, power refers to transformative capacity, and is hence an intrinsic property of agency. Power as transformative capacity can then be taken to refer to agents capabilities of reaching [definite] outcomes (Giddens 1979:88, emphasis removed). The exercise of power involves drawing on resources implied by structures of domination. Resources are the media through which power is exercised, and structures of domination reproduced (Giddens 1979:91). As such, power is a relational concept, but operates through the utilisation of transformative capacities as generated by structures of domination. Power thus concerns the ability of actors to secure outcomes where the realisation of these outcomes depends on the agency of others (Giddens 1979:93). The point of this is to avoid the either voluntarist or structuralist conception of power, and viewing them instead as mutually dependent. One important aspect of this is that power may be used even in the absence of explicit and discursively conscious intentions to do so, but logically not independently of action as such. It is thus better to adopt Giddens terminology to speak of instantiations of power. Murphy, writing from a different perspective, distinguish three different types of power, which nonetheless are consistent with the structurationist view and also illustrate it (Murphy 1988:134-35). The first concerns the power to command, as pointed to in Webers discussion of legitimate domination (Weber 1978:212-45). Here the dominant actor or group can instruct the dominated actor on what to do, and this is accepted by the latter. This may hinge on structural aspects like position in legal-rational arrangements, or empowerment through institutionalised history or tradition or on charisma, which might itself be based on mediated structured forms of domination, as Bourdieu showed (see below) The second type of power is the power to constrain. This refers to situations in which actions of dominant actors or groups effectively constrain those of others, regardless of why these actions are undertaken. Murphy points to Webers example of a quasi-monopolistic banking institution, which can impose its own terms, in its own interests, for the granting of credit (Weber 1978:943). The dominated group people who need credit have no choice but to accept the terms (or make do without what they need, try another bank). This thus

28

involves the possibility to constrain or narrow the opportunities open to dominated actors, without commanding the subordinates and independently of what are the intensions of the dominant actor (Murphy 1988:135). This, obviously, depends on distribution of resources in structures of domination, as Giddens points to. The third category pointed to by Murphy is the power to profit from. This refers to the capacity of actors or groups to profit, in order to realize its goals, from the autonomous actions of others. That is to say, these autonomous actions are not initiated by the profiting actor or group, and they may be oriented to other goals. The power to profit from implies the capacity to take advantage of possibilities that are presented by others (Murphy 1988:136). Murphy proposes that this is the type of power that upper and middle classes enjoy in relation the school system: They are not so much able to command or constrain how the school works, but through their cultural capital, they are able to profit from the relatively autonomous working of the school system. Murphy argues convincingly, I think that this is the proper form of the power relation between classes and the school, and it is this relationship which properly explains the misrecognition analysed by Bourdieu discussed below (Murphy 1988:149-50) The two first types of power are those conventionally considered as class power and domination. At least three broad types of such power can be identified. By virtue of the ownership of means of production, capitalists (in various forms) and their employed executives and managers make decisions about how socially significant economic resources are put to use. In capitalism, decisions about what should be built and produced, and how, what and where, are private decisions, exempt from democratic decision-making. Various legal regulations and limits on these decisions do not alter the fundamentals of this. This is thus a case of power to command. Furthermore, since the finances of the state to some considerable extent derives from taxation on the activities of private profit-making, a relation of structural dependency pertain between state and business. [T]the state, as everyone else, is dependent upon the activities of capitalist employers for its revenue, and hence the state operates in a context of various capitalistic imperatives (Giddens 1981b:211).17 This implies that even if [t]he state remains an arena within which class struggles are fought out , it is nevertheless one in which there
17

The dependency goes both ways, of course, since private enterprises depend on state provision of a range of community services, of which infrastructure and the maintenance of law and order stand out as particularly relevant.

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are influences at work that have a particular character of their own (Giddens 1981b:216). This means that there are objective, structural forces which tend towards deterring governments from politics that would or could hamper accumulation of profits, even in the absence of strategies of lobbying threats of flagging-out. This concerns a power to constrain. By the same token, the labour contract also ensures their power to command employees in the work-place. This, then, refers to the capitalists and executives power over workers and middle-class employees. More generally, the accumulation of pecuniary resources make for a broader type of social power, in that money (not as capital in the strict sense) can be invested in housing, educational careers for offspring, put to work in political campaigns etc. Power over capital, the associated political power, and the power over employees refer to quite specific forms of capitalist power. This is put in rather sketchy terms and in no way constitute a full-fledged formulation of what class power is. I outline this simply to clarify the types of power which I think ECT rightly draws attention to, and which Bourdieusian class theory seems at a risk to lose from sight.

2.4 Pierre Bourdieu on class

The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu is multifaceted and deals with a broad range of empirical issues. A concern with questions of inequality and power, often under the rubric of class, is however a common theme: the scientific function of sociology is to understand the social world, starting with the structures of power (Bourdieu 1993c:14). The most famous concept couched by Bourdieu is, of course, cultural capital, in some later texts redubbed information capital. In studies of educational inequality, Bourdieu and his colleagues applied the concept to help explain how the offspring of the bourgeoisie fared better than the sons and daughters of farmers in the education system. The concept was coined to capture the familiarity with legitimate culture displayed by the descendants of the upper classes through manners of speaking and dressing, as well as substantive cultural knowledge. Through having grown up in the bourgeoisie world, the students had a natural mastery of these relatively rare cultural competences. Though unintended, this was tacitly recognised by teachers, who willy-nilly rewarded these signs of distinctions with better grades and evaluations. Through this process of misrecognition, the school system contributes to the reproduction of the distribution of cultural capital, and as Bourdieu puts it in his foreword to

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the second English edition, by transmitting cultural capital across generations and to stamp pre-existing differences in inherited cultural capital with a meritocratic seal of academic consecration by virtue of the special symbolic potency of the title (credential) (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990:ix-x). With Distinction, cultural capital takes on an even more important role in his work. In that book, it becomes a core building block of his conceptualisation of social class. In that very rich and subtle analysis of the relationship between class and culture, a novel model of the class or stratification structure is advanced. With the concept of social space, Bourdieu constructs a model of the class structure as shaped by the distribution of, and relation between, key forms of capital. In social space, the geometric distance in the map reflects social distance that is to say, different endowments with capital and the associated difference in life-style. His portrayal of the class structure of France of the 1960s is three-dimensional: Classes are firstly delineated by the overall volume of capital that is, the amount of scarce marketable resources that agents possess. Secondly, classes are fractioned by capital composition, that is, the relative weight of cultural and economic capital in their overall holdings. Thirdly, a last cross-cutting division is trajectory, that is, changes over time in the volume and composition of capitals of individuals and/or groups (Bourdieu 1984:114-143). The social space, then, is a way to model the distribution of capitals, and this serves to give a snapshot of the relations of power between social classes at a given point in time. To be that, its constituent elements the forms of capital must represent the key forms of power that is effective in the context being studied. In the case of the social space of classes in globo, this would refer to forms of power of more general currency (as opposed to the more fieldspecific forms, discussed below). The social space is a relational structure of difference and similarity, objectifying the distribution of capitals. It is worth emphasising the relational aspect of this: The social space captures relations of strength or power, domination and subordination. Any position in social space is only meaningful in a relational sense: High volumes of capital are only understandable in relation to low volumes; just as cultural capital gains its meaning and efficacy by its relationship to economic capital. Individuals placements are also strictly relational: there is no inherent, substantial meaning ascribed to residing in any sector of the space each position is understandable in relation to the position of others. This is a point of extraordinary importance in understanding Bourdieus analysis, especially as it relates to life-styles, because the difference between life-style items only

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makes sense in their interrelationships. The interpretation of the classed nature of the taste for Warhol and Tel Quel owes everything to its opposition to having large art collections and membership of automobile clubs, as well as to a distinctive taste for bacon and public dances (Bourdieu 1984:128-9). Since the concept of capital plays such an important role in Bourdieus work, and especially in the use I put it to in this thesis, it is worth spelling out certain key aspects of it. In its most general sense, anything can be a capital given that three special conditions are met: Relative scarcity, unequal distribution and the presence of a relevant market, that is to say, a field. In an interview included in La sociologie est un sport de combat (Carles 2001 06:1018:15), Bourdieu illustrates this with the capacity to speak proper French, a core part of cultural capital. The accent-free, proper French is not spoken by everyone, and is hence in short supply. Moreover, the mastery of that particular linguistic competence is unequally distributed, concentrated among the native, the Parisians and the generally well-off (these traits are not directly specified in the interview, but implied). This goes from being a scarce and unequally distributed competence to being capital once it encounters a field which in it is valued and can be invested. Bourdieu draws attention to the field of education: the improper French of newly arrived immigrants is worthless on the school market. If you speak that kind of language, you will earn a straight F. This helps elucidate his application of capital in general. Economic capital refers to all sorts of monetary resources or anything that can rather easily be converted into money (such as property, houses, cars, stocks, etc.). This quite obviously meets the conditions specified above: it is scarce, it is unequally distributed and it provides purchasing power. The embodied form of cultural capital dispositions of the body and mind to speak, act and think in certain ways operate directly analogous to proper French, which is a case of it. In the clich example, a familiarity with high-brow culture can be a capital since not everyone has it and it is (tacitly) valued in schools. That implies if that the oft-repeated claim of the declining significance of high-brow culture is correct, this does not mean the end of cultural capital as such, but simply the demise of high-brow culture as capital. Educational credentials become institutionalised cultural capital insofar as they remain in short supply and are recognised in relevant labour markets, giving access to specific jobs and/or special remuneration. Similarly, social capital durable, more or less formal ties, friendships, acquaintances, connections is

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valuable by virtue of being rare and since it can be put to use in a range of contexts, as a channel of information and opportunities (Bourdieu 1986). Importantly for the explanatory purposes, one form of capital may be converted into another. Economic capital can be invested so as to accumulate cultural capital by purchasing rare cultural objects (the objectified form of cultural capital) or investing in education. Similarly, institutionalised cultural capital is frequently rather easily converted into economic capital, through the process mentioned above. That is basically the heart of what Bourdieu refers to as strategies of conversion (Bourdieu 1984:125-41), whereby power can be attained by creative conversions between the forms, so that, for instance, wealthy business owners may invest in their off-springs education, which can later be converted into a directorship or an executive position (Bourdieu 1984:137). A core point in Distinction is, famously, that a clear correspondence pertains between the social space and a related, but independent and distinct, space of life-styles. The latter metaphor applies the same spatial logic to account for, not distributions of capital, but distributions of items indicating life-style. To each position in social space corresponds a position in the space of life-styles. This is, in fact, a core point in his understanding of what class is, since individuals or groups are objectively defined not only by what they are but by what they are reputed to be, a being-perceived which, even if it closely depends on its being, is never totally reducible to this (Bourdieu 1990a:135). That is to say, classes are not simply defined by their amount and type of capital, but equally by their cultural representation. Bourdieu puts much emphasis on the point that the relation between the social space and the space of life-styles, or between class and culture, is one of homology. The precise meaning of homology is not very clearly spelled out by Bourdieu. What he seems to have in mind is this: the spaces defined by preferences in food, clothing or cosmetics are organised according to the same fundamental structure, that of the social space determined by volume and composition of capital (Bourdieu 1984:208). Since the homology argument is important for Bourdieu, and I draw upon it in the Politics paper, it is useful to try and tease out more precisely what it means. The claim is properly understood as pertaining to the relationship between two distinct structures social and symbolic and one cannot reduce the homologies between systems of differences to direct, mechanical relationships between groups and properties. This means that it is not

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being proposed that one can statistically predict one individuals taste in cosmetics based on knowledge about ones social origin. That would suggest a rather mechanic model of social determination, even if rendered in probabilistic term. Homology means that the space of positions and the space of position-takings (life-styles) are structured along the same lines.18 In explaining this, Bourdieu uses formulations and ways of presenting his argument that nevertheless gives it a somewhat determinist ring, as when he writes that the two major organising principles of the social space govern the structure and modifications of the space of cultural consumption, and, more generally, the whole universe of life-styles (Bourdieu 1984:176, my italics). He explains this by showing that the principal oppositions in life-styles reflect distance or proximity to necessity. By consistently prioritising form over function or substance, distance to necessity is manifested in taking up practices designated by their rarity as distinguished. This distance is, for Bourdieu, in a sense expresses the material distance to necessity facilitated by high overall volume of capital. The opposite is practices socially identified as vulgar because they are both easy and common, prioritising function over form hearty meals, catchy tunes, entertaining movies is characteristic of low volumes of capital. These oppositions are specified according to capital composition, but the difference in tastes between the economic capital fractions and cultural capital fractions are variants of the same fundamental relationship to necessity and to those who remain subject to it (Bourdieu 1984:176). How more precisely does this become the case? Bourdieu proposes that the correspondence between social position and life-styles comes about through the conditioning of the habitus systems of generative schemes applicable, by simple transfer, to the most varied areas of practice. Habitus reflects the conditions in which it was produced, so agents under similar conditions will produce similar practices (Bourdieu 1984:170). This is summed up in a much cited figure in Distinction, reproduced below (figure 1). Hence, Bourdieu suggests that between these two spaces lies a third space of habitus, of the generative formulae which underlie each of the classes of practices and properties (Bourdieu 1984: 126)19. That is to say, the space of habitus then refers to the distribution of differential modes of perceiving, classifying, thinking and acting. Through this space of
18

In the Politics paper, I follow Lennart Rosenlunds (2009) interpretati on of this, taking the implication to be that the different structures social space and space of life-styles, or of political opinions in my case should be constructed independently of each other, and then compared. 19 These formulations are drawn fro m the Politics paper.

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habitus, the economic and social conditions of existence become mediated into life-styles. These mediations imply that the overall fit between the space of conditions of existence and the space of life-styles is somewhat loose. On a superficial reading, the scheme gives the impression of a rather immediate and instantaneous reflection of current social position in life-styles. However, the conditions of existence that shape the habitus must necessarily to some considerable extent pertain to the conditions of social origin: a core point of the idea of class habitus is that social class background shapes mental structures from early on, which was, of course, the central premise of Bourdieus interventions in the sociology of education. Peoples habitus are of course not fully shaped by their current conditions of existence. Indeed, this is strongly emphasised by Bourdieu in The Logic of Practice: The habitus, a product of history, produces individual and collective practices more history in accordance with the schemes generated by history (Bourdieu 1990a:54). This is what is accounted for by the often overlooked third dimension of social space social trajectory. As can be grasped from the correspondence analysis maps, the effects of social origin the second dimension of inherited capital, or trajectory appear fully independent of the capital composition principle, so that there are distinct differences of taste by the composition of capital and distinct differences by class seniority (Bourdieu 1984:262).

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Figure 1: Conditions of existence, habitus and life-style (Bourdieu 1984:171)

The concept of habitus, then, fills a very central role in Bourdieus work. Much of the explanatory power of his theory rests on the social processes whereby the habitus is shaped and whereby it is effective. In a much quoted passage in Outline of a theory of practice, Bourdieu offers a characteristically dense and difficult, but highly accurate, description:
The structures constitutive of a particular type of environment (e.g. the material conditions of existence characteristic of a class condition) produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations which can be objectively regulated and regular without in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary to attain them and, being all this, collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor (Bourdieu 1977:72).

I suspect that the simple fact that these 106 words make up one single sentence and that this is in no way unrepresentative of his style of writing goes some way in accounting for the frequent misunderstandings surrounding the views of Bourdieu. For instance, a leading exponent of so-called analytical sociology lambasts a basically identical paragraph (Bourdieu 1990a:53) for being ambiguous, like mental clouds that mystify rather than clarify, being clearly unsatisfactory, lacking clarity and precision, being unclear about

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what habitus actually refers to and so on (Hedstrm 2005:4).20. While there is no denying the density and complexity of the paragraph cited above, it is both clear and precise. Let us flesh out the constituent parts of the description: 1. Particular class conditions (fundamental conditions of existence) produce habitus. That is to say, the experience of particular endowment with resources and opportunities in the context of their unequal distribution produces distinct 2. systems of durable, transposable dispositions. Disposition thus refer to predispositions, tendencies, propensities or inclinations21 towards particular ways of perceiving, thinking and acting. Dispositions are interrelated in a system. 3. These systems of dispositions are structured structures. This sums up what has just been said. The habitus refers to a system of dispositions, a structure, which is the product of conditions of existence, or social structures. That is to say, the habitus refers to embodied or mental structures that are shaped by their surroundings, i.e. structured by the social structures. 4. Habitus functions as a structuring structure, principles of the generation of practices and representations. The embodied or mental structures provide the dispositions that shape social action. Actors draw on these structures in their practices and representations, and in the decoding or interpretation of the practices and representations offered by others. Hence, social action practices and representations are structured by the habitus. 5. The practices produced by the habitus display regularity, precisely because they are produced by it. This refer to the fact that any individuals views, statements and actions are likely to display a certain family resemblance, owing to traits, characteristics and the personality specific to that individual as opposed to the following of rules. In an illuminating example, Bourdieu likens this to handwriting: a singular way of tracing letters which always produces the same writing, i.e. graphic forms which, in spite of all the differences of size, material or colour due to the surface (paper or blackboard) or the instruments (pen or chalk) in spite. Therefore, of all the different
20

The meaning of the sentence is, however, clearly not entirely lost on that professor, as in the midst of these putative insults, he is seemingly able to offer a semi-precise interpretation: It seems as if Bourdieu is trying to say that individuals often behave in habitual ways without consciously reflecting upon what they are doing, and that individuals who occupy similar positions in some abstractly defined social space tend to behave in similar ways; but I must admit that I am not entirely sure whether this interpretation is correct. It is, however, broadly correct, even if it does not sum up the entire passage. 21 These specifications of the concept of disposition are named in an endnote (Bourdieu 1977:214, n 1) following disposition in the paragraph cited above.

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uses of muscles present an immediately perceptible family resemblance, like all the features of a style or manner whereby a painter or writer can be recognised as infallibly as a man by his walk (Bourdieu 1984:173). 6. In contexts and relations not too dissimilar from its formation, the habitus equips actors with dispositions that are relatively well attuned to the relevant exigencies. In this case, actors are like fish in water, equipped with embodied and sub-reflexive dispositions fitted to ones social conditions. This allows acting adequately with little reflexive strain, in a quasi-automatic fashion, thus allowing one to act in ways conducive to achieving particular goals without aiming at them, or even expressing any mastery of the relevant skills and knowledge. This particular feature is exceptionally central to the concept of habitus, pointing to the fact that the dispositions and competences in the habitus are primarily of a practical nature. This does not rule out explicit, reflexive and discursive deliberation, but points to the tacit mastery of the social world embedded in what Giddens refers to as practical consciousness: For action to be purposive, agents do not have to be capable of formulating the knowledge they apply as an abstract proposition (Giddens 1976:83, my italics). 7. As habitus is constituted by conditions of existence, it follows that similar conditions of existence would produce similar habitus. It is this that would amount to class habitus, owing to its classed context of constitution. (It is important to note that class habitus is distinct from the concept of individual habitus: few persons experience exactly identical conditions of existence. One individuals habitus will reflect the conditions of existence faced by that individual, while class habitus would refer to the elements of habitus common to a class of individuals, produced by what is common in the conditions of existence of people considered to belong to, or originate in, the same or a similar class). When this is added to what is said in points 1-6, it emerges how it is that practices and representations can be collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor. The habitus, then, is a core conceptual explanatory tool in the argument of homology. It posits that through actors creative application of dispositions acquired through classed conditionings, systematic differences in life-styles and position-takings arise that follow the same lines as the social divisions that create classes and class fractions. Clear patterns are found in life-styles, because clear patterns are found in the habitus, the generative principle of these life-styles. As Bourdieu expresses it, systematicity is found in the opus operatum 38

because it is in the modus operandi (Bourdieu 1984:173). And these systematic patterns in the modus operandi are found because of the systematic patterns found in the conditions producing the habitus, i.e. pre-existing opus operatum. The structure of the social world shapes the mental and embodied structures of the habitus, and the habitus shapes the style of life. This dialectic between object and subject, society and actor, outside and inside, is central to Bourdieus approach. On this account, there is no starting-point or ultimate foundation for social analysis in either the individual or the collective, or the actor or the structure. What is implied is that the mutually co-constitutive relations that exist between them are the true stuff of social analysis. This constitutes the broad contours of Bourdieus tackling of the oft-cited challenge posed by Marx in that famous dictum from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past (Marx 1954:15). At this general level, Bourdieu seems to posit what Giddens has famously called a duality of structure and agency (Giddens 1984). 22

22

I have on more than one occasion drawn parallels between the views of Bourdieu and Giddens, and more will follow. This might seem odd, given the latters extremely dismissive attitude towards the former: After condemning Giddens as a prototype of the communication consultant to the prince under neoliberalism, structuration theory is called a a scholastic synthesis of various sociological and philosophical traditions decisively wrenched out of their context and thus ideally suited to the task of academicized sociodicy (Bourdieu and Wacquant 2001:5). This was a serious sharpening of tone as compared to Wacquants earlier comment on structuration theory, which was content in emphasising its theoretical nature as the chief difference between the Brit and the Frenchmans work (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:3, n. 3). Wacquant goes on to note that Bourdieus theory of practice predates Giddens structuration theory by at least ten years, which may be taken as implying that one is in some sense a copy of the other. Giddens attitude towards Bourdieu seems considerably friendlier. However, nowhere does he enter into any sort of extensive engagement with Bourdieus work. This is in itself remarkable: Giddens is commended even by his most hostile critics for his wide engagement with profiles and theories in social science (Loyal 2003:174), but he manifestly failed to ever discuss the approach of another sociologist whose approach quite obviously resembled his own. But the places where Giddens does refer to or mention Bourdieu, it is in a positive way (Giddens 1979:216; 1981b:161; 1984:133;1991:82) except for his reserved attitude towards the concept of symbolic violence (Giddens 1994:231). Moreover, in reviewing Distinction, Giddens claimed that Bourdieu had done more than any other living author to bridge the gap between objectivism and subjectivism (Giddens 1986:300-1). This would seem to be a rather big concession, given that his own entire production from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s was devoted to just that task. In a retrospective mode, Giddens indeed seemed to consider Bourdieus views and structuration theory as, for all practical purposes, similar: We cant make any sense of social life without something like the view that I am taking. I dont see what the alternative is. I can see failed alternatives, as it were, like Durkheim and social facts, or even the methodology of neo-classical economics. People might not like the concepts I use, and may prefer say a version by Bourdieu or somebody else, but that is just what social life is like. It is continually contingently reproduced by knowledgeable human agents thats what gives it fixity and thats what also produces change (Giddens and Pierson 1998:90, my emphasis). I would concur with Giddens judgment on this issue: structuration theory is broadly similar to and compatible with the main aspects of Bourdieus structural -constructivist theory of practice. They are, however, strikingly different in emphasis: Giddens work is a wholly theoretical and a conceptual critical synthesis of a broad range

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People do not, of course, relate to the social world in globo in an unmediated fashion23. The concept of field is of central importance to Bourdieu. It is clearly related to that of social space, and employs the same spatial analogy, but also involves a certain (limited) analogy with magnetic or force fields, in that the force(s) of the field affects any element (agents or institutions) that operate within it. Sometimes Bourdieu speaks of the broader field of classes as equivalent to social space (1984: 345) but his most distinctive application is related to a recognition of the central importance of social differentiation. Thus, field is used to denote more or less autonomous microcosms of social practice, like the field of literary production or the scientific field. Within these fields, particular forms of capital are established (for example, a set of competences and resources may come to count as literary capital), and there are also established (tacit) rules on how these capitals are to be accumulated and invested. The field is thus a field of forces you can only partake in the practice going on within the field if you abide by these rules, accumulate these resources and invest them in accepted ways. It is also is a field of struggle for positions within the internal hierarchy of the field, but also a struggle over these rules and resources. A central implication is that the field is governed by rules and forms of capital that are to some extent restricted to it, that are not (as) valid outside of it (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992: 94-115). As with the notion of social space, fields are also conceptualised strictly as relational structures. Fields are, for Bourdieu, structured spaces of positions (or posts) whose properties depend on their position within these spaces. The structure of the field is a state of the power relations among the agents or institutions engaged in the struggle [] about the monopoly of the legitimate violence (specific authority) which is characteristic of the field in question, which means, ultimately, the specific capital (Bourdieu 1993d:72-73). Note that Bourdieus notion of relations here often concerns structures of objective relations, and not interpersonal relationships (Bottero 2009), as will be discussed more in the next chapter.

of other theoretical approaches, constructed as a social ontology. Bourdieus work is resolutely empirical and addressed to problems of actual empirical research. That is to say, Bourdieus theoretical work is constructed more epistemologically (Broady 1990), concerned with how we can study the objective and subjective dimensions of social life in their dialectical relationship. In line with this judgement, Rob Stones has integrated many of Bourdieus ideas into his reworked program of strong structuration theory (Stones 2005). That there has been so remarkably little cross-fertilisation between structuration theory and those who follow Bourdieu might seem to stem at least in part from the radically divergent political orientations taken by Giddens and Bourdieu. Through the 1990s, Bourdieu became an increasingly central figure on the French left, leading French social democrats to speak of la gauche bourdieusienne. Giddens took the opposite path and became a cherished intellectual inspiration for New Labour. 23 The following is based on passages from the Putting Bourdieu to work paper.

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Bourdieu employed fields as a means to grasping the complex relation between positions and position-takings. Bluntly put, the point is to show how agents position-takings are intelligible in relation to the position they hold within the relevant field. For instance, he demonstrates that the positions taken by French humanities and social science professors towards the events of May 68, could be understood in relation to their relative positions within the field, and thus the universities (Bourdieu 1988a). For this endeavour, it is of central importance to grasp the positions of all relevant agents in their relation to the other positions, conceptualised in terms of a field structured by the distribution of relevant forms of capital and the strength relations between capitals. Fields are to be viewed as systems in which each particular element (institution, organization, group or individual) derives its distinctive properties from its relationship to all other elements (Swartz 1997:123). Agents positions in the field thus capture how theyre situated with respect to the resources and profits of the university world (or other fields). This means also capturing how the agents are situated with respect to the other agents engaged in the same field. This, then, lays a basis for the strategies agents adopt in the various struggles within the field, such as those brought about by the upheavals of May 68. The position-takings of the professors varied systematically with their positions within the field: the holders of specifically academic capital and/or tenured positions more often took conservative positions. Conversely, those with weaker positions in the field were less inclined to take positions in favour of the status quo (Bourdieu 1988:77-84). Similar patterns emerge in other of his field analyses: The dominant tends towards orthodox positions, whereas the subordinate more often take the heterodox positions (Swartz 1997:124). The most general aspects of Bourdieus sociology can be described in terms of the interrelationship of field, capital and habitus. Fields either in the sense of the global social space or a more delimited microcosm constitute the context in which people act - employ their capitals by the accomplished use of dispositions and competences in the habitus. Capitals, accumulated social energy, are the means whereby which action can be effected goods purchased, school grades achieved, jobs obtained, etc. Habitus, the armoury of dispositions, competences and world-views, is not simply required by any actor engaging in the field, but is what gives any field meaning, through the sense of illusio the sense that the games in the field are worth playing (Bourdieu 1998:76-79). To take an example rather close at hand, the field of scientific production and consumption is wholly dependent on the

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presence and participation of actors who are willing to invest and engage in it. Of course, not falling into subjectivism, it is equally true that there could be no such will in the absence of a field. These summary comments indicate the tight interdependence of these concepts the aspects of the social world that they point to. In fact, these concepts themselves make no sense alone: For example, the embodied form of cultural capital is made up of long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body (Bourdieu 1986:47), that is to say, embodied cultural capital exist in the habitus, and these particular dispositions can only function as a capital within fields where they are recognised as distinct and valuable. As evident from its origin, cultural capitals prime field is that of education. It is misleading, therefore, to consider habitus to be Bourdieus theory of action, as is suggested, for example, by the title of the chapter on habitus in David Swartz excellent account of Bourdieus work Habitus: A cultural theory of action (Swartz 1997). For Bourdieu, action is most properly conceived of as practice, implying both the practical, as opposed to discursive, nature of it, and it seems to me the same thing as Giddens highlights: To speak of human social activity as Praxis is to reject every conception of human beings as determined objects or as unambiguously free subjects. All human action is carried on by knowledgeable agents who both construct the social world through their action, but yet whose action is also conditioned or constrained by the very world of their creation (Giddens 1981b:53-4). Practice, for Bourdieu, arises in in the intersection of habitus, field and capitals, somewhat confusingly expressed in a formula: [(habitus) (capital)] + field = practice (Bourdieu 1984:101).24 The social space approach to social differentiation and divisions is taken up in Bourdieus other major works as well. These illustrate the necessary of identifying the types of power that are effective within the more delimited microcosms of social life. In Homo Academicus, Bourdieu analyses internal differentiation of the French university field, by studying the distribution of the various forms of capital that are effective in that world. This is done by correspondence analysis using indicators like fathers occupation, number of children, own
24

Swartz in fact recognises this, and rightly comments on the weirdness of that formula: Unfortunately, the formula confuses more than it clarifies the exact relationship among the terms. Are habitus and capital interactive terms whereas field is additive? Or does the formula simply recommend that every empirical inquiry take into account all of these factors? (Swartz 1997:141, n.50). It seems more likely that the latter is the case, but if so, why is it expressed in a seemingly precise mathematical formula if its specific interpretation is not what Bourdieu had in mind?

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educational credentials, publication record, directorships, various teaching experiences, place of higher education, awards, translations, television appearances, mentions in Whos who. In place of the three dimensions of the global social space, this produces three dimensions of differentiation: 1) full university power vs. other forms of power/prestige, 2) tenured teachers vs. younger teachers without institutional recognition, and 3) main university Establishment vs. more obscure specialists (Bourdieu 1988a:271-6). Similarly, the analysis of corporate heads undertaken in the broader analysis of the field of power in The State Nobility uses, among others, place of birth, number of children, place of residence, fathers occupation, the length of time the family had been in the business world, schooling, attending on of the top Parisian lyces, number of higher education diploma, board memberships, career trajectory (public or private) etc., as indicators of the different forms of capital effective in the field. This produces a first opposition between public and private sector, and a second opposition between old and new (Bourdieu 1996:340, 301-2). In all three analyses, then, the trajectory dimension is in evidence, as is some form of opposition by form of capital: cultural vs. economic in the global social space; strictly academic vs. power drawn from the outside world in the university; and public vs. private business among the corporate heads. The presentation outlined above centred on the aspects of Bourdieus work that I draw most explicitly on in the thesis. It should be noted, however, that what is perhaps the strongest element of how Bourdieu deals with social class is his insistence on the need to systematically connect the structural and constructivist analysis. The social world cannot be reduced to either its objective structural aspects, nor to the social constructions, interpretations and symbolically meaningful actions. Accordingly, sociology cannot restrict itself to a social physics of the laws and regularities that seemingly operate behind the backs of actors, nor to a social semiology or hermeneutics, which concerns itself only with interpreting actors interpretations of the social world.
In short, social science does not have to choose between that form of social physics, represented by Durkheim [] and the idealist semiology which, undertaking to construct an account of accounts, as Harold Garfinkel puts it, can do no more than record the recordings of a social world which is ultimately no more than the product of mental, i.e., linguistic, structures. What we have to do is to bring into the science of scarcity, and of competition for scarce goods, the practical knowledge which the agents obtain for themselves by producing on the basis of their experience of the distributions, itself dependent on their position in the distributions divisions and classifications which are no less objective than those of the balance-sheets of social physics. In other words, we have to move beyond the opposition between objectivist theories which identify the social classes (but also the sex or age classes) with discrete groups, simple countable populations separated by boundaries objectively drawn

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in reality, and subjectivist (or marginalist) theories which reduce the social order to a sort of collective classification obtained by aggregating the individual classifications or, more precisely, the individual strategies, classified and classifying, through which agents class themselves and others (Bourdieu 1984:483).

2.4.1 Bourdieu, Marx, Weber How does this view of social class compare to those of Marxists and Weberians? That is a complex question which inevitably produces a complex answer. Bourdieus thinking of social class does not represent a distinct sphere of his thought: in a sense, all of his work is concerned with class. Furthermore, Bourdieu was not a class theorist in the way that his Anglo-American counterparts were (Savage et al. 2005:42). We do not find the type of theoretical determination of what class refers to, like we find in Wright, Goldthorpe and many others. Bourdieu quite explicitly refused aligning himself with any single classical tradition in sociology:
whether or not to be a Marxist or a Weberian is a religious alternative, not a scientific one. In fact, one may -- and should -- use Weber against Weber to go beyond Weber. In the same way, one should follow Marx's advice when he said "I am not a Marxist" and be an anti-Marxist Marxist. One may think with Weber or Durkheim, or both, against Marx to go beyond Marx and, sometimes, to do what Marx could have done, in his own logic. Each thinker offers the means to transcend the limitations of the others (Bourdieu 1988b:780)

This has in no way prevented classifications and dismissals of Bourdieu for being either a Marxist or a Weberian (Weininger 2002:49-50). French structuralist-Marxist Nicos Poulantzas derided Bourdieu for his impenitent Weberianism (1975:178), while Jeffrey Alexander called Bourdieu the most impressing living embodiment of a neo-Marxist tradition, claiming that Bourdieu, like Habermas, has sought heroically to reconstruct historical materialism (Alexander 1995:128-9). However, Bourdieu is lambasted as a bourgeois social scientist offering a Weberian liberal theory in disguise by Rachel Sharp (1980:66-76), which in a certain sense seems in line with Brubaker (1985), who approvingly portrays Bourdieus work as basically neo-Weberian. Furthermore, Tom Bottomore opts for a more favourable reading from a Marxist perspective in his preface to Reproduction (Bourdieu and Passeron 1990), and Bridget Fowler (2011) argues in a friendly vein that Bourdieu is an unorthodox Marxist. And still in a sympathetic tone, Jacques Bidet argues that Bourdieu is indeed quite removed from historical materialism, but that his perspective is an important corrective to that tradition (Bidet 2008). The assessment of the Marxists Poulantzas, Sharp and Bidet is certainly correct, in so far as Bourdieu did not account of classes, class conflict, class power and its reproduction with 44

reference to the dynamics of capitalist accumulation (Sharp 1980:73). It is also correct, as Alexander notes that Bourdieu does seek to effect a materialist radicalisation of Webers concepts. However, Alexander acknowledges but quite explicitly ignores Bourdieus repeated attacks on Marxism, trying instead to argue that the very marrow of [Bourdieus] social science is penetrated by Marxism (Alexander 1995:128). Wacquants succinct examination of the classical inheritance in Bourdieus reframing class shows, however, that it does not neatly fit into any of the established traditions, even if it shows clear affinities with many of them (Wacquant 2013), as can be seen in his sociology more generally (Swartz 1997:28-48) Accordingly, I hold that Bourdieus analysis of class, like his sociology in general, cannot be equated with that is to say, reduced to an exemplar of any of the established traditions of classical sociology. In the following, I will focus very narrowly on how Bourdieus views on social class, as laid out above, compares to Marxian and Weberian class analysis. Two issues are dealt with: The first concerns exactly what Bourdieu means by class, and how this compares with how Marxists and Weberians usually understand that term. The second concerns more precisely how Bourdieu effects his oft-cited ambition to rethink the relationship between class and Stand. The most obvious point about Bourdieus use of class is that he applies it in a fairly encompassing way, including more elements in it than do Marxists and Weberians (at least usually). The analysis of social class is based in the analysis of social space, understood as a field of social classes. As described above, the structure of the social space is the distribution of the different forms of capital, and the relations of strength and of convertibility that exist between them. In addition to capitals, and again opposed to the views of most other analysts of class, secondary differences are also part and parcel of what makes a class and, as mentioned, so is the particular style of life of the class. Witness this maximalist definition:
Social class is not defined by a property (not even the most determinant one, such as the volume and composition of capital) nor by a collection of properties (of sex, age, social origin, ethnic origin proportion of blacks and whites, for example. or natives and immigrants income, educational level etc.), nor even by a chain of properties strung out from a fundamental property (position in the relations of production) in a relation of cause and effect, conditioner and conditioned; but by the structure of relations between all the pertinent proper-ties which gives its specific value to each of them and to the effects they exert on practices. Constructing, as we have here, classes as homogeneous as possible with respect to the fundamental determinants of the material conditions of existence and the conditionings they impose, therefore means that even in constructing the classes and in interpreting the variations of the distribution of properties and practices in relation to these classes, one consciously takes into account the network of secondary characteristics which are more or less unconsciously manipulated

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whenever the classes are defined in terms of a single criterion, even one as pertinent as occupation. (Bourdieu 1984:106, emphasis added).

Several comments must be made here, under the provision of the uncertainty surrounding extrapolative interpretation. Firstly, it is worth noting that Bourdieu considers the fundamental property of a class to be its position in the relations of production, thereby coming into close connection with Marxism. The chain of properties strung out from it would probably mean things like occupation, work autonomy, participation in decisions in the work-place or other factors associated with property relations and the organisation of the production process (see also below). These are the types of properties often drawn upon in the empirical operationalisation of class (Erikson and Goldthorpe 1993; Wright 1997; Leiulfsrud et al. 2005). Hence, it would seem reasonably to say that Bourdieu accepts property relations as the fundamentals of social class. This is superficially bolstered by his assertion that the objective truth of class is relations of exploitation (Bourdieu 1990a:136). However, inspecting his application of the term exploitation indicates that he is not thinking of exploitation in the strict Marxist sense, but in a more everyday sense. As will be recalled, other non-Marxist analysts of class have also opted for an expanded and looser conception of exploitation. Secondly, Bourdieu points to the dimensions of the social space the volume and composition of capital as the most determinant property of class. This seems to be his own operationalisation of class, and given the choice of the word most determinant property, this seems to imply that, for him, it would be the most unambiguous way of identifying social classes. Hence, aspects of the distribution of resources, as opposed to productive relations, are seen as the most determinant property of class. According to the discussion above, this brings him closer to Weberian class analysis, but significantly with a considerable extension of what should be included in the distribution. This, of course, points further to his emphasis on the relative autonomy of different fields in constituting their own principles of stratification. (The terminology causes an ambiguity, however, because it is not immediately apparent what the difference is between a fundamental and a determinant property). Thirdly, he underlines the relevance to class of a range of other properties: collection of properties (of sex, age, social origin, ethnic originproportion of blacks and whites, for example, or natives and immigrantsincome, educational level etc. . This connects with remarks made other places in Distinction on the need to consider these properties when understanding class, since all of them take part in constituting the reality of different classes. 46

If one class fraction is, for example, either strongly feminised or ethnicified, this would be seen as relevant to any understanding of that class both in terms its cultural practices and its capability for reproduction. The proper significance of this point is, I think, that it contrasts Bourdieu from the very widespread belief in the social sciences that in order to understand the real causal effects of class, it is necessary to control it for all the causal effects of, more or less, closely connected stratifying factors. Bourdieu seems to advocate the exact opposite it is necessary to consider all of these factors in their specific intersection. What Bourdieu refers to as secondary properties gender, age, ethnicity have stratifying effects that are only intelligible relative to the primary properties of volume, composition and trajectory of capital: This means that a class or class fraction is defined not only by its position in the relations of production, as identified through indices such as occupation, income or even educational level, but also by a certain sex-ratio, a certain distribution in geographical space (Bourdieu 1984:102):
the volume and composition of capital give specific form and value to the determinations which the other factors (age, sex, place of residence etc.) impose on practices. Sexual properties are as inseparable from class properties as the yellowness of a lemon is from its acidity: a class is defined in an essential respect by the place and value it gives to the two sexes and to their socially constituted dispositions [] So the true nature of a class or class fraction is expressed in its distribution by sex or age (Bourdieu 1984:107-8).

In sum, then, Bourdieu considers classes as complex structured forms of domination and inequality. Recognising that, in capitalism, the fundamentals of class relationships lie in the relations of production, it is nonetheless emphasised that class cannot be severed from the other forms of domination with which it is intertwined. This does not amount to saying that no assessment can be made of the relative importance of different factors Bourdieu most certainly does that by clearly distinguishing between what he considers primary, pertinent or determinate properties of class, and its secondary properties which are given the role of specifying the effects of primary properties. What is argued, however, is that classes cannot be properly analysed in some form of artificially obtained isolation from the structures of power within which they are embedded. This calls for a totally different mode of analysis (and quantification) than that which dominates sociological research, and I will pick up on this in the next section. This view of class undoubtedly differ markedly from both Marxist and Weberian views. Bourdieus distance from Marxism is rehearsed in many places in his work. He renounces Marxist approaches for their economism and determinism (Bourdieu 1985, 1987). The first

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concerns the tendency to, in some sense, reduce cultural, political and social phenomenon to economic ones. This is, of course, what is suggested by the notion of base and superstructure:
In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relationships that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness (Marx 1859 [2000]:425).

An overriding ambition of Bourdieus work was to overcome the false antinomy between so-called objectivism and subjectivism. The fruitlessness of this opposition is most visible, and most sterile, in the theory of social classes:
On the one hand, there are strictly objectivist definitions which, like the economistic strand of Marxism, seek the principle of class determination in properties that owe nothing to the agents' perception or action (not to mention those that identify classes as countable populations separated by frontiers traced in reality). On the other hand, there are subjectivist or nominalist definitions, including Weber's theory of 'status groups' which privileges the symbolic properties constituting a life-style; empirical analyses seeking to establish whether and how classes exist in the agents' representations (Bourdieu 1990a:136).

This connects to the ambition stated in the preface to Distinction, to rethink Max Webers opposition between class and Stand (Bourdieu 1984:xii). It is not, however, entirely clear what this rethinking amounts to. That is to say, it is clear that Bourdieu seeks to connect the objective and the subjective in the analysis of class, and that he perceives Webers opposition as corresponding to this divide, and therefore wants to rethink what he perceives as Webers posited opposition between the two. However, even if based on an endeavour to rethink Webers opposition, there is precious little attention given to that opposition, to interpretation of how Weber envisioned the relationship between class and Stand, and no explicit discussion of Webers ideas in Distinction. In fact, that second page of the book just cited contains the only mention of Stand. Bourdieus explicit discussion of class and Stand is found in a much earlier piece (Bourdieu 1966), where he specifies how he appropriates and reformulates these concepts. It is worth noting his interpretation of the Weber on the relationship between class and Stand:
everything seems to indicate that Weber opposes class and status group as two types of real unities which would come together more or less frequently according to the type of society; [however,] to give Weberian analyses all of their force and impact, it is necessary to see them instead as nominal unitieswhich are always the result of a choice to accent the economic aspect or the symbolic aspect aspects which always coexist in the same reality. (Bourdieu 1966:212-13, cited in Weininger 2005:84, with his additions and modified emphasis)

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Bourdieu proposes therefore to not think of classes and Stnde as two different types of groups, but as two different aspects of stratification the social/economic and the symbolic/cultural.25 Slightly confusingly, he uses class condition to refer to socioeconomic conditions of existence (a la Webers class), and class position to refer to symbolic distinctions emerging from oppositions and affinities among classes. Class positions, or the Standish traits, are, according to Swartz, a sort of symbolisation of class condition, i.e. of class in the strict sense (Swartz 1997:150-1). This leads into the following interpretation, offered by Swartz and picked up by others:
This reformulation of the relationship between social class and status permits Bourdieu to integrate culture, taste and lifestyle indicators into a social-class framework. It marks his distance from Marxist class analysis by conceptualizing culture as a constituent feature of social class and by identifying status as a source of false consciousness. Bourdieu offers a class-symbolization model of status where cultural differences serve as markers of class-differences. Class differences find expression in status distinctions that rank individuals and groups on scales of social honorability rather than in terms of economic interest alone (Swartz 1997:151).

In Bourdieus own words: Status groups based on a life-style and a stylization of life are not, as Weber thought, a different kind of group from classes, but dominant classes that have denied or, so to speak, sublimated themselves and so legitimated themselves (1990a:139). This would seem to bring Bourdieu into a very similar position to that taken up by Therborn, who equates status with mere ideology (Therborn 1978:142). Regrettably, Swartz formulation that cultural differences serve as markers of classdifferences is sloppy. How can culture be a constituent feature of class (cultural capital) and at the same time a symbolisation of class (life-style, status)? This can be clarified by pointing out that cultural capital in its embodied form do not refer to life-style as such, but to the dispositions embodied in actors which facilitate the style of life. The expression of Stand in life-style is however found in the instantiation of these dispositions in practice. Because the dispositions are invisible to everyday observers and the practices may be conspicuous, the latter masks the former. The embodied cultural capital is external wealth converted into an integral part of the person, into a habitus (Bourdieu 1986:48). Exclusive life-styles therefore function as Stand honour symbolic capital, in Bourdieus terms when it is not recognised that the very practice of that life-style presupposes embodied cultural capital, and hence
25

It should be noted that it is dubious whether this interpretation of Weber is justified. Neo-Weberians seem split on the issue: Parkin (1978) suggests that status groups are not a distinct dimension of stratification, but instead cross-cut class divisions. In contrast, Scott (1996) advocates maintaining that they are different dimensions, and offers an account which clearly considers status groups, or estates, as clearly different types of groups from classes, even if the empirics of this remains open.

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ultimately is facilitated by arbitrary privilege. Hence, Stand honour appears as charisma, and power relations are thereby misrecognised. It is this misrecognition which comes closest to false consciousness a concept Bourdieu did not use and had fundamental reservations about (Bourdieu and Eagleton 1992) and not Stand as such. The specific symbolic efficacy of life-styles cannot be assigned the passive role of false consciousness. The rethinking of the class and Stand opposition lies in the model of the relationship between the social space and the space of life-styles. What Bourdieu does is to posit that these are two clearly distinct phenomena, and he constructs the space of life-styles the space of Stnde, if you like and then inspects its relationship to the space of social positions or, the space of class situations. Bourdieu argues that these are only partially independent in the real world: While there is no denying the so-called relative autonomy of the symbolic sphere, it is causally connected to the socio-economic conditions of existence through the mediating force of the habitus. However, rather than Stand being determined by class, it is more accurate to say that it is underdetermined due to its autonomy and the fact that causal effects of class are mediated by different fields and habitus which never amounts to mechanical reproduction. In Distinction, Bourdieu does interpret differences in life-styles as symbolisations of differences in socio-economic conditions of existence. This, however, is an empirical claim about the specific case, even if he most definitely expects to find something similar in other countries (Bourdieu 1991). That something similar can be found, or not found, in other countries points us to the crucial distinction between what is an empirical claim and what is a theoretical and methodological approach. What Bourdieu suggests is that the space of lifestyles and the space of social positions could be constructed independent of each other, respecting the distinct and partly autonomous nature of the symbolic and the social. Once these spaces are constructed, their interrelation can be inspected without imposing any determinations on them through the analytical model. It is unclear if this is, strictly speaking, what Bourdieu did, that is to say, if this refers to actual research operations which Distinction reports on. As I return to later, Lennart Rosenlund (2009) seized on this formulation to investigate the homology between the social and the symbolic by literally constructing each space in independent operations.

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Conclusion
In this chapter, I have presented the theoretical perspective of the thesis. The thesis relies on principally three concepts from Bourdieu social space, capitals and fields. I have entered into a presentation of broader aspects of Bourdieus work to try to show how these concepts belong in a broader sociological framework which gives them their specific meaning and validity. The thesis aims to bring this perspective into a much more explicit and systematic dialogue with what I would consider the mainstream of theoretically informed class analysis, which I have referred to as ECT. This is necessary, I think, because many applications of Bourdieus work to stratification create a considerable distance from this theoretical tradition. At the same time, I have no bones to pick with the Bourdieusians insistence that huge theoretical problems haunt such conventional class analysis. But much ambiguity is created by the fact that the concept of class is applied by both camps, but with very divergent meanings. This promotes talking at cross-purposes. The first step is therefore to acknowledge this difference, and, crucially I would add, to recognise a validity and fruitfulness in both. The second step is to address how some form of systematic theoretical cross-fertilisation can be achieved, and this can therefore be seen as the main theoretical ambition of the thesis. The third step would be to try to create a conceptually sound and robust integration of the valid and fruitful points of both camps into what would hopefully amount to a simultaneously theoretically and empirically more sophisticated study of the forms of stratification and power that are founded on the generic features of capitalism. And this, by implication, concerns the ability of class analysis to intervene in and contribute constructively to the on-going debates about the transformations of modernity and the question they raise about the contemporary meaning and significance of class.

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3. Methodological relationism and multiple correspondence analysis

Two of three papers in this thesis involve quantitative analysis by way of Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA). The remaining paper is wholly concerned with theoretical discussion and critique. This involves, naturally, two quite different methods. The Putting Bourdieu to work paper involves exegesis and comparison of conceptualisations of class. In it, I quote and cite extensively from the authors discussed and strive to be explicit about how I interpret their views, and on which grounds I find them objectionable. I will not dwell further on the method applied in that paper. The quantitative analyses apply a technique of data analysis, which, even if emergent, is still not widely applied nor understood in sociology. Moreover, the multiple correspondence analyses presented in this thesis is conducted within a particular methodological framework of what can, following Bourdieu, be described as relational. In this, my ambition is to follow Bourdieu in exploiting the elective affinities between the relational mode of analysis implied in the conceptual apparatus, and the relational properties of MCA. The basic research strategy of the quantitative papers is to analyse internal relations within classes by modelling them as social spaces. This involves a close interlinking of theory and method. Theoretically, this is based on an understanding of intra-class relations as objective relations of power, that is, capital. I use Multiple Correspondence Analysis to construct these spaces. In this, I exploit a connection between the relational understanding of power with the relational properties of MCA. This makes MCA particularly suited for constructing social spaces, and in a way which closely related techniques, like non-linear principal component analysis, is not. As some of Bourdieus collaborators once remarked, doing correspondence analyses is not enough to do analyses la Bourdieu (Rouanet et al. 2000:5). As a technique of data analysis, correspondence analysis is in no way especially designed for sociological analyses, and, owing to its flexible properties, can be applied to a wide range of types of data (see for example the analysis of antelope census data in African wildlife areas in Greenacre and Vrba 1984). Bourdieu innovated a specific mode of applying and interpreting correspondence analysis, in close collaboration with statisticians. While the principal output from

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correspondence analyses is geometric spaces, the construction of social spaces in Bourdieus sense is a special way of applying the technique. In this section, I will discuss the elective affinity between the sociology of Bourdieu and the technique of MCA. I start with a brief discussion of Bourdieus reasons for rejecting the mainstream techniques of regression analysis, which leads to a consideration of why he chose MCA. This warrants a more direct discussion of the relational nature of his approach and the relational properties of MCA. In this context, I offer a brief technical introduction of MCA. After that, I turn to certain issues of research design and strategy, with some attention to the potential tension between the approach I take and the philosophy of data analysis associated with correspondence analysis. The chapter concludes with some notes on the methodological bracketing involved in the papers.

3.1 Bourdieu and quantification

In a paper otherwise rich in rather objectionable points, Breiger makes a remark very pertinent to the issues discussed below:
Social and cultural analysts well know that issues of theoretical orientation are matters of contention and worth fighting over. When it comes to quantitative methods, however, we often assume (even while occasionally being content to condemn such methods out of hand) that styles of quantification are entirely irrelevant to theoretical and ideological struggles. Such an assumption is not productive. Interpretation of quantitative methods is inseparable from more usual forms of textual interpretation, and on occasion interpretation of an author's methods of quantification can deeply enrich our reading and writing of social and cultural theory (Breiger 2000:109)

An important, but somewhat overlooked, aspect of the work of Bourdieu is how attentive he is to the issue pointed to by Breiger.26 Bourdieu stressed that statistical techniques were not neutral tools, but involved a distinct way of viewing the object under study:
various statistical techniques contain implicit social philosophies that need to be made explicit. When you perform a regression analysis, a path analysis, or a factorial analysis, you need to know what social philosophy you are bringing in, and more especially what philosophy of causality, action, the mode of existence of social things, and so on (Bourdieu et al. 1991:254)

These are the types of issues that animated Bourdieus rejection of standard approaches and adoption of MCA. Let us first visit the background for this position.

26

Breiger makes his comment in the context of a discussion of Bourdieu (among others) and in recognition that this is indeed a core concern of Bourdieu.

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3.1.1 The methodological rupture of Distinction27 In his earlier work Bourdieu practiced conventional forms of quantitative analysis. Regression analyses were performed and interpreted with a view to establishing the different variables explanatory power. The books (especially The Inheritors) were also structured as a conventional presentation of quantitative results. This accordance with the standard rules of quantitative practice, of which Paul Lazarsfeld was the chief exponent, seems to have discomforted Bourdieu and his collaborators: The Love of Art, he said, is that which of all my works is no doubt the one that most conforms to the positivist canon (even Paul Lazarsfeld appreciated it) (Bourdieu 1993a:265). Regression analysis, and the extension into multiple regression, should be so well-known that only cursory introduction is offered here. Regression in general deals with how the value of one dependent variable (to be explained) change when the independent variable (that which explains) change by a value of 1. In multiple regression, this is extended so as to encompass several independent variables.28 The real gist of the technique is that it allows the assessing of each independent variables association with the dependent by holding all other independent variables constant (Treiman 2009:104-105), that is, it offers a way of operationalising the ceteris paribus clause. Bourdieus critique of what he perceived as common, sociological application of these techniques is sprinkled throughout Distinction, with regard to the question of how class should be connected to culture.29 Early on, he warns of treating variables as something fixed and self-evident:
One has explained nothing and understood nothing by establishing the existence of correlation between an independent variable and a dependent variable. Until one has determined what is designated in the particular case, i.e. in each particular relationship, by each term in the relationship (for example, level of education and knowledge of composers), the statistical relationship, however precisely it can be determined numerically, remains a pure datum, devoid of meaning. And the intuitive half understanding with which sociologists are generally satisfied in such cases, while they concentrate on refining the measurement of the intensity of the relationship, together with the illusion of the constancy of the variables or factors resulting from the nominal identity of the indicators (whatever they may indicate) or of the terms which designate them, tends to rule out any question of the terms of

27

These paragraphs owe to Denis Barangers presentation at Thirty Years after Distinction in Paris, November 6th 9th 2010. 28 Even though particular modifications of the technique deploy logistic transformation in order to handle categorical outcomes, or quantiles instead of means, or some similar extension, the basic idea in all kinds of regression approaches are pretty much the same especially when contrasted with other multivariate techniques. 29 It is of course important to take note of the context of this critique and stay clear of context-insensitive generalisations of its point.

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the relationship as to the meaning they take on in that particular relationship and indeed receive from it (Bourdieu 1984:18).

The critique is extended to the notion of explanatory variables. When one treats the properties attached to agents occupation, age, sex, qualifications as forces independent of the relationship within which they act, the researcher slips into treating the variables as substances. This eliminates the question of what is determinant in the determinant variable and what is determined in the determined variable, that is, what constitutes the pertinent property that is really capable of determining the relationship within which it is determined. The crucial conclusion is that sociologist must take the relationship itself as the object of study, and not the statistical relationship as such, which is only the recording of effects of relationships (Bourdieu 1984:22). The critique is amplified when he turns to the presentation of the social space. He warns of the fallacy of the apparent factor, the propensity to equate class with a single variable like socio-occupational category. When a group is defined by such a criteria, a whole set of secondary properties are smuggled into the explanatory model. Thus, a class is also defined by a certain sex-ratio, a certain distribution of geographical space [] and by a whole set of subsidiary characteristics. He thus alludes to all those things which are brought into a class when it is formally defined by occupation; that is, all those things which socially defines the class in practice (Bourdieu 1984:102). Rather than seeing these as some kind of disturbing factors to be controlled for, Bourdieu advocates considering all these things a part of what belonging to a certain class is all about. This point is then methodologically stated:
The particular relations between a dependent variable (such as political opinion) and so-called independent variables such as sex, age and religion, or even educational level, income and occupation tend to mask the complete system of relationships which constitutes the true principle of the specific strength and form of the effects registered in any particular correlation. The most independent of independent variables conceals a whole network of statistical relations which are present, implicitly, in its relationship with any given opinion or practice (Bourdieu 1984:103).

This is to alert the researcher (and the reader) of the tendency to consider variables separately. Economic and social condition [] gives a specific form to all the properties of sex and age, so that it is the efficacy of the whole structure of factors associated with a position in social space which is manifested in the correlations between age or sex and practices (Bourdieu 1984:106). To account for sociological relationships, the various important factors variables, technically speaking should be studied in their relational configuration, not isolated from each other.

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The question is thus not, Bourdieu would say, which effects are produced by income controlled for educational level, but what effects are produced by their empirical configuration. Let us imagine an example: An income around the mean level is a different thing if co-appearing with, say, high educational level, highly educated parents and perhaps some inherited wealth, as compared to co-existing with an unemployed partner, no higher education and working-class parents. Its readily understood that the type of cultural consumption or political orientation typically associated with mean level of income, understood in isolation, would be uninformative to say nothing of pretending to predict someones cultural orientation by some pure effect of income (or education, or occupation). Conventional approaches wish to isolate variables so as to assess each ones potential predictive power, when all other possible predictors are controlled out of the picture, so to speak. Bourdieu advocates the exact opposite: Rather than trying to assess precisely what a single variable does when all other things are considered as being equal, one should consider all the relevant variables in relation to each other, in their specific constellation, so as to grasp the whole network of causal factors at play. This connects directly with the discussion of Bourdieus view of class in the previous chapter. His maximalist definition of class pointed towards the need to establish the particular configuration of the relevant properties. That is, of course, what he and his colleagues did with correspondence analysis, and it is what I try to achieve in the quantitative papers that follow. There is thus, as outlined, a strong connection between Bourdieus substantial views on the social world and his methodological approach. If one does not believe that the social world is accurately understood in terms of the linear determinations of phenomena by isolated variables, it makes sense to investigate the social world in a way that does not present it that way. Put positively, the relational understanding of social life leads to a relational mode of analysing it, making relations the object of study. 3.1.2 Correspondence analysis Criticisms of variable sociology are a dime a dozen. What is most distinctive about Bourdieu and his colleagues work was that they found a viable alternative mode of quantification in correspondence analysis. The particular formulations cited above seems influenced by this discovery, pointing to short-comings of regression techniques that were felt to be resolved by the type of correspondence analysis presented in Distinction.

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Correspondence analysis was developed by the French linguist and data analyst Jean-Paul Benzcri and his students and colleagues in the 1960s (Greenacre 2007:ix). Bourdieu first used the technique in Anatomie du got (Bourdieu and de Saint Martin 1976), a long paper that formed the basis for Distinction (Bourdieu 1984). After Distinction, multiple correspondence analysis is employed by Bourdieu and his colleagues in much or all of their empirical work involving quantification (Lebaron 2009). Distinction analyses culture in the broad anthropological sense (Bourdieu 1984:99). The multivariate extension of correspondence analysis applied within it allowed analysing the cultural orientations of classes and class fractions with a broad range of questions. The space of lifestyles of the dominant classes, for instance, are constructed using questions on qualities of interior, the qualities of a friend, the style of meals served to friends, furniture purchases, preferred singers, preferred classical works, museum visits, knowledge of composers and opinions on art. Age, fathers occupation, qualifications and income were used as explanatory variables (Bourdieu 1984:261). This allows all of these lifestyle components to be grasped in their relation to each other, so that the research is not limited to consider only a few pertinent questions (as one would have to with the conventional techniques). The factorial plane (Bourdieu 1984:262) illustrate this system of relations, with the explanatory variables plotted in so as to reveal how the different lifestyles are related to social differences. This allows the analysis of lifestyles as a system of relations, and also the use of explanatory variables in relation both to the lifestyles and each other. There is no need to consider single variables in isolation; correspondence analysis allows the construction of precisely the network of causal factors called for in his understanding of class.

3.2 Multiple correspondence analysis: A brief introduction

While the technique of correspondence analysis and its extension into multiple correspondence analysis was long one of the best kept secrets of French data analysis, several good English introductions are now available (Greenacre 1984; Lebart et al. 1984; Greenacre 1994; Le Roux and Rouanet 2004; Greenacre 2007; Le Roux and Rouanet 2010). These are mentioned because they introduce the French Benzcrist version of MCA, as opposed to the Dutch psychometric version based on optimal scaling, properly named Homogeneity Analysis (Gifi 1990).

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The introduction that follows will be kept in simple terms and aimed at a non-specialist reader. A proper technical introduction would start from simple correspondence analysis of cross-tables or contingency tables, and demonstrate its extension. I will however proceed directly to a presentation of what MCA does. More specifically, I will present the multiple correspondence analysis of the indicator matrix, as opposed to that of the Burt table or the Joint Correspondence Analysis developed by Greenacre (Greenacre 2007:137-52). What MCA does is similar to what Principal Component Analysis sometimes simply but confusingly referred to as simply factor analysis does. It seeks to detect underlying or latent dimensions in the data that can account for main structures in it. MCA transforms a table of categorical data into a graph or a map which gives an approximate summary of the table. This facilitates the analysis of huge tables. Like PCA, MCA extracts orthogonal dimensions that is, dimensions that are independent of each other that can be thought of as latent variables. For convenience, this can be illustrated with an example from this thesis. If one wants to place people on a continuum according to their political attitudes, one can ask them to place themselves on a ten-point scale from left to right. This, of course, runs into the problem of what left and right mean, of whether people have a reasonable understanding of where on the scale they belong, and a host of other issues associated with these types of self-classification. The approach taken in the Politics paper is different. There I start from a selection of thirteen questions of peoples political attitudes on specific issues and questions, guided by the idea that under these specific attitudes there are more general ideological orientations socialist or laissez-faire, liberal or anti-liberal. Through the MCA, three underlying dimensions are found: socialist vs. laissez-faire and liberal vs. anti-liberal, but also an opposition between strong opinions and weaker or more indeterminate views. The basic model of thought, which in a sense applies to MCA generally, is that beneath the specific questions analysed, a general structure can be found. This is the same logic that underpins the analyses presented in Distinction. The implicit assumption is thus that beneath the specific tastes and knowledge, more general orientations can be detected. Hence, Bourdieu found that in the upper and middle classes, two basic lines of divisions were found: cultural taste was differentiated, firstly, by capital composition i.e., differences in taste between cultural and economic class fractions and

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secondly by class seniority or volume of inherited capital i.e., differences in taste related to social origin. The MCA approach used in this thesis proceeds from an Indicator x Categories table, what is called a binary indicator matrix. In its essentials, MCA here means correspondence analysis conducted on an indicator matrix instead of an ordinary cross-table. The rows represent individuals and the columns represent each category of the variables analysed. Each cell will contain 1 if the individual has the relevant property and 0 if the respondent does not. The first step of the correspondence analysis is to transform data into vectors, vector being a quantity with a certain direction (or a location). To do so, counts are transformed into proportions according to both row and column marginal distributions. Once these are calculated, each column category can be placed in a high-dimensional space, where each dimension has a scale from 0 to 1 (Hjellbrekke 1999a:26-9). This produces a so-called profile space. The profile space accurately sums up all the information in the table, but when in it cannot be visualised or even imagined, it is of little or no help. The ambition of correspondence analysis is to reduce the dimensionality with minimum distortion and loss of information, so that main structures in the table can be visualised and interpreted. The distances are calculated as chi-square distances. This is conceived in terms of difference from a null hypothesis of sorts, where there are no real differences in the data. If we assume that there are no real differences in the response patterns of cases, each row profile would be similar to the average, only deviating from it because of sampling fluctuations. That would be an assumption of no difference, or homogeneity assumption. The point here is not the statistical test, but the ability of the statistic to measure heterogeneity of the profiles. Its computation is elegantly described by Greenacre (2007:27-32). These distances can be plotted onto a geometric space by transforming coordinates so that they can be interpreted in the same way as can distances in physical space (Greenacre 2007:34). For tables with more than three rows or columns, this quickly becomes difficult to understand. Most of us would have problems imagining spaces with more than three dimensions. The table analysed in the Politics paper, however, have 51 dimensions. This brings us to the crucial analytical aspect of correspondence analysis, namely the reduction of dimensionality. This is the stage in which the underlying dimensions are extracted, identifying dimensions along which there is very little dispersion of the profile points and eliminating

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these low-information directions of spread, thereby reducing the dimensionality of the cloud of points so that we can more easily visualize their relative positions (Greenacre 2007:43) and interpret the principal dimensions of the space. Simply put, this means finding the first line that comes closest to the points in the highdimensional space. This involves computing distances from each profile to the line, in a manner similar to fitting regression lines, with two exceptions: the procedure must allow for the different mass associated with each profile which quantifies the importance of the profile in the analysis; and the fitting of regression lines refer to the response variable axis, while in CA it refers to the subspace. The subspace produced by reduction of dimensions provides an approximation of the true position of the points. How good the approximation is can be assessed by calculating percentages of inertia, even if this is not so straightforward in MCA (Greenacre 2007:47-56, 140)The analyses in the papers use rate of Benzcris modified eigenvalues to assess the amount of explained variance that is to say, how good the approximation is (Hjellbrekke 1999a:66-67). These procedures are followed for both row (individuals) and column (properties) profiles. The remarkable feature of correspondence analysis, which gives it its name, is that these two analyses correspond to each other and are equivalent, so that both can be represented in the same space by using transition formulas (Le Roux and Rouanet 2004:37-8, 188) Standard practice, followed in the papers, is however to analyse the cloud of individuals and the cloud of categories separately. The cloud of categories shows the mean points of all properties in the constructed space, and this is the central tool for interpreting the results, alongside numerical output like category contributions. These reveal the extent to which different categories affect the obtained solution. This is an important aid in the interpretation, directing attention to categories that should be emphasised in interpretation. This proved particularly important in the Upper class paper, using figures that display only categories that contribute above average (Le Roux and Rouanet 2004:218) In the cloud of categories, the interpretation proceeds by inspecting axis for axis, seeking to understand what is the difference between the properties placed at the far ends of the axis. The cloud of individuals shows the distribution of all respondents in the space. The cloud of individuals is significant for the analysis, not least because it allows detailed analysis of the distribution of supplementary variables. These are variables that play no part in the

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construction of the space, not affecting its structure, but whose distribution can be inspected. This is a crucial feature for using MCA to do structured data analysis (Le Roux and Rouanet 2010:ch. 4). MCA as such deals symmetrically with relations between the variables analysed, but by using supplementary variables as structuring factors, asymmetric analysis becomes possible i.e., the space can be considered a dependent variable and the structuring factors independent variables, or vice versa. This was used by Bourdieu in Distinction to see how socio-demographic variables mapped onto the patterns of taste revealed by the correspondence analyses, allowing the interpretation that patterns of taste corresponded to divisions by capital composition and class seniority (Bourdieu 1984:260-7).

3.3 Correspondence analysis and methodological relationism

If I make extensive use of correspondence analysis, in preference to multivariate regression for instance, it is because correspondence analysis is a relational technique of data analysis whose philosophy corresponds exactly to what, in my view, the reality of the social world is. It is a technique which thinks in terms of relation, as I try to do precisely with the notion of field. (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:96)

Similar passages, or statements to the same effect, are found many places in his work. Bourdieus stated reasons for relying so heavily on this method are noteworthy: He does not justify it on technical-practical grounds. He could emphasise how MCA can handle large amount of variables; is fit for categorical data; proceeds inductively, making a model from the data rather than fitting a predefined model to it; and make no assumptions about distributions and relations in the data (Le Roux and Rouanet 2010; Meulman and Heiser 2010:55). Such a reason would be like the conventional justifications for the choice of method, where one shows that the method can handle the type of data/question one is dealing with. But Bourdieu offers a theoretical rationale: The method thinks in relations like he tries to do with his theories. Now, it is not entirely clear what this actually means. I will discuss in what sense correspondence analysis thinks in terms of relation. This rather sketchy discussion will hopefully shed at least some light on the particular affinity between method and theory in Bourdieu, which I exploit in the papers. First we must clarify what methodological relationism means. Sociology is conventionally seen as torn between two opposed methodologies: individualism and collectivism. Individualists hold that all social phenomena can and should be explained with

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reference to individual properties and actions, while collectivists stress the role of supraindividual properties of groups and institutions. Methodological relationism rejects this as a false opposition. Instead, its guiding principle can be stated as follows: no analytical level or unity can be attributed the ultimate explanatory power with respect to a social phenomenon. Instead, in sociological explanations one must focus on the complex relations existing between (and where possible also within) the various structures, fields, positions, and agents. If this is to be achieved, the concepts used in the analysis must include these relations (Hjellbrekke 1999b:61). In the previous chapter, I discussed general aspects of Bourdieus sociology with the aim of showing how it is relationist in the sense that it is concerned with the dialectical relationship between the objective and the subjective fields and actors, capital and habitus. A core point is that neither side can be analytically isolated. It follows from this that the challenge is to study relations, instead of either individuals or collectives. In the previous chapter, I spelled out the ways in which social space and field are structures of relations. What Bourdieu has in mind here seems to be a rather specific understanding of what relations are. Let me demonstrate that by drawing attention to two meanings of relations that he is ostensibly not referring to. What is perhaps the most common understanding of relations is that which can be called relations of interaction. That I take to refer to relations established through concrete interactions, and interpersonal relationships established on the basis of such a history, such as the relations between friends, between parents and children, between colleagues, etc. This is the sense of relations applied in Nick Crossleys recent manifesto for relational sociology (Crossley 2011). These are the same type of relations appealed to in the construction of the social interaction space through the Cambridge Interaction Scale based on the social distance created by differential association (Bottero and Prandy 2003). Bourdieu is explicit that this is not the type of relations he has in mind. What he wants to analyse is the relations of power between agents, in terms of capital. These are objective and invisible relations which both facilitate and constrain actors. Bourdieu seemingly regards network connections or empirical patterns of differential association of secondary importance (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:113-14).30 Less explicitly, however, Bourdieu seems also not
30

This, however, is removed from the type of view taken by Bottero and Crossley in a joint-written paper: if field relations manifest themselves in networks, as [Bourdieu] suggests, then such interconnections can identify field relations (2011:101). The gist of their argument seems to be that the analysis of objective relations that Bourdieu undertakes is disposable. This seems quite misguided. Bourdieus point is that the relations between forms of capitals and their holder structure interactions. His emphasis is that it is necessary to understand the

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to refer to the type of relations drawn attention to in Marxism, that is, the exploitative relationship between workers and capitalists. As I argued in the previous chapter, classes in the proper sense of ECT are strictly relational entities actors become members of a class by virtue of the relation they enter into with others. It is this exploitative relationship that actually constitutes the very position of worker and capitalist. Without exploitation, neither can be, and they exist in relations of dependence, since to be a capitalist means employing and exploiting workers, and the theoretical meaning of worker is also one who is being employed and exploited. This, which Elster calls internal relations, in which the elements are causally connected (Elster 1985:92-3), is, as far as I can judge, not what Bourdieu is referring to.31 We can now begin to sense the strong affinity between the notion of field and correspondence analysis. A field is a system of relations defined by the distributions of relevant forms of capital, which agents can be situated within. A multiple correspondence analysis of respondents capital profiles produce an approximation of a map of the field. Its geometrical multidimensional space represents the structure of the field, defined by the most

specific configuration of capitals in order to understand strategies of actors. Peoples interactions are formed by structures of capital in many ways: inherited capital, or social origin, affects who you grow up with, where you go to school, etc. Levels of economic capital affect where you can afford to live. The list could be extended. These underlying relations structure the specific friendships, formal connections and interactions individuals may have. But it simply does not follow that this underlying structure can be identified by only analysing the interactions and/or connections. Despite the similarities between MCA and network analysis, which Bottero and Crossley exaggerate considerably, network analyses of connections can simply not reveal the structures of capital distributions that can be uncovered by a social space or field analysis with MCA. The position of de Nooy (2003) avoids this confusion. I cannot go into a full discussion of the important question of different types of relationism implied by different meanings of relations. For a general discussion of the concept of relations in connection to network analysis, see Scott 2013. That discussion is premised on a division between attribute and relational data: attribute data consists of information about individual traits opinions, behaviours, characteristics while relational data are about their connections and linkages. For attribute data, variable analysis is deemed appropriate, while network analysis is appropriate for relational data (Scott 2013:3). Bourdieus approach fits in neither slot, however, since he studies relations that manifest themselves in seemingly individual attributes. In an interview, he makes an interesting point about this: The objective is to study structures of power, and not the population of elites or ruling classes. However, at the very moment I say this, I am obliged to correct myself, for in order to grasp structures, we have no choice but to deal with populations insofar as, in ordinary life, the properties that determine access to positions of power are only attached to individuals. The basic difficulty here is one of conducting statistical surveys that take as their unit of observation individuals or constructed groups made up of individuals, but without forgetting that the real object of analysis is not individuals, nor even classes of individuals, nor the institutions to which they belong, but the space of positions that may be characterized through their properties (Wacquant 1993:21). 31 De Nooy (2003) recognises this distinction, and argues that the analysis of fields would be well-advised to study both structural and interactional relations. I am generally in agreement with that view and, as is probably obvious from the general position I am establishing, in favour of combining this with the type of internal relations pointed to by Elster.

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central divisions detected in the capital profiles, and the space of individuals illustrate how respondents are situated within it.32 This leads us to the question of how correspondence analysis thinks in terms of relations. The most basic answer to this relates to the particular properties of the space, or cloud, of individuals and of properties. The distance between individuals are determined by how different they are in terms of the variables (more precisely, the categories) in question. Individuals who thus answered a questionnaire similarly, will end up close in the space, and individuals with identical answers receive identical positions in the space. Categories receive distances based on their similarity or dissimilarity with regards their composition of individuals, so to speak. Categories that often appear among the same individuals are close to each other in the map. This means that the position of individuals and categories positions in the space have no meaning in and of themselves. While the total dispersion of the cloud testifies to the strength of relationships in the data, the fact that some respondent has coordinate 0,97 on axis 1 and 1,22 on axis 2, or the precise positioning of some categories mean points, has no inherent substantive meaning. When interpreting these spaces or clouds, what is emphasised is the position relative to the position of all other elements (individuals or categories). This means that the spaces produced by the correspondence analysis need to be handled as systems of relations: No elements position is understandable in isolation. It is only possible to interpret the location of respondents and categories when the whole space is taken into consideration (Hjellbrekke 1999a). Or, more precisely, the aim of the interpretation is to take the whole space into consideration, with the ambition being an understanding of what governs the relations between the elements, i.e. what causes their different positions. Each categorys position in the cloud of categories is only intelligible in relation to the positions of (all) others. This is in fact a unique property of MCA, and strongly related techniques, like Non-Linear Principal Component Analysis, do not display the same feature. NLPCA allows the researcher to add restrictions to how variables are scaled, so that, for instance, the order between the categories of variables supposed to be ordinal is respected (Gifi 1990; De Leeuw 2006). This means that spaces produced by NLPCA are not relational
32

Note that this affinity arises in the particular extension of correspondence analysis, where the analysis is done on a matrix where the rows represent individuals, and the columns represent all the categories. This gives the resulting spaces of, respectively, properties and individuals a result not obtained as directly in the other extensions of CA, like the MCA of the Burt table or the Joint Correspondence Analyis (Greenacre 2007).

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configurations in the same strict sense as those produced by MCA, since when the order of the categories is respected, then the position of categories in the spaces will in part be a product of that restriction as it restrict where in the space categories of an ordinal variable can be placed.33 This brings us closer to a clear understanding of just why MCA has the relational properties that makes it particularly suited to the type of relational analysis proposed by Bourdieu. Hence, Rees-Jones (2011) is wrong to dismiss that particular link, which seemingly stems from a failure to appreciate on what grounds it is posited in the first place.34 I have provided some, admittedly sketchy, comments on the relation between Bourdieus ambition to think relationally in terms of fields, and the relational nature of correspondence analysis. In the preceding section, I noted how Bourdieu came to the conclusion that one needs modes of analysis which could place properties in relation to each other, rather than to treat them in isolation. In 1976 he published his first work with a method that could accommodate this need. I think this testifies to the thorough sociological and epistemological reasoning underlying his choice of method. The application of correspondence analysis was not a result of mere happenstance or a choice of convenience, but a choice guided by theoretical reflection.

3.4 Research strategy and the philosophy of data analysis

As discussed above, Bourdieus application of correspondence analysis was innovative. His view can be seen as being that the technique was particularly suited to model social spaces and fields. These notions embody, in a sense, important aspects of Bourdieus general approach to sociology, hereunder what may perhaps be seen as Bourdieus social theory. The relational mode of analysis employed by Bourdieu involves rather distinct ideas about causality and the mode of existence of social things, to borrow his own words (quoted above). Benzcri, the originator of correspondence analysis under that name and in that form35, developed the technique in conjunction with a distinct philosophy of data analysis. Rejecting the standard statistical approach of fitting a priori defined models to the data, Benzcri
33

If such restrictions are not applied, and all variables are scaled as nominal, NLPCA produces identical results as does MCA and, at least in the Gifi-version, becomes MCA (or HOMALS, strictly speaking). 34 As should be clear from what I said in the opening of this chapter, this link in a sense goes only one way. The structures of fields and spaces can best be studied by MCA, but there is nothing about MCA which and of itself makes it a tool of field-analysis. That involves a specific application of it, to which it is exceptionally well-suited. 35 It has been said of correspondence analysis that is has been discovered many times in the history of data analysis. See the references in Le Roux and Rouanet 2004: 11.

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favoured proceeding from the data to the model. He formulated five principles of data analysis, the second of which is in need of some commentary below:
Principle 2: The model must follow the data, and not the other way around. This is another error in the application of mathematics to the human sciences: the abundance of models, which are built a priori and then confronted with the data by what one calls a test. Often the test is used to justify a model in which the number of parameters to be fitted is larger than the number of data points. And often it is used, on the contrary, to strongly reject as invalid the most judicial remarks of the experimenter. But what we need is a rigorous method to extract structure, starting from the data (Benzecri (1973), translated and quoted in Gifi 1990:25).

What this seems to advocate, is a rather strong commitment to inductive data analysis. The researcher should not test out a priori determined models on the data, but seek to extract patterns from the data to see what the data can tell us. This view seems to be shared by later Benzcristians, with approving citations of Tukey on Data Analysis Philosophy (Tukey 1977). A central point for Tukey, as for the Benzcrists, was not only the limitations of a priori thinking, but also the frequent violations of the assumptions of statistical models. Like Tukey, Benzcri and his students devised an approach to data analysis that relied on far more flexible techniques with no assumptions being made about the data. This is an important corrective to statistical thinking and, I would add, not least to its application in sociology. Two important points need to be raised, however: these have, firstly, to do with some inherent dangers of this style of thinking and analysing, and secondly to do with how this compares with the approach taken in the present thesis. As I have already indicated, Bourdieu was not simply a practitioner of correspondence analysis, but the originator of a highly innovative sociological application of it. As regards the inductive approach to data analysis, much can be said in its defence. But as a principled position, it has some problems. These are brought clearly out by Gifis comments on Benzcris principles:
if they are applied consistently they lead to the type of blind empiricism that has terrorized psychometrics for a long time. If we continue to add empirical variables, without the guidance of any theory or control whatsoever, then we end up with a lot of explained variance but with no possibilities for prediction. We do need theory or, if you prefer, a model, because we need sensible rules on how to add variables. If the structure is there, it will become more clear when we add variables from the same domain. It will disappear when we add enough variables from other domains (Gifi 1990:26).

But Gifi is quick to note that he agrees with the principles, when seen in the context intended by Benzcri. That being so, the point is important because unsubstantiated and/or untheorised data fishing is dangerous in its own terms. In this thesis, the choice of variables is guided by a very explicit and acknowledged theoretical position. What is crucial to 66

recognize is that notwithstanding the elective affinities between the technique of MCA and Bourdieus thinking there is a clear difference to be made between the logic of data analysis and the philosophy within which it is embedded, and the theoretical orientation and the system of concepts that the sociologist relies on. While MCA will inductively find patterns in the data, the researcher choses more or less strategically which data are to be mined for patterns, and this cannot be an innocent decision. In this specific context, I want to call attention to the distinction between what is statistically inductive and what is, in a sense, sociologically and theoretically decided. The patterns detected in the applications of MCA in this thesis are inductive in the sense that the technique unearths divisions with no reference to any prior formal specification of hypotheses in the strict sense. But divisions can only be unearthed in variables subjected to analysis; so much is at stake in what is fed into the procedure. The point made by Aldenderfer with regard to cluster analysis seems entirely relevant to the application of correspondence analysis as well:
The importance of using theory to guide the choice of variables should not be underestimated. The temptation to succumb to a naive empiricism in the use of cluster analysis is very strong, since the technique is ostensibly designed to produce "objective" groupings of entities. By "naive empiricism" we mean the collection and subsequent analysis of as many variables as possible in hope that the "structure" will emerge if only enough data are obtained (Aldenderfer 1984:20)

The research design in the quantitative papers stays clear of such nave empiricism. Both applications of MCA are guided by a clear theoretical agenda which provides crisp guides and constraints on what variables are suitable. The thesis presents two constructions of social spaces of capital distributions. As made clear in both papers, this necessitates choosing variables that can be defended as indicating the capital profiles of individuals. In the construction of the political space, the choice of questions is guided by others theorisation of the difference between old and new politics, and I based the choice of questions on previous studies. In both cases, the actual choice of variables faces considerable constraints owing to the data used. The specifics of this are given in the papers.

3.5 Methodological bracketing

In this chapter, I have brought out how I draw upon important elements of Bourdieus methodological relationism. In the previous chapter, I discussed Bourdieus approach with an emphasis on the aspects of his work which I draw upon in this thesis. The exegetical section

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on Bourdieu concluded by highlighting his structural constructivism or constructivist structuralism (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:11). This position is closely connected to his relationism. The papers in this thesis, however, do not follow up on the call for sociological analysis to integrate the analysis of objective structures or distributions of capital with an analysis of the knowledge and actions of actors. The quantitative analyses study relational configurations of capitals and attitudes, but they stay in what Bourdieu calls the objectivist moment, by setting aside the subjective representations of agents (Bourdieu 1990b:125-6), limited to studying the distributions and the relationship between distributions. That is to say, the quantitative analyses are restricted to what Giddens, making a broadly similar case, calls institutional analysis, and methodologically bracket out the cultural, ethnographic or anthropological aspect needed to study the practical knowledge of actors (Giddens 1984:284-88). The fact that Giddens opens up for this type of bracketing is sometimes made out to be indicative of a weakness of structuration theory (Layder 2006:186). I would reject that assessment: it is difficult to see how one could posit it to be illegitimate to engage in such bracketing without effectively placing demands on social researchers that few have the resources and opportunities to meet i.e., that any single piece of social analysis has to simultaneously be an institutional analysis accounting for the relevant structures and structural principles and an ethnographic account of the purposive and knowledgeable practices of relevant actors. I want to emphasise the methodological nature of this bracketing and underline that the analyses are therefore decisively one-sided and partial. The patterns analysed and described in the quantitative papers can in no sense be accounted for independently of the day-to-day actions that produce, reproduce and transform such structures, and accordingly the complex mix of practical and discursive consciousness that guide them. Hence, the bracketing is methodological in that the research presented in these papers call for the investigation of actors knowledge and actions that is constitutive of the patterns revealed. This is to distinguish it from the ontological bracketing found in objectivist or subjectivist approaches.36

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I think that this structurationist methodological bracketing should be distinguished from the practice of postulating microfoundations that would seemingly account for patterns found in a model, such as can be found in certain applications of rational action theory. In Giddens sense, methodological bracketing involves the recognition that all social research presupposes the ethnographic moment, and that this is not properly

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This methodological bracketing is, however, not addressed in the papers themselves, but is instead implied by the interpretations. In the Upper class paper, I argue that, generally speaking, education works more as a means to reproduce upper-class positions across generations than as a means for mobility into it from below. This, however, calls not only for a more detailed analysis of the extent to which this holds, but crucially calls for an investigation of the actions and strategies of upper-class families in passing on privilege across the generations especially the extent to which they actively use education. Similarly, it implicitly calls for an analysis of the ways in which people from lower-class background actually do make it into the upper-class. In the Politics paper, I show an association between the principle of capital composition and attitudes to economic issues. Cultural capital fractions more often express socialist views, while fractions richest in economic capital more often express laissez-faire views. I argue that this may partly be interpreted as an aspect of the social opposition between these groups and their struggles to strengthen their own, or weakening the others, positions. The interpretation is rather tentative, and in order to be substantiated and established as probable, one would have to inquire into the subjective dimensions of these opinions, and situate them within the broader context of these intra-class relations, hereunder probing the meaning attributed by members of one fraction to the political opinions of the other. It would, for instance, be relevant to engage in the analysis of symbolic boundary work on the basis of the moral-political stances involved (Lamont 1992; Lamont and Molnr 2002).

solved by simply making assumptions about what people do and especially since these assumptions are often not very realistic. The actual microfoundations what is really going on simply demand their own empirical analyses.

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4. The three papers in summary

In this chapter I offer brief summaries of the three papers in the thesis. Where relevant, I comment on developments post-dating the writing, acceptance or publication of the papers. I also try to spell out how the papers relate to the general theoretical issues raised by the thesis as a whole.

4.1 The Structure of the Upper Class: a Social Space Approach

Published in Sociology, December 2012 vol. 46 no. 6 1039-1058 (goo.gl/OF8FQ4) This paper takes as its point of departure the economic upper class of Norway, conceived in as a class of people either living off of property or off working as top executives and business professionals. In earlier work, I constructed this category in accordance with principles drawn from basically Weberian class theory to analyse its patterns of recruitment and the extent to which the class was segmented into a core of successful inheritors and a periphery of less successful newcomers (Flemmen 2009). This paper investigates this question of its internal segmentation. The paper is rather exploratory in nature, seeking to uncover the internal differentiation of the upper class without relying on any specified hypothesis on what they should be. That being said, the paper does start from the proposition that internal divisions can be fruitfully conceptualised in terms of Bourdieus concept of social space and forms of capital. By subjecting twelve indicators of capital to MCA, a social space of the upper class is constructed and its internal divisions revealed. Based on the literature of the sociology of elites and upper classes, three general expectations were formulated. I expected to find some form of division between owners and managers, a prominent theme in the literature. Furthermore, I expected that the possession of educational credentials or capitals would be a line of division. Lastly, particularly following Bourdieu, I expected to find a division by the volume of inherited capital. In a sense, one could assert that all of these divisions were present by simply inspecting a few frequency tables. What the analysis does, however, is to establish the particular structure of such divisions and, importantly, the relationship between them. There is indeed a significant division by the volume of inherited capital in evidence this accounts for a good deal of the variance. There is also, perhaps unsurprisingly, a division by educational 70

credentials. What is most striking is, perhaps, that these two lines of division almost completely overlap. The volume of educational capital follows the volume of inherited capital. This means, generally speaking, that the members of the economic upper class of high social origin also have taken up higher education, while those of lower social origin have done so less often. This is striking because it shows that newcomers do not generally find their way into the economic upper class through the education system. That flies in the face of the popular belief in education as the main road to success. What it also seems to suggest is that educational credentials are more important for class reproduction than for recruiting from the lower ranks. This, I note in the conclusion, is surprising in a sense, but in fact in line with the cases of several high-profile Norwegian capitalists of low social origin who give interviews where they talk down the value of education for business success, yet their own children pursue educations in business. The analysis indicates that this is not contradictory, but in keeping with the role of educational credentials in the reproduction of the upper class, in line with what has been suggested by Bourdieu and Scott. It should, however, be noted that connection between inherited and educational capital is a general tendency, there are of course many exceptions. Another important finding is what is interpreted as a sustained division between owners and managers, manifested in a division by the source or form of economic capital wages/salaries vs. capital income and wealth or assets. This means that, generally, there is no complete overlap between the group of property owners and that of top executives and business professionals. This point is also used to make a significant theoretical claim, namely that class analysis a la Bourdieu needs to appreciate that economic capital is a complex issue, and that one should differentiate it. Where ones economic capital comes from is of course of central importance, as drawn attention to by ECT. That these are social divisions, and not simply statistical constructions, is corroborated by two things. One is the fact that they echo important themes from earlier research, but more importantly, the divisions are found to overlap with the segmentation of the upper class by occupation and industry. High volume of inherited capital is associated with working in banking and finance, as well as professional/scientific services. This is opposed to the association between low volumes of inherited capital and dealing in motor vehicles. It would

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thus seem that the business and financial elites within the upper class are a substrata marked by relatively more exclusive social origins. As can be seen, the paper is thus exemplary of the overall project of this thesis, the use of the Bourdieusian tool-box to analyse the fractioning of social classes conventionally understood. However, the paper was written before this overarching ambition was spelled out. The paper does not, therefore, address that problem as such. At a minimum, however, I think the paper demonstrates the fruitfulness of applying these tools to deal with intra-class relations.

4.2 The Politics of the Service Class: the Homology of Positions and Position-takings
Accepted for publication in European Societies (http://goo.gl/krJuyA). This paper deals with the new middle class by taking Goldthorpes theory of the service class as its point of departure. The question addressed concerns whether the political divisions within it overlap with its social divisions, understood in terms of the distribution of capitals modelled in a social space. More specifically, I try out Bourdieus suggestion that position-takings are homologous to social positions. To do this, I adopt Lennart Rosenlunds way of analysing homology. Rosenlund emphasises that homology refers to a relation between systems or structures, not between properties in an individual. Rosenlund took this to imply that one should construct the relevant systems or structures independently by the use of MCA (2009). In line with this, I compare the structures of the political space with the structure of the social space within the service class, instead of modelling correlations between specific socio-economic traits and specific attitudes. To do this, I construct two spaces of the Norwegian service class. I construct one space of position-takings, analysing a range of questions on political attitudes. This is analogous to Bourdieus construction of spaces of life-styles in Distinction, but substituting political opinions for cultural consumption and taste. A core point is that I set out to include questions tapping both old politics, i.e. relating to issues of equality and public spending etc., and new politics, like environmentalism, the right for homosexuals to adopt, the role of Christian values etc. Owing to limitations of the data, the social space of positions is

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constructed by rather few and suboptimal indicators of capital, thought to tap both the volume and the composition of capital. (This is a case of the theoretically guided application of MCA discussed in the methodology chapter). The social space of position does exhibit the expected structure. Its first and most important dimension reflects the composition of capital, while its second dimension reflects the volume of capital. The political space also exhibit the expected dimensions: The first and by far most important dimension reflects divisions in old politics, between what I refer to as socialist and laissez-faire opinions, but also environmentalism. The third dimension reflects new politics divisions, while the second show a division by the strength of opinion, differentiating between those who have strong opinions (regardless of what they are about, strongly agree and strongly disagree) and those who express weaker opinions (simply agree). Only dimensions one and three are used in the analysis, since the second dimension was not deemed relevant to the questions at hand. I found the two spaces to be fairly homologous. The volume of capital corresponded to attitudes to new politics: those with high volumes of capital were in favour of homosexuals adopting, for a more internationalised society, against a prominent place for Christian values. Those of low volumes of capital expressed the opposite views. Most striking, and statistically most important, was the correspondence between the composition of capital and attitudes to old politics. Cultural capital fractions are more socialist, economic capital fractions more laissez-faire. These findings are used to question Goldthorpes assertion that the service class would be essentially conservative. The paper supports earlier research that found it to be systematically fractured politically. The amount and form of capital possessed by serviceclass members are importantly related to differences in political views. Goldthorpes point was, however, not that the service class would be homogeneous, but that its internal diversity was not related to class i.e. employment relationships. This throws up the question of whether capital, in Bourdieus sense, is theoretically relevant to class analysis, and accordingly to the basic question of the entire thesis.

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4.3 Putting Bourdieu to work for class analysis: Reflections on some recent contributions
Published in The British Journal of Sociology, June 2013 vol. 64 no. 2 325343 (: http://goo.gl/fVBGc9) This paper is wholly conceptual or theoretical in focus. It deals with recent applications of the work of Bourdieu in class analysis. More specifically, it reviews recent distinguished attempts by British authors to take an approach to class that exclusively finds its theoretical basis in Bourdieu. While recognising the strengths of this, and the fruits of their work, the paper nevertheless argues that through this particular theoretical reorientation, the basics of class relations in capitalism are overlooked. The work being discussed exhibit two different ways of fashioning a Bourdieusian class analysis. One is referred to as a Social Space Approach (SSA). The crux of this approach is that class is defined with reference to Bourdieus model of social space, so that class refers to positions or clusters of positions that are reasonably similar in terms of the volume, composition and trajectory of capital. This is found in the work of Skeggs and Sayer, but most systematically and vigorously in Will Atkinsons recent contribution. The other approach is referred to as a Field-Analytical Approach (FAA). This considers class to be the end result of multiple structurations of inequality produced in a multitude of different social fields. In many ways, this view is fully compatible with the social space view, but the emphasis on class as simply structured inequality, and that field is arguably the central analytical concept, is distinct. This approach is taken by Mike Savage and some of his collaborators. The paper raises a number of objections to these approaches. The core problem lies in the fact that neither approach allows any conceptual space for the relations of production and market exchange that was the hallmark of ECT. In both cases, class becomes a term denoting structured social inequality in the endowment of capitals. While I obviously support such an understanding in many respects, it is problematic because the approach has no room for conceptualising the relations of power and domination that are created by the fundamental workings of capitalist economies.

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The paper therefore calls for bringing the Bourdieusian approaches into a much clearer and explicitly elaborated connection to ECT. Specifically, the paper tries to argue for one such bridge by connecting with Webers distinction between class and status or Stand, conceiving them as referring to causal processes in which capitals can gain a currency beyond their respective fields. After the paper was accepted for publication, Savage and colleagues (Savage et al. 2013) offered a heavily-promoted new model of social class in the UK. The paper conceives of classes as shaped by the distribution of capitals, so that classes are seen as aggregates of people with similar amounts of resources or capitals. Savage et al. do not, however, adopt the social space as a model of class relationships, but rely on classifying respondents by their amount and type of capital through a latent class approach. Seemingly, the approach to measuring class there is consistent with the FAA (class as outcome of workings of fields). It seems reasonable to argue that the approach taken in that paper can be subject to a very similar assessment as given the other Bourdieusian approaches discussed: It provides important and novel insights into contemporary divisions, but it does not address the types of economic relationships characteristic of ECT.

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5. Concluding discussion
As a whole, this thesis concerns the social differentiation of class relations. That is to say, it seeks to deal with how the sociology of class can adopt a mode of analysis which is more sensitive to the complexities of contemporary forms of class stratification. Its point of departure was the idea that central concepts from the oeuvre of Pierre Bourdieu could usefully be applied to give a rigorous account of the systematic heterogeneity of conventional class categories. That is to say, intra-class relations can fruitfully be understood as divisions in the distributions of capital and accordingly modelled as multidimensional social spaces. By way of conclusion, I will highlight empirical, methodological and theoretical conclusions that can be drawn from the work presented in this thesis. My principal empirical conclusion concerns how divisions in the distribution of capitals reveal significant patterns of differentiation of the classes in question. I specify this general conclusion into several specific conclusions. 1) The composition of capital; the volume of capital; and the volume of inherited capital are important dimensions of differentiation in contemporary Norway at least in the higher echelons of the class structure. a) The composition of capital is related to internal tensions in the broad service class and in the economic upper class. In the service class, the division by form of capital relates to a political fractioning between old left and right socialists vs. laissez-fair-ists. b) In the economic upper class, the composition of capital is evident in the structure of inherited capital: This is tied to the opposition between owners and executives as well as to the extent to which one relies on educational capital or credentials. c) The volume of inherited capital captures a powerful distinction between inheritors and the self-made (wo)men in the upper class, and this is in turn related to an opposition between its arguably more powerful business-elite fractions and possibly less central industries, like that of motor vehicle retail and repair. d) The volume of inherited capital to some extent corresponds to the volume of educational capital. This implies that, in the case of the Norwegian economic upper class, education seems to be relatively more often a means for class reproduction or inter-elite circulation, than a means for upward mobility into the highest echelons of the class structure. e) The volume of capital differentiates liberal from anti-liberal elements of the service class. These conclusions speak to core debates in the fields of class analysis, the sociology of elites and of social mobility. They do, however, require further empirical work. Much hinges on the 76

validity of the principle of capital composition. Further empirical work should seek to investigate this line of division further to see whether it structures other relevant phenomena cultural orientation, educational strategies, symbolic boundary work, etc. (on symbolic boundary work and capital composition, see Jarness 2013). The connection between volume of inherited capital and educational capital within the upper class should be investigated further, to qualify and quantify the nature of that relationship in more detail not least through analysis of the actual reproduction and mobility strategies in play. Similarly, the division of the upper class by this volume of inherited capital should be further addressed, for instance by more detailed analysis of the specific fractions as compared to the broader class. My next overall conclusion is methodological: 2) The model of social space, premised on conceptualisation of multiple forms of capital as constituted by distinct fields, is a powerful tool to analyse intra-class relations. This was, of course, the supposition guiding the research. It is therefore not in a strict sense found or verified. I would, however, suggest that the supposition was strengthened by the fruitfulness of the work done in its application. The two quantitative papers can be read as an attempt to try out the social space model, and the fact that these applications are able address core issues in the field testifies to their power. The strength of the approach, and its fruitfulness, is, however, to be regarded as a theoretical and methodological claim corroborated by the findings, but ultimately rests on the theoretical foundations laid out in chapter 2. 3) The integration of the social space and field-analytical approach with the fundamental of class relationships in capitalism calls for theoretical work of integration and synthesis. In chapter 2, I discussed how Bourdieus view of class compares with Marxist and Weberian ones. In Putting Bourdieu to work I discussed various authors attempt at applying that concept of class, and argued that its application is at odds with the classical accounts of class. If one wishes, as I do, to retain the strength of both the Bourdieusian and the classical concepts of class, one has to be able to account for how they are or can be made to be compatible. This is a conclusion that points to further work, as the issue is only briefly discussed in the papers. Below, I will sum up these discussions and hopefully make my own view more explicit and indicate how a more satisfactory answer could possibly be developed. Let me elaborate on and discuss these conclusions further. 77

Taken together, the papers can be read as making the following claim. Class analysis can benefit greatly from adopting core concepts from Bourdieus sociology, as the approach embodied in them allows for a very subtle mapping and analysis of contemporary forms of stratification and power. As Bourdieu demonstrated himself, and other researchers have corroborated, it offers a powerful approach to understanding the fine-grained and multidimensional nature of class in the context of advanced social differentiation. In the two quantitative analyses, I emphasise the strength of this approach in modelling and accounting for intra-class relations. The Structure of the Upper Class takes as its object a categorisation of the upper class of my own making, rooted in what I call a fairly orthodox conception, in terms of class theory. From the Weberian emphasis on class situations as defined by the determination of life-chances in the market, the upper class is constructed so that it captures categories of people whose life-chances depend either on forms of ownership, or on their employment in the higher-level managing and related tasks in corporations. The Politics of the Service Class takes Goldthorpes theory of the service class at its point of departure. What Goldthorpes theory successfully does account for, is what might be seen as the structural basis for the new middle class, created by the transformations of capitalism through the better part of the 20th century. Or, in other words, Goldthorpe shows how the new middle classes fit into the relationship between private property and property-less wage labour, without resorting to ad hoc concepts. The Structure of the Upper Class is premised on the fruitfulness of conceptualizing the upper class in rather orthodox class analytical terms. The analyses demonstrate that one can come to grips with unavoidable heterogeneity of the category by applying Bourdieus toolbox. The analyses unearth a marked division by what I, following Bourdieu, call the volume of inherited capital that is, the amount of capital possessed by ones parents. This is frequently referred to in the literature as social origin, a metaphor which rightly emphasise the sense in which persons have different starting points in life, but does not capture how this in itself constitutes an advantage or disadvantage in the form of resources (more or less) at ones disposal throughout life. Something which is not noted in the conclusion to that paper is that the principle of capital composition also surfaces within the upper class. The second dimension of the space is mostly shaped by the different sources of economic capital. However, the indicators of 78

inherited capital also map out in interesting ways on this dimension. It reveals a certain correspondence between the form of economic capital one has (salaries vs. capital incomes) and the general composition of capital (cultural vs. economic) among the parents. This suggests that the inflow into the upper class from the cultural upper or middle classes occurs through an acquisition of the educational capital in some sense required to obtain managerial and professional positions in business. This is opposed to those originating in class fractions based on economic capital, who more often have large capital incomes and wealth. The Politics of the Service Class makes a somewhat stronger claim. The paper expands upon earlier research to make the argument that, despite the convincing nature of Goldthorpes theory of the service class, the class thus constructed becomes systematically heterogeneous, in ways which, at least, goes to the heart of the types of issues addressed by class analysis, and, I would argue, also are relevant to the theoretical conceptualisation itself. Moreover, the specific patterns of internal heterogeneity I detect the homology between social positions and political position-takings within the service class echo the arguments from Bourdieus Distinction. The paper can be read as suggesting that, not only are the concepts of Bourdieu excellent tools for studying intra-class relations, his more substantive claims on the multidimensional nature of class relations are also supported. The principle of capital composition, so central to his work, is found to differentiate the left-wing from the right-wing of the service class. This approach to studying class is still not widely used in sociology, but some recent applications have stayed close to Bourdieus formulations and demonstrated the applicability of a social space approach to class in contexts far removed from France of the 1960s (Hjellbrekke and Korsnes 2004; Prieur et al. 2008; Rosenlund 2009; Harrits et al. 2010; Andersen and Hansen 2011; Faber et al. 2012; Skjtt-Larsen 2012; Harrits 2013). Hence, my own work shows that a turn to Bourdieus concepts of class and stratification allows intraclass relations to be studied by means of the same theoretical and conceptual approach that can be applied to inter-class relations. This addresses a short-coming pointed to by Frank Parkin some thirty-four years ago, that class analyses tend to deviate from their professed theoretical position once the attention shifts from relations between to relations within classes (Parkin 1979:29-30). On the account adopted here, however, the two can be seen as cases of the same phenomenon: the struggle between holders of different forms of capital.

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While both papers thus seek to advance a more Bourdieusian approach, both of them retain considerable elements from European class theory. In both analyses, I depart from conceptualisations of specific classes that are grounded in the relations of power and the social divisions implicated in capitalism as an economic system. Simultaneously, I maintain that the basic capital-labour division, constitutive of capitalism, does not neatly translate without further ado into empirical social classes. This is brought out in the study of the service class, in which I argue that the fact that different fractions of the service class belong to different fields goes some way in accounting for their different socio-economic and political profiles. The social space approach or, when appropriate, a field-analytical approach can gainfully be used to address intra-class relations in a manner that is consistent with an understanding of class as manifested in the distribution of capital. At the same time, class analysis needs to maintain a conceptual connection with, and a substantive concern for, the forms of domination that are, in a sense, generic to capitalism (spelled out in the theory chapter above). While Bourdieu of course is the prime source of inspiration to the authors criticised in the Putting Bourdieu to work paper, his own position is more in accordance with what I am arguing than the positions of his followers. Allow me to quote a lengthy passage from Distinction where he stresses the same point:
The model of social space that has been put forward here is not only limited by the nature of the data used (and usable), particularly by the practical impossibility of including in the analysis structural features such as the power which certain individuals or groups have over the economy, or even the innumerable associated hidden profits. If most of those who carry out empirical research are often led to accept, implicitly or explicitly, a theory which reduces the classes to simple ranked but nonantagonistic strata, this is above all because the very logic of their practice leads them to ignore what is objectively inscribed in every distribution. A distribution, in the statistical but also the politicaleconomy sense, is the balance-sheet, at a given moment, of what has been won in previous battles and can be invested in subsequent battles; it expresses a state of the power relation between the classes or, more precisely, of the struggle for possession of rare goods and for the specifically political power over the distribution or redistribution of profit. Thus, the opposition between theories which describe the social world in the language of stratification and those which speak the language of the class struggle corresponds to two ways of seeing the social world which, though difficult to reconcile in practice, are in no way mutually exclusive as regards their principle. 'Empiricists' seem locked into the former, leaving the latter for 'theorists', because descriptive or explanatory surveys, which can only manifest classes or class fractions in the form of a punctual set of distributions of properties among individuals, always arrive after (or before) the battle and necessarily put into parentheses the struggle of which this distribution is the product. When the statistician forgets that all the properties he handles, not only those he classifies and measures but also those he uses to classify and measure, are weapons and prizes in the struggle between the classes, he is inclined to abstract each class from its relations with the others, not only from the oppositional relations which give properties their distinctive value, but also from the relations of power and of struggle for power which are the very basis of the distributions. Like a photograph of a game of marbles or poker which freezes the balance sheet of assets (marbles or chips) at a given stage, the survey freezes a moment in a struggle in which the agents put back into play, at every moment, the capital they have

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acquired in early phases of the struggle, which may imply a power over the struggle itself and therefore over the capital held by others. The structure of class relations is what one obtains by using a synchronic cross-section to fix a (more or less steady) state of the field of struggles among the classes. The relative strength which the individuals can put into this struggle, or, in other words, the distribution at that moment of the different types of capital, defines the structure of the field; but, equally, the strength which the individuals command depends on the state of the struggle over the definition of the stake of the struggle. The definition of the legitimate means and stakes of struggle is in fact one of the stakes of the struggle, and the relative efficacy of the means of controlling the game (the different sorts of capital) is itself at stake, and therefore subject to variations in the course of the game. Thus, as has constantly been emphasized here (if only by use of quotation marks), the notion of 'overall volume of capital', which has to be constructed in order to account for certain aspects of practice, nonetheless remains a theoretical artefact; as such, it could produce thoroughly dangerous effects if everything that has to be set aside in order to construct it were forgotten, not least the fact that the conversion rate between one sort of capital and another is fought over at all times and is therefore subject to endless fluctuations (Bourdieu 1984:245-6, emphasis added).

Two points are crucial in this: Firstly, that any analysis of the distribution of capitals in a field or a social space at any given time is a snapshot, and does not bring out the struggles that take place in the field. Secondly, it alludes to the importance of what Bourdieu called the fundamental property of class as affecting the empirical distribution of capitals. And it is warned that if all of this is forgotten, rather than simply temporarily put aside, the analysis is severely impoverished. It is the first point which has received most attention by Bourdieu, while the latter is my concern here. Theoretical work is needed in order for class analysis to be able to maintain a grasp of the fundamentals of class relationships while simultaneously benefitting from the power of the Bourdieusian ideas applied. This points to unresolved issues and challenges for future work. The challenge concerns building the conceptual or theoretical links between class in two senses. Between (1), the synthetic-descriptive notion of class that which considers position in the social space shaped by the forms of capital and all of the secondary principles and its various constitutive elements (field, capital, habitus, etc.); and (2) the type of analytical-explanatory concept of class that can be drawn from European class theory. This distinction comes close to the distinction between a concrete and an abstract concept of class. Or put differently, how can we connect the institutional order of class society with the structuration of class in social space? This problem stretches beyond what I have been able to address systematically and comprehensively in this thesis. In the papers, I sketch out some elements of how this may be connected. Let me summarise this and offer a few supplementing comments. I propose to

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conceive of this as a problem of class structuration the process whereby by abstract class divisions become identifiable social groupings (Giddens 1973, presented above in section 2.2.3.1). I adopt that specific formulation of this more general problem of class formation for two reasons: 1) The concept runs parallel to Bourdieus account of the mode of existence of social classes, in that it recognises the interplay of economic and cultural dimensions, as well as the active work of political labour. I would argue, however, that it is distinct in some important and interesting respects. First of all, it explicitly connects to a conception of class as based in the institutions of capitalism and this is, of course, why I discuss it here in the first place. Secondly, the emphasis on work-place relations rightly recognises the centrality of work and occupation for class formation. Thirdly, it recognises that status might operate independently of class in addition to its reinforcing effect suggested also by Bourdieu in ways that might counteract structuration around the class principle.37 Fourth, it offers a systematic theoretical expression of these processes. In sum, this means that the concept of class structuration offer an outline of the theoretical means to connect the concerns of Bourdieusian sociology with ECT. 2) Also, I find the concept of class structuration fitting for these purposes because I think the connection between class society as an institutional order, the mediation of fields and the structuration of social space could fruitfully be elaborated in terms of a duality of structure and action. This would, however, involve a reformulation of the concept of class structuration to make it more explicitly attuned to structuration theory proper. This, however, is a task for further work. 38

37

As Scott argues, the claims and accounts of a death of class, which frequently point to the lack of subjective salience of class, might be interpreted as a severed or reconfigured connection between class and status (Scott 2002). In Giddens terminology, this would amount to a lower degree of class structuration, within the confines of class society as an institutional order. Savage makes a similar point in arguing that class cultures today are individualised, as opposed to the more or less collective class cultures of times past (Savage 2000). 38 The concept of class structuration predates the formulation of structuration theory proper. Accordingly, class structuration is not developed by Giddens in terms of the duality of structure, even if it appears consistent with it. In a later text, he makes a few remarks on how he would see the 1973 arguments through the optics of his more developed account of structuration (Giddens 1979:109-10). Structuration theory, as presented by Giddens, is, as Scott remarks, a sophisticated conceptualization of action and interaction, and a suggestive outline for the analysis of social systems, but neither level of analysis is developed into a comprehensive theoretical statement (Scott 2012::236). It is instructive in this respect to remind that Giddens final statement of the theory was presented as an outline (Giddens 1984). The shortcomings of it is well-rehearsed in the literature and cannot be recapitulated here (see various views represented in Cohen 1989; Held and Thompson 1989; Clark et al. 1990; Craib 1992; Bryant and Jary 1997; Tucker 1998; Parker 2000; Loyal 2003; Stones 2005). A particularly acute problem is the question of social structure and

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Now, drawing on this conceptual armoury, I have proposed that the service class is not structurated into a distinct class, because it is systematically fragmented by the fact that its members are embedded in different fields. The fields of cultural production operate in a different mode, with a different logic and different ethos, spawning and/or demanding different illusio and habitus, than what can be found in the economic field. According to the terminology introduced above, the service class does not display unitary class awareness, but a systematically fragmented one. This suggests the operations of a field as mediating between the existence of market capacities and actual social groups. The fields help constitute their own specific forms of capital, which forms the basis for power in their internal hierarchies. For instance, the specific operation of the academic field constitutes academic and/or scientific capital, which can become the basis for specific privileged employment relationships, within the confines of labour markets under the sway of the field. While it is consistent to say that the scientific field then mediates the effects of the class structure on the lives of the actors in the field, it is crucial to recognise that mediation in this sense involves autonomous field-effects. Certain fields are rather delimited microcosms, meaning that the struggles that go on within them have limited bearings on the outside world. However, other fields have a much more profound influence on the entire social formation. A case in point is the fields of education, in which core aspects of cultural capital is constituted and circulated. Thus, the capital conferred by the education system takes on a very general currency in contemporary society: Educational capital is widely convertible so that it is effective even outside the fields of education. In the Putting Bourdieu to work paper I elaborate a bit on this, and connect it to the interpretation of class and status as causal processes through which capitals may gain a more wide-spread efficacy. The theoretical argument set forth in this thesis can therefore be summed up as follows: The basic institutions of capitalism as an economic system generate class divisions principally between owners of productive property and the sellers of labour-power the latter being differentiated by the nature of their labour-power in terms of market situation. In this sense, capitalism is by definition a class society. These abstract class divisions do not,
system analysis (see Thompsons oft-cited contribution in Held and Thompson 1989). I share Scotts assessment that structuration theory provides the key if not the complete solution to bringing together structural and interactional analysis and therefore also provides the essential basis for further theoretical work (Scott 2012:viii).

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however, translate without further ado into social classes in the sense of collectives with subjective importance for its members class for-itself, in Marx sense. That depends on a range of factors, many of which are widely recognised in class analysis, integrated in Giddens account of class structuration. These class divisions are diversified in the market in which labour-power is bought and sold, so that the number of class situations becomes almost indefinite, as Weber implied. Furthermore, the workings of fields provide further differentiation, giving rise to more or less disjunctive hierarchies of capitals in relatively autonomous microcosms of practice. Hence, actors in similar class situations can be differentially positioned within different fields, yielding different endowments of (more or less) field-specific forms of capital, in turn connected to different habitus and engagement in field-specific struggles. Snapshots of the state of this non-linear and complex process can be obtained by the constructions of social spaces. These spaces are continuous and multidimensional distributions of capital, generated by the complex interplay of property relations, market processes and the workings of fields. The model of social space does not presuppose categorical classes but instead show all individuals precise position in this complex distribution. This is thus a space of possible or probable classes, as Bourdieu emphasised. This is a dense statement of a complex process, and it will have to be elaborated and specified later. One of its chief strengths is that it might open up a way out of the deadlock between, on the one hand, the insistence on large-scale class categories which obviously fall short of being social classes by a long shot, and on the other hand, the opposed insistence on the death of class by referring to the obvious differentiation of class-relevant relationships and the decline of expressed class identity and consciousness. That is to say, the approach outlined above opens up for a class analysis that does not depend on the existence of classes as collective actors. Hence, a class society with fractured and individualised class divisions can consistently be posited and analysed within this framework. This might let class analysis engage more fully with the widely heralded, if exaggerated, current transformation of modernity without resorting to the flogging of dead horses.

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