Cultural vs Economic Capital: Symbolic Boundaries within the Middle Class

Abstract

This article concerns an insufficiently studied link in cultural class analysis, namely that between class-structured lifestyle differences and social closure. It employs a modified version of Michèle Lamont’s promising, yet under-theorised approach to the study of symbolic boundaries – the conceptual distinctions made by social actors in categorising people, practices, tastes, attitudes and manners in everyday life. Drawing on 46 qualitative interviews with people from the city of Stavanger, Norway, the analysis focuses particularly on a horizontal boundary-drawing dynamic between middle-class interviewees. It is argued that entanglements of different types of status judgements work both to construct and reinforce social boundaries between class fractions. The findings draw attention to what Pierre Bourdieu has termed the capital composition principle of social differentiation. Though fundamental to Bourdieu’s model of the social space, such systematic intra-class divisions have seldom been discussed in detail in contemporary cultural-stratification research.

Keywords

Bourdieu capital composition egalitarianism Lamont social closure status Weber

In what ways do differences in people’s lifestyles form the basis for exclusion in social life? This question has been central in social-stratification research since the pioneering work of Max Weber (1946, 1978). A key concept in his seminal account of different types of social stratification is social closure, referring to the process whereby one group of social actors monopolises advantages by closing off opportunities to another group of outsiders that it defines as inferior and ineligible (Murphy, 1988). In the case of status groups (Stände), Weber (1978: 387) held that social closure involves identifying certain attributes of lifestyles as the basis for excluding those without the attributes: ‘Differences in the styles of beard and hairdo, clothes, food and eating habits, division of labor between the sexes, and all kinds of visible differences can, in a given case, give rise to repulsion and contempt.’ While Weber regarded class and status as two analytically distinct forms of stratification, he held that lifestyles are typically rooted in specific class relations that condition a way of life and thus form the bases of status judgements. Thus, Weber’s account of capitalist class situations stresses the role of status as a factor reinforcing class (Scott, 2002: 30).

In contemporary debates on class, status and lifestyles, the work of Pierre Bourdieu is central. The crux of Bourdieu’s (1984, 1985) model of cultural stratification is that a system of class differences (‘the social space’) corresponds to a system of lifestyle differences (‘the symbolic space’), and that this structurally homologous relationship is tied to both group formation and institutionalised exclusion processes. While Bourdieu’s multifaceted argument has been pivotal in contemporary debates, a vast stream of research has been preoccupied with the rather limited question of whether the social distribution of lifestyles is structured in a similar fashion as that depicted in Distinction, that is, in accordance with the structures of social space (Bourdieu, 1984: 97–168). This narrowing of scope in cultural-stratification research has been particularly evident in the ‘cultural omnivore’ debate, in which researchers have discussed whether the increased propensity for broad, hybrid and eclectic cultural preferences among the middle class has rendered Bourdieu’s model of cultural stratification obsolete (e.g. Chan, 2010; Peterson and Kern, 1996; Warde et al., 2007). Thus, the empirical inquiries have typically been geared towards mapping lifestyle differences, rather than the ways in which these differences are tied to processes of exclusion and the monopolisation of opportunities and advantages.¹ Although the notion of cultural capital – which implicitly presupposes social closure (Murphy, 1988: 18–19) – is repeatedly evoked, the various arguments about the exclusionary impact of differentiated lifestyles are very seldom substantiated with empirical evidence of how certain attributes of lifestyles function as capital. While social closure by definition presupposes differentiation, differentiation does not necessarily entail social closure: even if a researcher can empirically point to a class-structured distribution of lifestyles within a given society, these differences may be rather inconsequential in social life.

In this article I discuss the insufficiently studied link between lifestyle differences and social closure on both theoretical-methodological and empirical grounds. First, I discuss Michèle Lamont’s approach to the study of symbolic boundaries with regard to class, status and lifestyles, pointing both to its advantages and its potential pitfalls. I then use a modified version of this approach to map symbolic boundaries in the upper regions of the local social space in Stavanger, Norway. I analyse qualitative data generated through 46 in-depth interviews with people structurally located in different fractions of the middle class. Finally, I discuss the findings in light of contemporary sociological debates on cultural stratification, particularly addressing theoretical-methodological issues.

The Symbolic Boundary Approach to Class Analysis

A promising, empirical approach to studying the exclusionary consequences of lifestyle differences has been advocated by Michèle Lamont (e.g. Lamont, 1992, 2000; Lamont and Fournier, 1992; Lamont and Molnar, 2002). Drawing on a combination of both Durkheimian and Weberian traditions, this approach was originally developed as an alternative to the body of research associated with Bourdieu and his followers (Lamont, 1992: ch. 7, 2010). In particular, Lamont and her colleagues have problematised the assumption that lifestyle differences directly lead to hierarchisation and group formation. Instead, they have empirically mapped the various repertoires of evaluation people draw on to demarcate themselves symbolically from others. The studies have revolved around the notion of symbolic boundaries, referring to the conceptual distinctions made by social actors to categorise people, practices, tastes, attitudes and manners in everyday life.

While initially advanced some 20 years ago, the symbolic boundary approach (SBA) has recently gained momentum. Researchers have been exploring symbolic boundaries in a number of fields: class and stratification, ethnicity and race, gender and sexuality, religion, health, risk and policy making (see the review in Pachucki et al., 2007). Of particular interest with regard to the focal point of this article is the way in which Lamont (1992) documents the various repertoires of evaluation drawn upon by upper-middle class men in France and in the United States to produce symbolic boundaries. By means of qualitative interviews, she invites her interviewees to reveal the criteria they use for evaluating other people’s lifestyles. The analytical strategy involves mapping the relative salience of several kinds of symbolic boundaries, yet without having any preconceived notions about their relative strength. Lamont extracts three sub-types of symbolic boundaries from the qualitative interview data: moral boundaries; socioeconomic boundaries; and cultural boundaries.²

Another important aspect of SBA is the conceptual distinction made between symbolic and social boundaries. This crucial distinction separates two levels of sociological analysis: symbolic boundaries are ‘conceptual distinctions made by social actors to categorise objects, people, practices, and even time and space’; whereas social boundaries are ‘objectified forms of social differences manifested in unequal access to and unequal distribution of resources (material and nonmaterial) and social opportunities, [and] they are also revealed in stable behavioral patterns of association, as manifested in connubiality and commensality’ (Lamont and Molnar, 2002: 168). A causal link between the two types of boundaries is also established: ‘symbolic boundaries can be thought of as a necessary but insufficient condition for the existence of social boundaries’ (Lamont and Molnar, 2002: 169).

The first and most apparent advantage of using SBA, when researching class and cultural stratification, is that it allows one to assess empirically the link between lifestyle differences and social closure. As noted above, this link has been insufficiently studied, and more knowledge is needed for the development of what has been dubbed ‘cultural class analysis’: a type of class analysis rooted in the ideas of Bourdieu (e.g. Atkinson, 2010; Savage, 2003; Savage et al., 2005b). This need has been particularly evident in the debate following in the wake of a proposed ‘new model of social class’ in the UK (Savage et al., 2013). In this and other publications (Hanquinet et al., 2014; Prieur and Savage, 2013), the authors argue that an ‘emerging’ form of cultural capital has come into play in recent years. As opposed to cultural consumption styles associated with the appreciation of institutionally recognised cultural goods, emerging cultural capital denotes a knowing, reflexive and somewhat playful mode of consumption involving transgressions of previously established hierarchical divides in cultural taste. While this idea is promising, as it challenges many of the problematic ideas tied to the cultural omnivore thesis (see the critique in Jarness, 2015), it remains unclear whether, and in what ways, these emerging styles of consumption function as capital, that is, as practices that imply exclusive privileges and advantages in social life.

The second advantage of SBA is that it brings much-needed attention to the subjective aspect of lifestyle differences. The subjective evaluation of esteem and prestige is a fundamental aspect in Weber’s (1946) seminal account of status situations and status groups. Even Bourdieu (1985: 730) – who has been accused of altogether neglecting the notion of status in his work (Chan and Goldthorpe, 2004)³ – notes that lifestyle differences

only exist for a subject capable not only of perceiving differences but of recognizing them as significant, interesting, i.e., only for a subject endowed with the capacity and inclination to make the distinctions that are regarded as significant in the social universe in question.

However, while the subjective element of status judgements is present in Bourdieu’s general theoretical outline, the ways in which people actually evaluate and classify others in either negative or positive terms do not receive much attention in Bourdieu’s empirical account in Distinction, nor in those of his followers (for notable exceptions, see Friedman and Kuipers, 2013; Skjøtt-Larsen, 2012).

Finally, because SBA allows for the inclusion of moral issues in empirical studies of cultural stratification, it implies a broader conception of lifestyles than is usually the case within the research field. Indeed, by including moral judgements, researchers might rectify the unfortunate tendency of occupying themselves only with mapping the social distribution of a limited set of cultural preferences and activities. As pointed out by Scott (2002: 33), Weber’s initial notion of Lebensstil reflects the totality of a group’s existence: its ‘whole way of life’. By contrast, the term ‘lifestyle’ has been popularised in discussions of contemporary consumerism and is simply seen as ‘a way of using certain goods, places, and times that is characteristic of a group’ (Scott, 2002: 33). A similar critique is forwarded by Sayer (2005), who has shed light on the moral aspects of people’s experience of class inequalities.

There are, however, some serious theoretical-methodological problems with SBA, which are yet to be resolved by its proponents. As discussed elsewhere (Jarness, 2013), SBA is underpinned by at least two fundamentally problematic assumptions. First, it wrongfully presupposes that symbolic boundaries constitute a necessary condition for the existence of social boundaries. SBA thus one-sidedly focuses on the subjective aspect of social stratification, at the expense of important structural and institutional aspects which may have considerable effects on people’s life-chances, independent of their subjective intention, awareness and acknowledgement of processes of exclusion and monopolisation.

A second, partly related problem with SBA is the assumption that the relative salience of different types of symbolic boundaries can be discerned from the ways people talk about themselves and others in an interview situation. In effect, if interviewees exhibit a high occurrence of moral aversions to other people (e.g. aversion to dishonesty) and a corresponding low occurrence of cultural aversions (e.g. to bad taste in music) or socioeconomic aversions (e.g. to low professional ambitions), these findings mean that moral boundaries somehow outweigh the stratifying impact of other types of boundaries. While Lamont should be credited for drawing attention to the importance of moral boundaries, the assumption of such zero-sum relationships between different kinds of symbolic boundaries is questionable, since different evaluative criteria may be tightly entangled and work in reinforcing rather than contradictive ways.

Despite these problems, SBA remains a welcome supplement to other approaches to studying class, status and lifestyles. The first problem (that is, the one-sided focus on the subjective aspect of social stratification) can be resolved by lowering the ambitions of SBA: while symbolic boundary drawing may be regarded as one way through which social boundaries between people are created, maintained and legitimised, it is not the only possible way. Especially when basing the empirical analyses on qualitative interviews, the researcher should bear in mind that SBA first and foremost explores what Giddens (1984) calls discursive consciousness. Since the analysis of symbolic boundaries cannot provide direct access to practical consciousness, much less to the unconscious, it cannot be viewed as an exhaustive account of what people actually do in everyday life (see the critique in Jerolmack and Khan, 2014; cf. Lamont and Swidler, 2014). The second problem can be remedied by not presupposing a contradictory relationship between different types of symbolic boundaries. Whether and how different types of discursive repertoires work in either contradictive or reinforcing ways is an empirical question to be explored, not something that should be built into an analytical strategy a priori.

The mapping of symbolic boundaries can, in other words, be conducted without adopting the entire approach advocated by Lamont and her followers. A modified version of SBA can potentially provide a deeper understanding of whether, and if so in what ways, lifestyle differences are manifested subjectively in the ways in which people evaluate and classify others. In the following analysis I aim to do just that, while simultaneously drawing on insights from the Bourdieusian and Weberian traditions.

Data and Analytical Strategy

The analysis in this article is based on qualitative interviews with 46 individuals from Stavanger – Norway’s fourth largest city in terms of population. Stavanger is an interesting empirical case for several reasons. First of all, as a city it has a remarkable structural and cultural history. As previous studies indicate (e.g. Hjellbrekke, 1999; Rosenlund, 2009), the advent and expanding presence of a booming offshore oil industry from the late 1960s onwards has brought with it tremendous changes in population growth, occupational structure, educational level, income, increasingly hedonistic lifestyles associated with increased wealth and prosperity, as well as a higher demand for cultural forms such as theatre, music and literature. Second, previous studies indicate that due to a particular kind of modesty tied to egalitarian sentiments (Sakslind and Skarpenes, 2014; Skarpenes and Sakslind, 2010), Norwegians are particularly reluctant to denigrate others on the basis of lifestyle differences. Others have argued that such sentiments can somewhat paradoxically conceal, and even help to maintain, the hierarchical structures of Norwegian society (Gullestad, 1992; Jarness, 2013). Keeping in mind that there is a vast and still expanding body of sociological work which argues that the stratifying impact of lifestyle differences is in decline, the mapping of such differences in an apparently egalitarian context is particularly interesting, and can potentially reveal compelling paradoxes in contemporary society.

The analysis expands on previous studies of Stavanger’s class structure. As shown by Rosenlund (2009, 2014), the local class structure can be represented as a multidimensional social space. Informed by Rosenlund’s findings, interviewees were strategically recruited in order to ensure a dispersion of interviewees along both the capital volume dimension and the capital composition dimension of the local social space. For this purpose, I initially used the newly developed Oslo Register Data Class Scheme (ORDC) (Hansen et al., 2009), which distinguishes classes and class fractions according to individuals’ occupations and their capital endowments. I picked a number of occupations typical for each category, and then searched for potential interviewees through online yellow pages.⁴ The sample includes 25 males and 21 females, aged 25–67 (avg. 39.8), all of whom are ethnic Norwegians. I conducted the interviews myself between September 2009 and May 2010. I used a semi-structured list of questions that was constructed so as to invite the interviewees to classify and evaluate their own and other people’s lifestyles, with particular emphasis on both material and non-material consumption styles. The list of questions was inspired by that of Lamont (1992, 2000), but I also added specific questions adjusted to the local context (e.g. specific places, establishments and urban areas in Stavanger).

As demonstrated in Rosenlund’s analyses of survey data, a wide variety of lifestyle properties are unequally distributed according to the structure of the local social space, that is, in line with Bourdieu’s (1984) proposed model. Moreover, as shown elsewhere (Jarness, 2013, 2015), the tastes of the interviewees in the current study follow a similar pattern: their different modes of appreciating material and non-material goods are clearly linked to their capital endowments. Expanding on these findings, I analyse how perceived lifestyle differences are salient when the interviewees draw symbolic boundaries between themselves and types of people with whom they would rather not associate. I focus particularly on interviewees located in the upper regions of the social space (i.e. interviewees endowed with high amounts of cultural and/or economic capital relative to the other interviewees) and their internal classification struggles.⁵ Thus, the analytical strategy involves examining the ways in which the horizontal tensions between class fractions, endowed with a preponderance of either cultural or economic capital, are discursively manifested.

Mutual Antagonism

When the interviewees express antipathy towards other people’s way of life, they repeatedly use the terminology ‘the elite’. The underpinning notions of what types of people constitute the elite, or what kinds of practices or attitudes constitute elitism, do, however, vary considerably among the interviewees in the sample. Interestingly, a systematic line of division seems to follow the capital composition principle of social differentiation. While not a clear-cut division, there is a marked tendency among interviewees with a preponderance of cultural capital (e.g. academics, post-secondary teachers, artists and cultural producers) to express aversion towards ‘the rich’ and ‘the economic elite’, while interviewees with a preponderance of economic capital (e.g. CEOs, managers and economically fortunate lawyers) tend to express aversion towards ‘the snobs’ and ‘the cultural elite’. In the following discussion I shall focus on these lay categories and how people associated with them are perceived, evaluated and classified from an outsider perspective, that is, by interviewees who dis-identify with them.

Aversion towards ‘the Rich’

The most explicitly expressed aversions to other people’s lifestyles and tastes are found among interviewees located in the cultural fraction of the upper regions of the social space. Endowed with a self-conscious perception of themselves as ‘intellectuals’, ‘artists’ and ‘cultural producers’, these interviewees report feeling marginalised in an environment perceived as inhabited and dominated by people conspicuously displaying lifestyles, tastes and values alien to their own. The ultimate target for their aversion is ‘the rich people’, who are associated with expensive lifestyles rendered possible by Norway’s booming oil industry. Interviewees in the cultural fraction typically describe Stavanger as awash in ‘egoistic’ and ‘individualistic’ values – for instance, as reflected through right-wing political attitudes, a striving for material luxury and a conspicuous display of expensive status symbols – and they typically express suspicion towards people embodying such lifestyles:

This town is characterised by this individualised attitude that reveals itself first and foremost through the ballot box. It’s very blue and conservative. […] I guess it’s because of the huge business community here. It’s overflowing with money. The wealth is just enormous. […] People are becoming increasingly vain. There are fewer limits to showing off your wealth than elsewhere. It can be seen in the fleets of cars and all the huge villas. People want it big. (Elias, post-secondary teacher, early 30s, cultural capital+/economic capital–)

The practitioners of expensive lifestyles are viewed as somewhat dubious types of people who make an inappropriate mark on their surroundings. While very few interviewees problematise private economic wealth in itself, there are certainly many opinions about how ‘the rich’ spend their money. ‘Flashy’, ‘tacky’, ‘vulgar’, ‘indiscreet’ and ‘loud’ are the terms commonly used to classify the lifestyles of the rich:

[I]t’s all about the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie, or, rather, the lack of it. You know, a type of rowdy and conspicuous display of wealth that you see a lot of in this town. […] That’s just tacky. […] People with styled, greasy hair, gold VISA cards and loud personalities, ploughing their way through crowds. It’s not a pretty sight. (Thomas, journalist, early 40s, cc+/ec–)

Wittily referring to the Luis Buñuel 1972 film Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie, Thomas conceives of the loudness of the bourgeoisie – the exact opposite of a discreet charm – as representing a lack of character. The rich are thought to live superficial, inauthentic and empty lives. Such perceived inauthenticity is especially linked to the consumption of material goods considered to be unnecessary, and expressions of superficiality:

There are lots of people here in Stavanger with lots of money, and they build houses, and these houses are so trendy, you cannot believe it. […] The latest fad is to build architect designed houses. […] You know, it’s supposed to be ‘fun’ to live in a house. And it’s all so incredibly shallow, a very superficial idea of what a home is supposed to be. […] You know, lots of glass so that people can see what’s going on from the outside. […] It’s like ‘Look at us! This is where we live!’ (Sofia, academic, mid-60s, cc+/ec–)

Despite her own enthusiasm for minimalism and functionalism in architecture and interior design, Sofia utters contempt for rich people’s appropriation of such styles. Apparently, the rich are viewed as appreciating their wealth in the wrong manner. This suggests that Sofia is aware of different modes of appreciating goods (Jarness, 2015), and that ‘wrong’ ways of appreciating the ‘right’ goods cause her to feel resentment and contempt. Similar boundaries are being drawn regarding the way in which the rich appreciate cultural goods such as music, literature and visual arts. The recurring theme is that the rich do not really like this sort of culture; they attend concerts, exhibitions and the like ‘just to be seen with the right crowd’.

What may be inferred from the excerpts above is that discreetness and subtleness – the very opposite of loudness and flashiness – are considered virtues. Lifestyles perceived as conspicuous displays of wealth are thus deemed ‘not a pretty sight’; they connote aesthetic flaws, inauthenticity and pretentiousness on behalf of the economically fortunate. In addition to aesthetic criteria of evaluation, the condescending evaluation of conspicuous consumers’ lifestyles is also tightly connected to moral criteria. The loudness and flashiness of wealthy consumers are often linked to character flaws such as vanity, exhibiting a shallow inner life or, more generally, a lack of values:

You’ve got to have certain values in your life. And I believe culture and art can help provide people with values in life. It gives you perspectives, points of view, something to think about, something to challenge you. […] If you haven’t got a single picture on your wall, if you don’t own a single book, if you’ve hardly got a record collection … But you’ve got the most expensive furniture, the newest car and you treat yourself to the most expensive holidays … Then maybe you’re so preoccupied with making money that it sort of becomes your only value in life. […] I find that really disturbing. (Theodor, head of cultural enterprise, mid-40s, cc+/ec–)

There is a striking entanglement of moral and aesthetic evaluative criteria in this quote. Being interested in literature, music and the fine arts, Theodor is quick to evaluate people based on their cultural tastes. Moreover, he perceives people who do not share his enthusiasm for certain cultural forms as lacking important values in life, and as bearers of lifestyles representing immorality. Indeed, a perceived link between vanity and dubious morality is a recurring theme whenever the interviewees located in the cultural fraction classify the lifestyles of the rich. As soon as attempts to ‘stand out’ are perceived as exaggerated and/or too expensive, they are clearly frowned upon and associated with a certain dubious morality. The interviewees with high cultural capital but low economic capital thus cultivate a clear depiction of ‘the rich’ as people endowed with both aesthetic and moral character flaws.

Aversion towards the ‘Cultural Elite’

Interestingly, middle-class interviewees endowed with a preponderance of economic capital demonstrate similar contempt for the pretentious lifestyles of those whom they perceive as ‘the cultural elite’. In recent years, this terminology has been widely used in Norwegian popular language and public debates. Based on a study of how it has been used in Norwegian newspapers in the last three decades, Haarr and Krogstad (2011) argue that the meaning of ‘the cultural elite’ has changed over time, being increasingly deployed to denote something negative, unpleasant and undesirable. This is echoed in the derogatory ways it is used by the economically fortunate interviewees, who explicitly dis-identify with people perceived as embodying ‘elitist’ cultural styles:

The cultural elite are characterised by formal cultural education. And they take pride and ascribe status to it. And they’ve got a relatively high amount of influence on politics and those who are in charge of granting funds to cultural projects, projects which appeal more to their narrow taste, and not to the taste of the majority. […] They also represent power, in a sense. They like to convey this image of underground culture, and of being oppressed. […] I guess they’re attracted to this ’68 Che Guevara kind of romanticism. The political engagement is long gone, but the whole image is still there. […] But the thing is, they represent mainstream culture and the established cultural life in ways they don’t dare to admit. (Lucas, lawyer, early 30s, cc–/ec+)

Here Lucas seems to associate the lifestyles of the cultural elite with a somewhat obsolete left-wing counter-culture, while he assumes that the cultural elite themselves represent power and ‘the established cultural life’. What seems to elicit his greatest resentment is the fact that both the cultural producers and the consumers of certain forms of culture receive state funding. For those unfamiliar with and/or uninterested in such culture, it is simply incomprehensible why the state hands out money to artists and their ‘faithful acolytes’. Interestingly, the boundary drawing directed against what is perceived as the snobbish lifestyles of the cultural elite is entangled with morality in ways that are similar to the boundary drawing directed against the rich:

I totally resent [cultural snobs], especially if they’ve got this attitude that their taste is superior to that of others. […] I guess it has something to do with a need to show off based on buying art objects, and the ways people relate to art. […] For me, it’s more important to be honest about your taste than trying to fit into this or that social circle, you know, because it’s only acceptable to put these particular paintings on your wall, or to attend these particular classical music concerts, just because they’re supposed to be more refined or something. I think that’s stupid. (Johan, CEO, mid-50s, cc–/ec+)

When those richly endowed with economic capital talk about ‘cultural snobbery’, it is sometimes unclear whether they are referring to specific ‘elevated’ cultural preferences and tastes, or to a perceived ‘better-than-you’ attitude among the cultural elite. Nevertheless, they often infer that the cultural elite have a better-than-you attitude, and that their strange or weird preferences are pretentious expressions of a dubious striving to be special:

I attended this play once. I can’t even remember the name of it. It was really hopeless. […] It was so peculiar and strange that there were, of course, some people who had to find it interesting. But common, simple men like me found it totally meaningless. […] I’m not really sure whether they liked it because they were obliged to like it. You know, because they’re supposed to be refined, and if not, they’d lose their differentness. […] I guess I’m more of this average, simple guy who doesn’t need such high-society entertainment. (Wilhelm, manager, oil company, early 40s, cc–/ec+)

Implicitly, the ordinariness of ‘the average guy’ is held to be more honourable than the pretentious efforts of the cultural consumer who seeks out ‘high-society entertainment’ for the sake of standing out from the crowd. Just as the interviewees in the cultural fraction perceive the rich to be flashy and pretentious, the interviewees in the economic fraction perceive the cultural elite to be endowed with equally dubious motives: their cultural consumption is associated with ‘trying too hard’ or spending too much time on ‘being cultivated’.

A Sense of One’s Place

The mutual antagonism mapped here indicates that the interviewees are very much aware of the differences between the tastes and lifestyles of their own kind of people and the lifestyles of others. They seem to be endowed with a social ‘sense of one’s place’, as well as a ‘sense of other people’s place’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 471, 1985: 728; Goffman, 1951). The antipathies and sympathies towards practitioners of certain lifestyles and tastes are also expressed in a highly specific spatial sense. When asked where they feel comfortable, and which places they would rather avoid, the interviewees express explicit aversions to settling down and moving around in certain neighbourhoods and urban areas in Stavanger. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the interviewees located in the cultural fraction express a clear aversion to places associated with the ‘flashy’ lifestyles of the materially privileged:

I never go to these places where people go out to dance. […] Hall Toll, Javel. Night clubs like that. […] If I was going to be a bit prejudiced, I’d say the people going there are interested in stuff that I care nothing about. […] Real estate agents. People like that. […] They don’t share my cultural preferences. They’ve got different views of things. […] They’re interested in posh addresses, clothes, cars… [Laughs] I could just go on with these prejudices. (Elias, post-secondary teacher, early 30s, cc+/ec–)

Certain places seem associated with a type of person with whom the cultural fraction does not feel at ease. The interviewees in the economic fraction express a similar aversion to areas perceived as inhabited and frequented by the cultural elite, such as Rogaland Teater, the local venue for dramatic art:

The whole concept of plays bores me. […] I guess it has something to do with the clientele there too. There are all these women and their husbands that sort of tag along after them. And they’ve got their glasses of wine and a self-image of being really refined. […] You know, in their Uno of Denmark dresses, this big earring in one ear, asymmetrical haircuts and designer glasses. […] Bah! They’re repulsive! (Lucas, lawyer, early 30s, cc–/ec+)

These associations seem to be decisive in terms of how they navigate neighbourhoods and Stavanger’s urban areas. Explicit boundary drawing is clearly evident when the interviewees talk about specific cafés, restaurants, bars, museums and other public places in or near the city centre. The places where the interviewees in the cultural fraction report feeling ‘comfortable’, ‘at ease’ or ‘at home’ are the exact same places where interviewees in the economic fraction report feeling ‘uncomfortable’, ‘alien’ and ‘out of place’ – and vice versa.

Thus, the mutual antagonism between the cultural and the economic fraction manifests itself in both a social and a spatial sense of one’s place, as people navigate the local milieu by seeking interaction with their peers while avoiding interaction with ‘the others’. As noted by Bourdieu (1996: 12), social space tends to translate itself into physical space. This finding supports Rosenlund’s (2009) study of class and residential segregation in Stavanger. It also resonates well with several British studies that have demonstrated how differences in class habitus play out spatially, both between and within social classes (Butler and Robson, 2003; Jackson and Benson, 2014; Savage et al., 2005a).

These patterns, however, should not be overemphasised, as there are several mixed-class neighbourhoods in Stavanger. Moreover, the interviewees report that they occasionally seek out places that are not frequented only by their own kind. The divisions in physical space are far from absolute. But then again, even though people from the different classes and class fractions may occasionally rub shoulders, the empirical findings suggest that an awareness of difference remains intact and that encounters between people may even reinforce their feelings of contempt.

Egalitarianism and Social Closure

As summarised in Table 1, the ways in which the interviewees classify other people reflect an explicit antagonism between middle-class fractions. When the interviewees draw boundaries, they repeatedly express moral aversion to practices and attitudes perceived as ‘conspicuous’, ‘self-assertive’ and ‘snobbish’. There seems to be widespread tacit agreement that other people’s self-assertion is somewhat suspicious and morally unjustifiable. One interpretation of this anti-elitist discourse is that the derogatory classifications are endeavours fuelled by egalitarian sentiments to eradicate or compress existing status hierarchies – a de-monopolisation of social esteem, as it were. As Lamont’s (1992) analytical strategies imply, the salience of moral evaluations over other types of evaluation means that moral evaluations trump other types of evaluation, so the other types (e.g. aesthetic evaluation) have less impact on social life. This point has been expanded on by a group of Norwegian researchers who have asserted that the prevalence of egalitarian sentiments among the educated Norwegian middle class renders the stratifying effects of cultural and socioeconomic boundaries less consequential compared to countries like France and the UK (Sakslind and Skarpenes, 2014; Skarpenes and Sakslind, 2010).

Table 1.

Mutual symbolic antagonism between middle-class fractions in Stavanger, Norway.

	‘The cultural elite’(as classified by the economic fraction)	‘The rich’(as classified by the cultural fraction)
Referred to as	The cultural elite, the cultivated people, the cultural snobs, the intellectual snobs, the artsy types	The rich people, the filthy rich, the economic elite, the bourgeoisie, the people with money, high society, the oil people
Lifestyles of distaste	Preferences for cultural goods perceived as weird, cultivating esoteric knowledge	Spending too much money on material goods, appreciating cultural goods in a manner perceived as inauthentic
Ascribed characteristics	Conspicuous, trying too hard to stand out from the crowd, pretentious, elitist, self-assertive	Vain, conspicuous, tacky, shallow, leading empty lives, self-centred, vulgar, loud, indiscreet, a lack of taste, self-assertive
Associated living areas of distaste	Storhaug, downtown area	Eiganes, Gamle Stavanger, Madla, Stokka, Våland
Associated establishments of distaste	Cementen, Tau Scene, Checkpoint Charlie, Folken, Rogaland Teater	Hall Toll, Broremann Bar, Javel, Taket, Tango, Stavanger Konserthus

Even though Norway’s middle class distance themselves from elitism and snobbishness, this does not, however, mean that their doing so eradicates or compresses other types of boundaries. Although it is fruitful for analytical purposes to distinguish between different types of boundary drawing, it would result in a flawed analysis if these are taken a priori to be competing or mutually exclusive, rather than complementary components of people’s repertoires of evaluation. As we have seen, consumption preferences and cultural tastes are perceived as linked to moral qualities, or the lack thereof. Contrary to the advances put forward by proponents of SBA, an alternative interpretation would be that moral boundaries are entangled with, and in certain respects reinforce, cultural and socioeconomic boundaries.

The interviewees themselves, however, do not seem to perceive their antipathies and disapproval as strategies for setting up boundaries or as efforts to bite into the benefits accruing to others. On the contrary, the ways in which the interviewees classify ‘the others’ indicate that they instead attempt to avoid and distance themselves from what they perceive as a morally dubious arms-race for status and prestige. In their view, they are just minding their own business: ‘unpretentious’, ‘down-to-earth’, ‘just like the next guy’. This self-perception is fairly widespread in the two middle-class fractions. This finding resembles Savage et al.’s (2005a; see also Devine, 1992) description of Britons emphasising their ordinariness in constructing social identities: ‘we’ are the ordinary people, whereas ‘they’ are pretentious social climbers shamelessly trying to stand out from the crowd. But the fact remains that whatever is conceived to be ‘normal’, ‘natural’ and ‘ordinary’ is not at all widespread. On the contrary, interviewees located in the two fractions seem to have quite different conceptions of ordinariness. So while interviewees in both the cultural and the economic fraction draw on similar discursive repertoires when demarcating themselves from self-assertive others, the lifestyles from which they demarcate themselves are clearly different.

According to Bourdieu’s (1984: 56) argument about the functioning of the habitus, ‘each taste feels itself to be natural – and so it almost is, being a habitus – which amounts to rejecting others as unnatural and therefore vicious’. In this way, the interviewees seem to take the naturalness of their own lifestyles for granted. This naturalness is then used as a yardstick against which ‘the others’ are judged. Thus, group formation and reproduction (i.e. creation and maintenance of social boundaries) can, somewhat paradoxically, take place without the social actors’ acknowledging that they too are taking part in a struggle for social esteem, honour and prestige. Indeed, the findings suggest that apparently egalitarian moral sentiments can themselves be hierarchising and sources of exclusion, in that people disparage and avoid others perceived as ‘social climbers’, ‘conspicuous’, ‘inauthentic’ and the like. While egalitarian moral sentiments may certainly function bottom–up as a counterforce members of the non-privileged classes direct against the privileged classes, this analysis suggests that egalitarianism also functions as a misrecognised counterforce members of the culturally privileged middle class direct against members of the economically privileged middle class – and vice versa.

Insofar as social actors choose friends, spouses and partners with similar lifestyles, while avoiding those who practise lifestyles alien to their own – as the classificatory practices of the interviewees indicate – more or less exclusive social groups will be formed on the basis of such choices. Indeed, empirical studies of marital endogamy (Hansen, 1995) and residential segregation (Ljunggren and Andersen, 2014; Rosenlund, 2009) in Stavanger and other Norwegian cities suggest that the capital composition principle of social differentiation is systematically implied in such processes. This type of non-formalised social closure express itself indirectly in and through elective affinities and differential association; that is, more or less restricted demographic relations of mobility and interaction (Bottero, 2005).

Concluding Remarks

In this article, I have shown that a modified version of SBA can be used to account for intra-class tensions and classification struggles between class fractions. While SBA in itself is insufficient to interrogate empirically the creation, maintenance and legitimation of social boundaries, it can be viewed as a promising and powerful supplement to other approaches, such as those of Weberian and Bourdieusian origin. Reworking SBA into a complementary, and not as an alternative, framework of sociological analysis can rectify some of the shortcomings in the expanding corpus of sociological work on class, status and lifestyles. Focusing on the case of Stavanger, Norway, this analysis has shown that there is a mutual symbolic antagonism between different fractions of the middle class. The findings indicate a connection between symbolic boundaries and structural oppositions in the social space. The particular antagonism mapped out here brings attention to what Bourdieu (1984) has termed the capital composition principle of social differentiation. Somewhat surprisingly, such systematic intra-class divisions have, though fundamental to Bourdieu’s model, seldom been discussed in detail in contemporary cultural stratification research. Typically, this model has been misleadingly recast by portraying people located in the upper regions of the social space as a monolithic entity (‘the middle class’, ‘high status people’, etc.). This study has, by contrast, shown that there are indeed systematic symbolic tensions within this region of the social space. This resonates well with Bourdieu’s (1984: 479) notion that ‘social identity lies in difference, and difference is asserted against what is closest, which represents the greatest threat’. The capital composition principle has also been demonstrated in several other Scandinavian studies (e.g. Flemmen, 2013b; Harrits et al., 2010; Prieur et al., 2008; Rosenlund, 2014), but it is seldom reported in studies from other countries, not even in the most comprehensive follow-up studies in the wake of Distinction (e.g. Bennett et al., 2009; Le Roux et al., 2008). Only by conducting thorough comparative research can we determine whether this is rooted in actual national differences, or whether it has something to do with the theoretical-methodological make-up of the studies.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Prof. Johs. Hjellbrekke, Dr Magne Flemmen, Dr Marte Mangset and two anonymous Sociology reviewers for their insightful comments on the first draft of this article.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

Vegard Jarness is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Sociology University of Bergen, Norway.

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