Abstract
Sociology has a rich tradition studying ‘elite’ and ‘street’ social spaces, but rarely considers spaces between these fields and the social actors within them. This article fills that gap by examining the life stories of affluent Oslo youth engaged in illegal drug dealing. Participants had access to economic, social, and cultural capital in both elite and street social space. Making money in legitimate and illegitimate ways kept participants relatively marginal in both spaces. Having social networks among street-oriented peers and among elites facilitated drug dealing but also allowed them an exit from drug crimes when needed. They were educated and often employed, but also had high levels of drug and street cultural competence. This left them relatively estranged from their affluent background milieu leading to persistence in drug dealing. I argue that illegal drug markets among the affluent can be viewed as an in-between social space, that ‘elite’ or ‘street’ youth are likely best conceptualized as existing on a sociocultural spectrum between fields and provide a Bourdieusian framework to study social actors who stand between fields and the impact this may have on their lives.
Introduction
Research using Bourdieu’s theories has fruitfully studied individuals inhabiting elite and street spaces separately, focusing on the relations or variations within them (Friedman and Reeves, 2020; Shammas and Sandberg, 2016). However, people often live between social spaces, and studying relationships between fields represents a blind spot in Bourdieusian sociology (Liu, 2021). Therefore, some sociologists, building on Bourdieu’s field theoretical concept, have begun studying spaces between fields (Arrigoni, 2022; Eyal, 2013; Liu, 2021). However, there is little research on in-between spaces, and none have examined social spaces and social actors between the ‘elite’ and ‘street’. In this article, reference to ‘elite’ and ‘street’ field is not meant to indicate that these are specific and ‘relatively autonomous social microcosms’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 97), that is, fields in the more strict Bourdieusian sense. My use of the social–spatial metaphor is more general, to convey that ‘elite’ and ‘street’ are the upper and lower ends of the broader social space (e.g. Bourdieu, 1984: 120–125; Shammas and Sandberg, 2016) participants stood and moved between.
This article examines the life stories of an understudied and hard to reach group: young people from elite social environments dealing with drugs. While past studies have primarily criticized Bourdieu for paying insufficient attention to spaces between fields, or how social actors have multiple (sometimes contradictory) life experiences, this article demonstrates the utility of combining Bourdieu’s theories with these recent critiques to study in-between spaces and the social actors within them. Specifically, I use Bourdieu’s key concepts of field, capital, and habitus as a theoretical lens to comprehend participants life trajectories and sense of self, and combine these with Gil Eyal’s (2013) concept of spaces between fields, Bernard Lahire’s (2011) concept of the plural actor, and Bourdieu’s (2000) later writing on habitus clivé. Combining concepts to study participants’ lives and social practices reveals that illegal drug markets among the affluent is a space between fields. In this space the subcultural and mainstream blend and overlap through drug use, dealing, and minor crime. Participants had economic, social, and cultural capital from both the elite and street social space. As a result, they are hybrid social actors who spend time in several fields and therefore do not fully belong to one field. They act as bridge builders between spaces, norms, values, and practices, and are therefore best understood as neither fully elite or privileged, nor street and disadvantaged, but rather as complex individuals inhabiting positions along an elite to street cultural continuum. 1
Bourdieu on elite social space
For Bourdieu, fields are networks of objective relations between social positions in a specific social space, such as the artistic field or class or lifestyle field (Bourdieu, 1984; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Fields are relatively autonomous, and each field adheres to a specific logic of practice (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Many of the social spaces Bourdieu studied can be understood as fields connected to the ‘elite’, ‘ruling class’, or the ‘dominant’ (Wacquant, 1993). Regarding elite reproduction in these social spaces, Bourdieu et al. (1977) argued that the family and school worked together, so individuals ended up in a class position similar to the one they were born into. This reproduction was made probable by building and embodying the forms of capital valued in each field (Bourdieu, 1998; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Children of professors and artists had cultural capital (e.g. academic credentials), and children of the ‘private bosses’ accumulated and inherited economic capital (e.g. assets, wealth). In-between these two extremes were children of professionals (e.g. lawyers, judges), high level executives, or ‘state bosses’, who had both cultural and economic capital (Bourdieu, 1998).
For Bourdieu (1998), a central concept in elite social reproduction is ‘ease’ – a sense of being naturally at home in elite institutions. In academics, ease comes from having academic culture as one’s ‘native culture’, meaning it is acquired through the family, often ‘imperceptibly’ (Bourdieu, 1998). This logic also extends to lifestyle. For instance, people with high levels of cultural capital can consume culture, food, and art with ease and confidence (Bourdieu, 1984). Importantly, consumption habits and lifestyles work to establish and maintain positions in social spaces but also mask social hierarchies. Building on Bourdieu (1984, 1998), Khan (2011) revisited the notion of ease, arguing that it helps explain elite social reproduction. However, he argues that ease is not only inherited through the family but also through interactions in school and is awarded through the notion of hard work. Still, the most privileged students are those who are more likely to achieve ease because, compared with people from underprivileged backgrounds, they view their position in elite institutions as a result of hard work and merit (Khan, 2011).
Bourdieu and street social space
While Bourdieu’s work and many scholars using his writing in research often focus on elites and those in dominant positions in society (e.g. Bourdieu, 1984; Hansen and Toft, 2021), his concepts have also been used to study dominated and street social spaces (Shammas and Sandberg, 2016). One critical concept is street capital: ‘knowledge, skills and objects that are given value in street culture’ (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2011: 33). This concept partly builds on the notion of subcultural capital, objects, and skills valued in youth subcultures (Thornton, 1995). Like cultural capital and street capital, subcultural capital is granted to individuals who display a second nature of their knowledges (Thornton, 1995). In Thornton’s (1995) original study, this could mean knowledge of music or the ability to effortlessly perform the latest dance styles. Subcultural capital may fuel rebellion and escape from the ‘trappings of parental class’, but assertion of subcultural distinction partly relies on a fantasy of classlessness (Thornton, 1995: 12). Subcultural capital and street cultural capital can be converted into economic capital through, for instance, club organizing or street-level drug deals. However, subcultural capital may not have the same financial rewards as cultural capital (Thornton, 1995) and with street capital ‘it is difficult to transfer to other social arenas’ (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2011: 168). Finally, street culture is increasingly conceptualized as occurring on a spectrum between simply hanging around in street spaces and using violence and crime to generate income (Ilan, 2017).
Privileged individuals are more likely to enter elite social spaces such as prestigious universities or high-level positions in large companies (Bourdieu, 1998, 2014b), whereas disadvantaged individuals are more likely to enter street fields such as street-based illegal drug markets (Bucerius, 2014). In short, regarding past research, individuals’ exclusion from mainstream society becomes part of their entryways into street spaces, which are often characterized by violence, drug use, and internalized rage, because actors lack formal education, wealth, or social networks in conventional society (Bucerius, 2014; Sandberg, 2008). Thus, the cumulative challenges experienced by the disadvantaged may cause them to seek alternative forms of self-respect through crime (Sandberg, 2008).
Bourdieusian studies focused on street social spaces typically showcase individuals’ lack of attachment to the mainstream but also show individuals’ energies, competences, and resources within circumscribed street fields (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2011). For instance, regarding street capital, the habitus of actors in street fields include dispositions toward violence and drug use (Shammas and Sandberg, 2016). Studies on street habitus also highlight the narrative form dispositions take by stressing how storylines shape actions. Stories can also be a resource when deterring aggression is a challenge in an environment organized around violence (e.g. Fleetwood, 2016). Finally, individuals may also have access to street social capital, ‘the resources available to individuals through social networks which allow them to thrive within the street field’ (Ilan, 2013: 18).
In sum, most studies view the street field as a circumscribed social space far removed from the elites (Shammas and Sandberg, 2016) and as a space with context-specific forms of economic, cultural, and social capital (Ilan, 2013; Sandberg, 2008). However, what if people do not stand firmly in elite or street social space, but somewhere in between? As in previous studies, elite and street social space can be viewed as distinct and bounded by field-specific capital. However, the present article investigates the spaces in which elite and street social spaces blur. This is accomplished by considering the multiple capital forms of young people who grew up among elites but who nevertheless engaged in the street cultural activity of illegal drug dealing among drug and street culturally oriented peers.
Drug markets: between elite and street social spaces
Recent scholarship notes Bourdieu’s research on elites ‘almost exclusively observes the relations within a given field’ (Arrigoni, 2022: 1286). More generally, although Bourdieu extensively used the concept of homology to examine structural similarities across fields, some argue that Bourdieu did not take ‘seriously the spaces between fields or how fields are related to each other’ (Liu, 2021: 124). Although this argument could be moderated by acknowledging that Bourdieu thought the state functioned as a meta-field contributing to constructing all fields (Bourdieu, 2014a), scholars still argue that Bourdieu’s framework is not particularly helpful when considering spaces between fields (Eyal, 2013).
Eyal (2013) argues that spaces between fields can be understood in two primary ways. First, as boundary work, but as more than mere rhetoric, as ‘real’ work: establishing connections and making transactions (p. 176). Moreover, spaces between fields are thick boundary zones; boundary work does not take place within either field but is completed by hybrid social actors who belong to either side (Eyal, 2013: 175). Individuals in these in-between spaces are said to simultaneously or consecutively belong to several fields and, above all, function as hybridization agents between logic, norms, tools, and practices (Arrigoni, 2022: 1294). Second, spaces between fields are interstitial and underdetermined, where actions, combinations, and conversions can be done that are impossible within fields (Eyal, 2013).
Bourdieu did not focus on illegal drug consumption or markets. While most young people do not use illegal drugs, many do. Studies on youth from Oslo show that boys use illegal drugs more often than girls. Living in the city center or certain affluent districts was also associated with increased use of cannabis and cocaine. In addition, youth participating in alcohol-based party cultures or those with high socioeconomic statuses (SESs) are at a higher risk for using cocaine. Finally, while past studies have shown that high SES is associated with more cannabis use, recent studies indicate that youth with psychosocial risk factors who live near the city center have an elevated risk of cannabis use (Pedersen et al., 2024). While youth from affluent areas are known for hard partying, extensive alcohol use, and use of certain illegal drugs, studies also show socially included upper middle-class youth are mindful that their drug use should not get in the way of school, careers, and a healthy lifestyle (Schwencke et al., 2024).
This study argues that there are at least two broad ways of considering participation in illegal drug cultures in affluent communities. One is more decontextualized and resonates with Bourdieusian sociology, highlighting the relevance of cosmopolitan, omnivorous, or multicultural capital among elites (Khan, 2011; Prieur and Savage, 2013). Here, drug or street cultural modes of consumption are just one of several forms of cultural expression and likely do not take center stage in participants’ lives. This is shown in studies on relatively privileged people using and dealing with drugs that often emphasize they are ‘conventionally’ oriented, ‘law-abiding’, and connected to the mainstream. Drug use and dealing is often intertwined into the fabric of everyday life, such as work and study (Lowe and Laidler, 2024; Mohamed and Fritsvold, 2009; Perrone, 2010; Søgaard and Bræmer, 2023). In addition, drug use and dealing occur in closed social network groups, allowing participants to evade stigmatization and punishment by law enforcement (Askew and Salinas, 2019; Berger et al., 2023; Salinas, 2018). In short, many of these individuals are part of the middle and upper classes and arguably more connected to conventional life. Second, building on Eyal’s (2013) conception of social actors between spaces as hybrid agents, partaking in illegal drug cultures in affluent communities may take a more durable form through prolonged and intense membership in cannabis culture (Sandberg, 2013), street culture (Ilan, 2017), or through more extensive drug use and dealing. Here, social actors arguably become more involved in drug use, dealing, and other crimes; their dual capital formation is more pronounced (sometimes even in competition); their cultural toolkits are more complex; and consolidating their narrative identities is more demanding.
Participants in the present study fell into both categories depending on where they were in their life trajectories. Taking their long-lasting positions and dispositions into account contributes to nascent research on spaces between fields, because these studies have not considered what standing between social fields entails for individuals’ biographies (Arrigoni, 2022). Building on Bourdieu’s work, Lahire (2011) argues that people often live through simultaneous and heterogeneous, sometimes even contradictory, social experiences, and questions the ontological complicity between the embodied (dispositions) and objective (field) put forth by Bourdieu. Lahire (2011) argues that individuals are more maladjusted and out of place than Bourdieu’s theory of habitus assumes. Moreover, field theory privileges major competitors, and many less dominant actors are effectively excluded from analysis (Lahire, 2014). However, toward the end of his career, Bourdieu (2000) acknowledged that ‘Habitus is not necessarily adapted to its situation nor necessarily coherent’ (p. 160). Instead, individuals may hold contradictory social positions that exert structural double binds, leading to a destabilized habitus torn by contradiction and internal division (Bourdieu, 2000).
Thus, Bourdieu’s (2000) later writing presents habitus as less mechanistic and able to adapt, although never radically. While Bourdieu presented the notion of a split habitus, he ‘rarely engaged empirically with the precise conditions under which the habitus is likely to be altered, adjusted, and/or disrupted’ (Friedman, 2016: 144). Given the lack of empirical studies on spaces between fields and the focus in the literature on social actors being socialized into and occupying either elite or street social spaces, the aim of this article is to present an in-between social field, namely, illegal drug markets in affluent communities. Building on nascent research on spaces between fields and combining Bourdieu’s (2000) notion of a split habitus with Eyal’s (2013) concept of spaces between fields, and Lahire’s (2011) work on the plural actor, this article attends not only to this in-between space but also considers what standing between fields entails for individuals.
The article shows how participants throughout their youth and young adulthood accumulate and draw on both dominant forms of capital and drug subcultural and street capital, leading to entry, persistence, and exit from drug use, crime, and dealing. Focusing on these years-long processes draws attention to participants’ multiple life experiences, and their in-betweenness, arguably leading to a more nuanced, accurate, and complex understanding of people from elite environments engaged in minor crime and illegal drug markets.
Method
The present article is based on in-depth interviews with 34 young adults (33 men and 1 woman). Data were collected to study illegal drug markets among affluent youth in Oslo, Norway. Participants were recruited in two ways. First, through fieldwork with people engaged in drug and crime prevention among youth. Because I am from Oslo and grew up in several of the same west-end neighborhoods, I also recruited participants through my own extended social networks in the city.
Once recruited, participants were encouraged to choose an interview location with which they were comfortable. Interviews were typically between 1 and 3 hours long and were conducted in west-end communities, for example, at the participants’ houses. I asked broad questions about their upbringing, work, educational experiences, and about their experiences with legal and illegal drugs.
Participants had grown up and/or attended school in one or several of Oslo’s west-end neighborhoods. While Oslo is socioeconomically segregated along an east–west divide, participants’ backgrounds also reflect the heterogeneous nature of affluent communities. Several participants had upper class backgrounds (e.g. parents were high-level executives). Many participants also came from upper–middle-class backgrounds (e.g. parents were consultants) or lower–middle-class backgrounds (e.g. parents were primary schoolteachers). Most participants were in their late teens or early- to mid-twenties at the time of the interview. A few were in their early thirties. Younger participants typically had limited work experience, while those above high-school age studied in university or worked (e.g. in the tech industry). In short, the participants enjoyed varying levels of ‘privilege’.
Participants’ backgrounds also revealed degrees of relative disadvantages. For instance, participants started using legal and illegal drugs earlier than most of their west-end peers, many had negative experiences with law enforcement, many struggled socially and in school, some had experienced drug abuse at home, and several struggled with addiction. Their privileges and disadvantages, such as their relative attachment to the elite or street social spaces, are best understood as taking place along a multidimensional spectrum.
While drug use patterns varied among participants, most had considerable experience using legal and illegal drugs (mostly alcohol and cannabis, but also cocaine, MDMA, LSD, and Ketamine). Several participants struggled with addiction, others stated that their use was for recreational, medicinal, or therapeutic purposes. Their drug dealing ranged from selling low-level amounts (e.g. grams) occasionally and for a limited time, to mid- to high-level amounts (e.g. kilos) for several years. Most participants dealt with mid- to-high level amounts. Some also had experience with other forms of crime such as robbery, fraud, and assault.
Data were analyzed in several rounds. First, analytical, and observational notes were taken immediately after interviews. Interviews were then transcribed verbatim, and a preliminary codebook was created and subsequently tested on the interview material and modified. Of particular importance for this article are codes pertaining to the participants’ dual capital formation. Bourdieu’s (1986) conceptualization of economic, cultural, and social capital was used to identify times in the interviews when participants spoke of their accrual of, access to, or utilization of dominant forms of capital. Similarly, I looked for moments in interviews when participants spoke of their access to street cultural capital, street social capital, and economic capital from drug dealing (Bakkali, 2022; Sandberg and Pedersen, 2011). Finally, I analyzed when capital forms appeared concomitantly in participants’ life histories and the implications of this overlap for their self-understanding and life trajectories.
This study was approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD). Before being asked to participate in the study, participants were given detailed information about the research project and what participation entailed (e.g. they would remain anonymous). All participants consented to participate in the study and were generally supportive of the project.
Analysis
The following analysis shows participants’ hybrid social positions by detailing how dominant and street capital were accrued and blended and how this impacted their life trajectories into and out of drug and street subcultures. The analysis focuses on the three most important forms of capital in elite and street studies: economic, social, and cultural.
Building economic capital among elites and on the streets
Participants grew up among Oslo’s economic elite. In this environment, economic capital and the symbolic mastery of its associated lifestyles are powerful forces in elite socialization and reproduction (Hansen and Toft, 2021; Jarness et al., 2019). Jacob, for instance, was from a ‘posh business family’ and lived in Oslo’s most affluent neighborhood. While in the upper class, Jacob often described feeling uncomfortable in his affluent background milieu, because people were ‘mean’ and did not always share his ‘values’. This feeling was amplified during his upbringing because of his and his peers’ extensive engagement with drugs and the street subculture (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2011). ‘And so we created our own little thing. Fuck everybody else!’ Jacob explained. After high school, he spent a few years studying and working in the United States and the United Kingdom before returning to Oslo where he received a job offer in finance from an affluent childhood friend, who in addition to being the son of a CEO was also ‘totally criminal’, ‘dealing cocaine’, and had connections to some of the city’s most notorious gangs. Jacob explained: So he [his friend] sold me the first ‘plate’ [hectogram of cannabis], or he asked me first, ‘do you want to?’ And then, I am not sure why, but I have always. . . right for me. . . I have always had romantic relationships with marijuana. I have not viewed it as a big, bad wolf. I have always viewed myself as a communicator of marijuana knowledge. . . So for whatever reason, I was like ‘yeah, why not’. I have been doing it [selling cannabis] ever since I got that job a year and a half ago.
The balancing act between, on one hand, being from Oslo’s most affluent neighborhood and on the other hand, being drawn to parts of drug and street culture, was a recurrent theme throughout Jacob’s life story. It resulted in Jacob dealing with drugs while working in the financial sector. However, doing both at the same time kept him somewhat marginal in both spheres, because drug dealing kept him from immersing himself in the job and because he could not, because of his affluent background, see himself as a career criminal. Jacob therefore existed somewhere on the sociocultural spectrum between the elite and the street.
Jacob’s story of illegal drug dealing among and with the affluent, aided by wider social networks among more sub- and street culturally oriented individuals, is a good example of what Eyal (2013) calls a space of opportunities where combinations can be made that cannot be done within fields. The narrative also shows that, while these combinations can be made, Jacob did not stand firmly within either the elite or the street field and was thus somewhat marginal to both (Eyal, 2013). He belonged to several social fields depending on his life trajectory, but due in part to his dual capital accumulation, did not hold a dominant position in one field. While his family background and upbringing may have placed him in a position to become socialized into the economic elite in Oslo, his plural, early, repeated, and ongoing experiences with drug use and dealing complicated his life trajectory and sense of self (Lahire, 2011).
For other participants, originally being in possession of traditional economic capital but without the opportunity to reproduce it as an adult could lead to the accrual of economic capital in street social spaces to keep or advance one’s social position. Arthur’s story is one such example. Arthur was from an affluent family but struggled in school and with finding lucrative employment after finishing high school and moving out from his parents’ house. As a result, he began selling weed to wealthy peers who valued his knowledge and connections. He continued dealing with drugs for years, typically selling hectograms on a regular basis. Like Jacob, Arthur reasoned that he had probably been open to such a ‘radical suggestion to earn money’ because he had a lot of experience using drugs and because it was quite common among his group of affluent friends. He primarily used his money to maintain a high standard of living. Arthur’s example therefore speaks of the concept of spaces between fields where ‘resources can be accumulated and then possibly converted into an improved position in one’s home field’ (Eyal, 2013). However, drug dealing kept Arthur from focusing on finding a legitimate job. As such, accruing drug subcultural and street capital (e.g. competence in the illegal drug economy) somewhat hindered Arthur’s progress in mainstream society, pointing to the difficulty of transferring street capital to other social arenas (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2011).
Bourdieusian sociology points to the social reproduction of a society’s economic elite through educational achievements, inheritance, and other family transactions (Bourdieu, 1998; Hansen and Toft, 2021). In addition to having economic capital, it is important to master symbolic expressions of wealth, such as stylistic conformity (e.g. fitting in as opposed to standing out), having a well-trained body, and showcasing effortlessness in social hierarchies (Bourdieu, 1984; Jarness et al., 2019; Khan, 2011). Thus, social reproduction occurs in a roughly symbiotic relationship between the actors’ primary habitus and the social institutions they encounter. Participants in this study often shared backgrounds, social contexts, and/or cultures of affluence. However, through their wider social networks and personal experiences, they acquired subcultural and street capital (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2011; Thornton, 1995). For some, their plurality of social contexts and repertoires of habit (Lahire, 2011) created structural double binds on participants’ limiting progress in traditional society (Bourdieu, 2000).
Street social capital and upper class social capital
According to Bourdieu (1986), social capital is an actual or potential resource obtained through networks. Social capital is important in elite and street social spaces (Ilan, 2013). Unlike most previous studies on young people from elite backgrounds (Khan, 2011), participants in the present study had social networks consisting of a combination of elite, drug, and street cultural networks. Oliver’s life story is a good example. His parents belonged to the upper class. However, Oliver grew up in a mixed-income neighborhood, which he described as ‘street’ oriented and dominated by gangs. ‘So, I grew up really lucky in one way, but with large contrasts in life’, he said.
Oliver had large social networks from the ‘street’; at the same time, through his parent’s social status, he met with and had access to social spaces in the upper classes of society. This duality shaped Oliver’s life profoundly. First, his street-oriented peers and neighborhood context socialized him into Oslo’s street culture. ‘I became a hardcore gangster by the time I was in high school’. Oliver learned how to shoot guns, fight, and socialize into a life of crime. However, his parents’ social networks kept him relatively insulated from the full consequences of drug and street cultural participation. For instance, Oliver’s parents often took him on expensive vacations where he would rub shoulders with Oslo’s elite, using these trips as a ‘time-out’ from peer-influenced crime and street cultural socialization. Eventually, when Oliver and his peer group got in serious trouble with the police, his parents finally intervened by sending him to private school. This was a turning point in his life, resulting in Oliver escaping the life of crime and socializing into a more conventional upper class lifestyle.
For Oliver, peers in sub- and street cultures were important for his entryways into crime, and his family was the propelling force out of those subcultures. However, for other participants, access to peer groups that were more conventionally oriented was more important than parents for resisting drug dealing and crime. Daniel is an example of this. His parents were part of the cultural elite, but like Oliver, he also grew up in a mixed-income neighborhood, had extensive experience dealing with drugs, and led a life heavily involved in street culture. He was recently told by his lawyers that he would face a longer sentence if he did not discontinue his crime. However, he explained, ‘I have so many contacts [outside of his drug dealing/street-oriented friends], so that’s one of the reasons for why going back to dealing . . . seems a waste . . . when I have other options’.
Both Oliver and Daniel ceased dealing as part of a combination of factors where serious trouble with police, parental aid, and social networks in conventional social spaces was important. Others made the choice without extensive contact with law enforcement or other serious social problems. For these participants, the possibility of imagining a different future was decisive. Vetle, a high-school student who recently stopped dealing with drugs, is a good example: Vetle: Yea, it was just that it [smoking and distributing cannabis] made me feel like I just kept around other people who smoked. I just stayed in the same social circles, and I felt a need to expand a bit and get to know new people. I love my buddies that I have been with all this time, but it’s not where I see myself in 5–10 years.
Like other participants, Vetle’s potential for imagining a different lifestyle was also made possible by his extensive social network among other, more conventionally oriented youth. While he spent much of his adolescence dealing with drugs and engaging at different levels in street culture among street-oriented peers, he also had more ‘mainstream’ social networks.
Building and having access to more conventionally oriented and street-oriented peers had several important implications for participants. They acquired the social networks necessary to obtain and distribute illegal drugs. They had contact with distributors as well as with relatively conventional buyers. As such, they serve as a social bridge between people from elite social space and those from street social space (Eyal, 2013). Finally, their social networks in wider social space among mainstream society gave them resources to discontinue drug dealing and crime.
Subcultural and street and elite cultural capital
In Norway (Pedersen et al., 2018) and other post-industrialized societies, cultural capital in the form of educational credentials and mastery of legitimate culture through modes of behavior represents one of the most efficient forms of capital (Bourdieu et al., 1991: 631). Many scholars argue that upper class youth are increasingly cultural omnivores, enjoying and mastering both ‘high-brow’ and ‘low-brow’ culture with a sense of ease (Khan, 2011). However, true cultural openness has been contested (Bennett et al., 2009), and researchers have rarely focused on the importance of subcultural and street cultural capital for young people from elite environments. Examining participants’ life stories reveals that they have access to traditional forms of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) but also to drug and street subcultural capital (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2011; Thornton, 1995). The two have accrued simultaneously throughout their lives and affected their life trajectories and sense of self. William’s story is a good example.
William came from an upper class background. He got a formal education and relevant work experience early on in life and converted his knowledge and capabilities into a lucrative career in software development. Growing up, he was part of a party culture at Oslo’s west end, which included excessive alcohol consumption. However, he also used a range of illegal drugs, including cocaine and amphetamines. In addition, he ‘read a lot about psychedelics and different drugs from an early age’. William spoke of the relaxed feeling he had after smoking cannabis, how it ‘allows for fluidity of mind’, how MDMA ‘brushed the dust off his emotional center’, and how psychedelics made him more accepting of life’s highs and lows. Importantly, these experiences also made him into a natural ‘communicator’ of cannabis and psychedelics in his extended social network, as he was able to convert his knowledge, skills, and experiences into a successful drug dealing career.
William accumulated traditional forms of cultural capital and drug and street cultural capital, often at the same time. He consumed and sold various drugs, mainly cannabis, was part of an affluent party culture, and worked in the technology industry. Recent studies have found that people sometimes sell drugs alongside otherwise ‘conventional’ lives (Søgaard and Bræmer, 2023). William and others’ life stories can be interpreted as blending the ‘conventional’ with the ‘subcultural’. William had experience with alcohol but also with cannabis, cocaine, MDMA, and psychedelics, the latter being substances that are not commonly used in the general population but are more common in the segments of Oslo’s affluent west end from which William came (Pedersen et al., 2024). William and other participants with pluralistic drug use experiences also found some familiarity with the concept of the cultural omnivore – those social actors enjoying a range of cultural activities (Peterson and Kern, 1996) – and the concept of cosmopolitan capital, which is cultural consumption that is expansive and moving beyond one’s local and national culture (Prieur and Savage, 2013). It also adds to this line of research by introducing the drug subcultural and street cultural components (Sandberg and Pedersen, 2011; Thornton, 1995).
While William’s story reveals ease (Khan, 2011) in blending his taste for, and distribution of, illegal drugs with a regular job, the participants’ narratives also reveal tension when combining divergent capital forms. Emil’s story is one example: Because it [cannabis] is illegal, right, you have to get it illegally and you don’t want your mom and dad to find out you’re smoking, and you don’t want your friends who you were friends with before in Norway who were conservative and who are really anti-drugs [to find out he is smoking].
Compared with some of his closest friends from his affluent upbringing, Emil had become more interested in cannabis and psychedelics as opposed to alcohol because he viewed them as healthier, allowing him to be more introspective and develop closer and more positive relationships with other people. ‘So, I slowly became more and more like someone who you could probably see from the outside smoked a lot of weed . . . more so than a guy who does not touch it at all and is really into business’, Emil explained. Recent research on acceptable cannabis consumption by affluent youth reveals that its use should be infrequent and should not get in the way of mainstream pursuits (Schwencke et al., 2024). In short, Emil expressed having a more difficult time, compared with participants like William, combining his subcultural lifestyle of drug use, distribution, and new social networks, with the taste culture among his more ‘mainstream’ friends.
In general, what cut through the life story of Emil and participants like him was the tension in trying to integrate their extensive experience of using and selling illegal drugs with their wider background culture. The tension was particularly pronounced when it came to the different ‘taste cultures’ in their divergent social groups. This finding speaks of research on upper class individuals, which shows that a key part of privilege is the ability to move through life with ease, but this can be difficult to accomplish in practice (Khan, 2011). Participants typically viewed cannabis as a more interesting drug than alcohol. They described themselves as being more curious than most ‘mainstream’ youth, and that they were defined by others and by themselves as outsiders or ‘stoners’. Importantly, participants like William and Emil made substantial changes to their lifestyle and identities, had some of the highest levels of drug and street subcultural capital among the participants, and were most likely to persist in illegal drug dealing.
The analytical sections examine the blending of the three distinct forms of capital: economic, social, and cultural. However, it is important to note that the three capital forms also overlapped. For example, in the section on social capital, cultural and economic capital was also important because participants needed the necessary skills and knowledge to be able to deal drugs and make money.
Discussion
Scholars have recently pointed out that Bourdieu was mostly concerned with fields as a relatively autonomous social space and that he did not pay sufficient attention to the spaces between fields (Eyal, 2013). This study builds on this research, arguing for spaces between fields as a useful heuristic to comprehend illegal drug markets among affluent youth in Oslo, Norway, and possibly elsewhere. This conceptualization is useful because it sheds light on how dominant forces connect to subordinate ones and how conventional and mainstream forces connect to drug and street subculture. For instance, affluent youths’ relatively ‘conventional’ alcohol consumption, party cultures, and certain forms of illegal drug use may expand and form a sociocultural bridge to aspects of drug and street subcultural lifestyles. In short, this concept may reveal some of the boundary work occurring between divergent fields that can potentially escape researchers when fields are studied in isolation.
Eyal (2013) also stressed that boundary workers who stand between and connect social spaces are typically hybrid, belong to several fields, and therefore do not stand firmly within a single field. Yet, few empirical studies explicitly examine social actors between fields. This article adds new knowledge to this issue by examining the life stories and trajectories of young people from affluent communities engaged in drug and street cultures.
One could argue that participants did not stand between fields but simply entered street social space from the upper parts of society. However, findings in this article indicate that they did not stand firmly in elite social space or street social space but on a sociocultural spectrum between these two extreme parts of society. Conceptualizing participants’ lives in this way highlights their complex and multiple life experiences and avoids simplifying their backgrounds, life histories, and identities. The conceptualization is a reminder for future research to pay attention to complexity among social actors who are ‘elite’ and/or ‘street’, and what impact duality, hybridity, and ambiguity have for participants’ lives and the social spaces they occupy. Finally, this study provides a potential framework for future research on spaces between fields and the social actors who stand between them. As this article shows, this can be accomplished by combining Eyal’s notion of a space between fields; Bourdieu’s notion of habitus clivé; Bernard Lahire’s concept of the plural actor; and Bourdieu’s key concepts of field, habitus, and capital with empirical material, context, and field-specific knowledge.
Similar to past research on elites, affluent young people in Oslo engage in a wide variety of cultural expressions (Peterson and Kern, 1996). This article sheds light on the importance of drug subculture and street culture in these milieus (e.g. Sandberg, 2013). Examining drug and street culture among youth with this background has not received much attention in studies using a Bourdieusian framework. The relative importance of drug and street culture for the participants in this study suggests subcultures should be given more attention in future studies on middle and upper class youth cultural practices, particularly how they overlap and intersect with ‘mainstream’ and other youth subcultures.
In studies on young people from elite backgrounds, the notion of ‘ease’ – feeling comfortable in just about any social situation – is seen as a true mark of privilege (Khan, 2011). Findings in this article indicate that ‘ease’, as a concept, is still helpful for understanding relatively privileged youth, and supports other studies on middle and upper class young people dealing with drugs, showing that drug use and dealing simply represent one form of social practice alongside otherwise conventional lives (Jacques and Wright, 2020; Mohamed and Fritsvold, 2009). However, participants in this study also encountered difficulty when combining rather divergent ‘conventional’ and ‘subcultural’ social practices, in part because they were more attached to subcultures than is common in their affluent background milieus. Thus, while illegal drug use is common in affluent communities (Pedersen et al., 2024), drug and street subcultural attachments can conflict with social inclusion or social reproduction in elite environments (Bourdieu, 1998). Similar to past studies, it seems that fitting in, as opposed to standing out, remains important in elite environments (Jarness et al., 2019) and that true cultural omnivorous behavior is unlikely to find full acceptance (Pedersen et al., 2018). Notably, this does not preclude accumulation and use of ‘low-brow’, cosmopolitan, or drug or street cultural capital, but points to there being limits and social costs associated with lifestyles and consumption.
Conclusion
Bourdieusian sociology focuses on elite and street social space in isolation. Studies on elites typically focus on dominant forms of capital, whereas studies on street fields typically showcase participants’ street capital. However, there is a dearth of theoretical field studies on divergent capital accumulation among individuals who spend time in both elite and street fields as well as on their life trajectories and sense of self. This article bridges the literature on young people in elite and street social space by showing that accumulating and blending divergent capital forms can lead people to enter, persist, or desist from drugs and street culture. Future research might build on this article by exploring whether and with what consequence affluent and disadvantaged youth elsewhere are plural and stand between fields.
Lahire (2011) argues that social actors are more maladjusted, off-field, or out of place than Bourdieu’s theories of habitus and field assume. This is largely because people have multiple contradictory life experiences. In addition, Bourdieu’s framework pays more attention to major competitors in fields at the expense of less dominant ones (Lahire, 2014). The present study emphasizes the plurality of participants’ experiences by examining how they accrued, often simultaneously, capital in elite and street social space. This is important because it highlights the complexity of people from elite environments and those involved in drug or street cultures. Not paying sufficient attention to actors’ plural experiences may lead to oversimplification or even the stereotyping of people and their social environments.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Sveinung Sandberg, Willy Pedersen, and two anonymous reviewers for their many helpful comments. He is also grateful to the editorial team at Current Sociology for their work in the review and publication process. Thanks are owed to the University of Oslo and the Department of Sociology and Human Geography and PROMENTA research center, for being a supportive research community.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by The Research Council of Norway (grant no. 288083).
