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Social Distinction
FURTHER READINGS
ENTRY CITATION
What and how people consume are critical components of how individuals define themselves in relation to others.
Yet, consumption practices are also meaningful social signals that individuals use to categorize and evaluate
others. As such, consumption is not only a basis but also a marker of social identity that can serve as a powerful
source of social differentiation and stratification in interaction. Research on social distinction focuses on analyzing
two primary issues: (1) how individuals define and interpret the social, cultural, and/or material value of
individuals, objects, and organizations; and (2) how such classification schemes—including those based on
consumption—contribute to broader systems of social inequality. This entry reviews key authors and works
relevant to the study of social distinction, highlights key debates pertinent to the topic, and describes current
trends in research.
Key Authors
Max Weber
The writings of classical social theorist Max Weber are integral to contemporary understandings of distinction. In
his seminal essay “Class, Status, and Party,” Weber argues that social status—defined as social estimations of
worth, honor, and/or esteem—is a key basis of societal power and social stratification. According to Weber, status
groups are social communities that share a quality or characteristic that affords them a certain level of admiration
from others; they tend to be bounded units that exhibit similar lifestyle and consumption practices as well as a
sense of shared identity. Unlike economic classes, whose power stems from ownership of property and/or control
of production relations, status groups derive their influence through social and symbolic exclusion. In particular,
status groups monopolize access to valued resources, a process referred to as social closure. To facilitate such
exclusion, status groups tend to adopt one or more “badges” of belonging, most commonly physical markers such
as dress, accent, or skin color, so that group membership is clearly demarcated and easily perceptible to all.
Thorstein Veblen and Norbert Elias
Building on Weber's insights, Thorstein Veblen and Norbert Elias provide in-depth analyses of the badges that
status groups use to demarcate membership. In Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen argues that members of
affluent classes engage in “conspicuous consumption” of costly or scarce goods and services to publicly
communicate their elevated status to others. Focusing more on behavior, Elias documents the elaborate etiquette
and interaction rituals common among premodern cultivated classes in The Civilizing Process.
Pierre Bourdieu
Yet it is the work of Pierre Bourdieu that has been the most influential in shaping contemporary understandings of
distinction. Similar to Weber, Veblen, and Elias, Bourdieu contends that status signals play a profound role in social
stratification. However, Bourdieu's work advances prior scholarship by articulating how processes of distinction
serve to reproduce economic inequalities, particularly with respect to social class.
Forms of Capital
Bourdieu argues that in addition to economic capital, there are two nonmonetary resources that play a crucial role
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in the maintenance of class inequality. The first of these resources is what Bourdieu refers to as social capital, or
the size, strength, and status of one's social connections. The second is cultural capital, or high-status cultural
signals. According to Bourdieu, cultural capital occurs in three forms: the objectified state (e.g., material goods and
possessions), the embodied state (e.g., individual skills and knowledge), and the institutionalized state (e.g.,
credentials). Reminiscent of Weber's notion of social closure, Bourdieu contends that elite groups use both social
and cultural capital as “markers” of class membership and bases for exclusion from valued objects and
opportunities. More than just status signals, however, Bourdieu asserts that these resources are forms of capital in
their own right; they are valuable not only because of their association with high-status members of society but
also because possessors can theoretically use them to procure greater material rewards. Consequently, although
seemingly nonmonetary in nature, social and cultural capital represent subtler forms of economic capital. When
used as criteria of selection or exclusion, they serve to veil the true economic basis of social differentiation and
make class inequality seem more legitimate.
Class Cultures
Individuals' stocks of social and cultural capital are heavily influenced by their position in a society's economic class
structure. In Bourdieu's model of cultural reproduction, families and schools reproduce existing class relations by
imbuing younger generations with stocks of culture (e.g., attitudes, tastes, knowledge, self-presentation styles,
and consumption patterns) consistent with their social stratum of origin. The culture of different classes can be
categorized according to their distance from necessity. Concerned primarily with everyday survival needs,
members of the lower classes tend to prefer objects, opportunities, and experiences that have practical and
immediate value. Freed from the material constraints of mere subsistence, members of the upper classes, by
contrast, gravitate toward goods and practices that are more ephemeral, abstract, and complex in nature.
Moreover, they place a premium on those that require significant investments of temporal, intellectual, and/or
economic resources. In Distinction, Bourdieu documents such differences in consumption patterns in diverse
cultural arenas ranging from theater to food.
Cultural Reproduction
Shared norms, values, modes of interpretation, and experience—which Bourdieu collectively refers to as the
habitus—within each social stratum facilitate feelings of class identity and solidarity. However, they also foster
common goals and aspirations among members, which serve to channel individuals into class-specific educational
and occupational trajectories. Compounding such self-selection, key gatekeeping institutions such as the
educational system reward only those cultural tastes and styles characteristic of the dominant classes, further
barring the less advantaged from attaining positions of power, influence, and affluence within society.
Debates
Bourdieu's writings on culture and stratification, in particular those on cultural capital, have sparked a tremendous
volume of research across the social sciences. His work has been particularly influential in sociology, education,
and cultural studies. Although seminal in many respects, his work has also been met with strong criticism. In
addition to challenges regarding the empirical rigor of Distinction, researchers have argued that his model of
cultural reproduction suffers from four key conceptual weaknesses.
First, critics have argued that Bourdieu overemphasizes the importance of early childhood experience in predicting
future educational and occupational attainment. A number of sociologists and educational researchers have
suggested that stocks of cultural capital acquired later in life can have similar if not more profound effects on
educational attainment than those acquired in early childhood.
Second, researchers have argued that Bourdieu overstates the importance of cultural distinctions in the
maintenance of modern-day class systems. For example, Michèle Lamont argues that cultural boundaries are a less
salient source of class distinction than locally meaningful demarcations such as race and nationality. Although she
finds the use of cultural boundaries to be particularly weak among the American upper-middle class, which instead
privileges moral qualities, Lamont even finds that cultural boundaries are less salient markers of social class than
originally hypothesized in Bourdieu's native France. In addition to an overemphasis on cultural boundaries in
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general, other critics have argued that Bourdieu overstates the importance of highbrow culture in particular. In her
study of the Toronto securities industry, for example, Bonnie Erickson finds that it is the ability to draw from both
“high” and “low” cultural forms that is key for advancement within the North American corporate world. This finding
is consistent with research in the “production of culture” tradition, demonstrating that in an increasingly global
world, more privileged members of society are characterized by their cultural omnivorousness, or familiarity with
and/or consumption of both highbrow and lowbrow artistic forms. Together, such studies imply that cultural
breadth may be a more potent marker of social distinction in the modern era than cultural exclusivity.
Third, critics have argued that Bourdieu fails to account for variation in how people engage in processes of social
differentiation. Scholars have demonstrated that the relative strength and salience of particular types of social
distinctions vary both by sociocultural context and key demographic variables, such as gender and race.
Finally, the utility of the term cultural capital has come under fire not only for doing too much work but also for
failing to predict future educational and occupational attainment—central tenets of Bourdieu's reproduction model.
Finally, whether class distinctions—let alone social classes themselves— remain a salient feature of contemporary
Western societies has been the subject of debate.
Partially due to such shortcomings, the study of distinction post-Bourdieu has centered on the concept of “symbolic
boundaries.” Drawing from Émile Durkheim's fundamental dichotomy between the sacred and the profane, work in
this vein analyzes how individuals conceptualize who is above and below them in social structure or standing.
Although the majority of work on symbolic boundaries has been cognitively oriented, focusing on unpacking the
content of cultural scripts individuals use when thinking about the overall worth of specific groups, research on the
topic is shifting to analyze how individuals draw such social distinctions in real-life interaction and evaluation
settings.
Current Trends in Research
Despite criticisms of Bourdieu, cultural sociology is witnessing a revitalized interest in the relationship between
culture and classification. Part of the weak explanatory power of cultural capital may be due to how the term has
been operationalized in the social sciences—most commonly one's degree of participation in “highbrow” artistic
forms. Since the time of Bourdieu's writings, increased globalization, technological innovation, and credit expansion
have helped democratize access to formerly elite cultural goods ranging from classical music to sushi. It may be
that the basis of distinction in the modern era has shifted from cultural elitism to cosmopolitanism, suggests
Richard Peterson. As such, the status signals that presently distinguish “the classes” from “the masses” may no
longer be those that are abstract and elusive but rather those that have some level of popular resonance but that
require long periods of what Annette Lareau terms concerted cultivation. For example, participation in resourceintensive extracurricular activities, such as varsity athletics, is used as a criterion of selection not only by elite
university admissions committees, as demonstrated by Mitchell Stevens, but also by the nation's highest paying
employers on graduation, as shown by Lauren Rivera.
Recent research on distinction has begun not only to revisit issues of culture and classification but also to
investigate the role of actors other than the family and primary education in the production of social distinctions,
including institutions of higher learning, third parties such as rankings organizations, corporations, and national
governments.
Finally, contemporary scholars are developing more complex and nuanced understandings of the role of
consumption in social differentiation. First, they are expanding the focus of inquiry from traditional artistic products
(e.g., musical genres) to include cultural objects ranging from luxury hotels to sport-utility vehicles. Second, they
are investigating how consumption contributes to types of social distinction other than that based purely on social
class. A new generation of researchers interested in the intersection of networks and culture is analyzing the
relationship between cultural consumption and social capital, addressing both how people's social ties affect their
cultural tastes and consumption practices and how the latter can also influence the size, density, and status of the
relationships they develop over time. Such studies hold the promise not only of refining understandings of classic
concepts such as conspicuous consumption and social closure but also of opening up novel areas of inquiry across
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disciplinary and methodological traditions.
—Lauren A. Rivera
Further Readings
Bourdieu, Pierre Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1984.
Elias, Norbert The Civilizing Process : Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations . Translated by Edmund
Jephcott. New York: Urizen Books, 1978.
Erickson, Bonnie “Culture, Class, and Connections.” American Journal of Sociology vol. 102 (1996): p. 217–251.
Kingston, Paul The Classless Society . Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.
Lamont, Michèle Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and American Upper-Middle Class .
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Lamont, Michèle, and and Annette Lareau “Cultural Capital: Allusions, Gaps, and Glissandos in Recent Theoretical
Developments.” Sociological Theory vol. 6 (1988): p. 153–168.
Lamont, Michèle, and and Virag Molnar “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences.” Annual Review of
Sociology vol. 28 (2002): p. 167–195.
Lizardo, Omar “How Cultural Tastes Shape Personal Networks.” American Sociological Review vol. 71 (2006): p.
778–807.
Peterson, Richard “The Rise and Fall of Highbrow Snobbery as a Status Marker.” Poetics vol. 25 (1997): p. 75–92.
Rivera, Lauren A. “Status Distinctions in Interaction: Social Selection and Exclusion at an Elite Nightclub.”
Qualitative Sociology vol. 33 (2010): p. 229–255.
Schulz, Jeremy “The Social and Cultural Work of the H2 Hummer.” Journal of Consumer Culture vol. 6 (2006): p.
57–86.
Sherman, Rachel Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels . Berkeley: University of California Press,
2007.
Stevens, Mitchell Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites . Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2007.
Veblen, Thorstein The Theory of the Leisure Class . New York: Modern Library, 1899.
Weber, Max “Class, Status and Party.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology , edited by H. Gerth, ed. and C.
Wright, ed. . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958.
Entry Citation:
Rivera, Lauren A. "Social Distinction." Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture. 2011. SAGE Publications. 15 Oct. 2011. <http://www.sageereference.com/view/consumerculture/n494.xml>.
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