Class is a term that has been subject of analysis for sociologists and anthropologists over years, the aim of this essay is to explore Pierre Bourdieu’s approach to class analysis. A class can be defined as “the fundamental principles of social and cultural difference within a society, the different conditions of life tied up with those differences and the power, struggle and domination invested in them”(Atkinson, 2015: 49).
Pierre Bourdieu was mainly concerned with rethinking the concept of class as it had been traditionally defined within Karl Marx’s theory which affirms that the means of production or the tools and raw material used to create a product is the sole factor that determines a social class and economic capital is the only one …show more content…
Bourdieu asserted that cultural capital helped to reproduce the class structure in society as well as to legitimize that class structure. The culture of the dominant(middle) class is valued and seen as worthwhile, whereas “the dominated are perceived as common and ‘vulgar’”(Atkinson, 2015: 54). The more cultural capital an individual from upper class has the more distance they are going to seek between themselves and “popular” culture. The dominant class owns the authority, obtained through the media, schools and politics and it is used to set their way of life as the legitimate one. Elements such as education, high culture, financial success, posh lifestyles are marked as “good” only because compared to their opposite, the common and broad culture, they have a prestigious value and meaning. They are able to define their own culture as worthy of being sought and possessed and to establish it as the basis for knowledge, especially in the education system. The dominated class considers the dominant’s lifestyle better than theirs: they may preserve and justify their own way of life, as well as comprehending that they have to follow the legitimate lifestyle in order to “get ahead” in every field. However, there is no way of showing that the dominant class is any better or worse than other subcultures in society.
Bourdieu considers the central role of schooling in changing and reproducing inequalities as “the education system confers legitimacy, prestige and value (symbolic capital) upon the culture of the middle class, constituting it as cultural capital” (Crossley, 2008:
Pierre Bourdieu was mainly concerned with rethinking the concept of class as it had been traditionally defined within Karl Marx’s theory which affirms that the means of production or the tools and raw material used to create a product is the sole factor that determines a social class and economic capital is the only one …show more content…
Bourdieu asserted that cultural capital helped to reproduce the class structure in society as well as to legitimize that class structure. The culture of the dominant(middle) class is valued and seen as worthwhile, whereas “the dominated are perceived as common and ‘vulgar’”(Atkinson, 2015: 54). The more cultural capital an individual from upper class has the more distance they are going to seek between themselves and “popular” culture. The dominant class owns the authority, obtained through the media, schools and politics and it is used to set their way of life as the legitimate one. Elements such as education, high culture, financial success, posh lifestyles are marked as “good” only because compared to their opposite, the common and broad culture, they have a prestigious value and meaning. They are able to define their own culture as worthy of being sought and possessed and to establish it as the basis for knowledge, especially in the education system. The dominated class considers the dominant’s lifestyle better than theirs: they may preserve and justify their own way of life, as well as comprehending that they have to follow the legitimate lifestyle in order to “get ahead” in every field. However, there is no way of showing that the dominant class is any better or worse than other subcultures in society.
Bourdieu considers the central role of schooling in changing and reproducing inequalities as “the education system confers legitimacy, prestige and value (symbolic capital) upon the culture of the middle class, constituting it as cultural capital” (Crossley, 2008: