Intersections of class, lifestyle and politics. New observations from Norway

Abstract

Although social class was once central to political sociology, it has become increasingly less so; many analysts now believe that one’s class position is less important in determining political attitudes and political party preferences. Simultaneously, more attention has been paid to what might be called the culturalization of politics, as epitomized by the US culture wars and stereotypes like the “latte-drinking liberal.” Here, political attitudes are regarded as primarily structured by people’s lifestyles and broader way of life. But do political preferences have to be explained by either relations of sociomaterial conditions (e.g. class) or cultural orientations (e.g. status and lifestyles)? In this article, we argue in favor of an approach that aims to reconcile these factors, allowing for the empirical mapping of whether and how they intersect in shaping political party preferences. We investigate this by using detailed Norwegian survey data to measure the extent to which intraclass heterogeneity in political party choices can be accounted for by the interaction between class and lifestyle. We employ a novel combination of Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) and Chi-Squared Automatic Interaction Detection (CHAID). In drawing on constructed models of the social space and the space of lifestyles, we show that there are important correspondences between these spaces and that their interaction may help account for party choices. The results highlight the need for a more complex account than that suggested in recent works of cultural stratification research.

Et si on changeait la musique? Déterminants sociaux des préférences pour le hip‐hop, le rap et les musiques urbaines en Grande Bretagne

“…Enfin, réintroduire la distinction entre classe, parti et statut dans le cadre d'une théorie des légitimités culturelles protéiformes semble d'autant plus nécessaire que les études de Flemmen, Jarness et Roselund (2022) ont démontré dans le cas norvégien, que l'hétérogénéité des choix partisans au sein d'une même classe peut s'expliquer par l'interaction entre classe et style de vie. En poursuivant leur raisonnement, on peut donc se demander dans quelle mesure les choix partisans influeraient autant qu'ils seraient influencés par des pratiques culturelles intimement liées, selon les contextes nationaux et l'histoire propre à la circulation de ses pratiques, à des conditions de vies et de chances de vies relatives à la classe et/ou au statut ethno racial.…”

Support for eco-social policy from a class perspective: Responsibilities, redistribution, regulation and rights

“…Bourdieu's class concept is relational because what counts are not the individuals' absolute positions in social space, but the relations between them. His spatial concept of the social can be used to construct a fine-grained distinction between the upper or dominant classes at the top of social space, the middle classes, and the lower or dominated classes at the bottom, with cultural class fractions on the left and economic fractions on the right side for each of these three classes (see Figure 1 and also Flemmen and Haakestad, 2018;Flemmen et al, 2022). 3 The vertical axis, reflecting the amount of capital, is a power dimension of societal stratification which represents the privileges held by people, their involvement in societal infrastructure and institutions and their potential to enforce their political will over others.…”

“…Bourdieu's class concept is relational because what counts are not the individuals’ absolute positions in social space, but the relations between them. His spatial concept of the social can be used to construct a fine-grained distinction between the upper or dominant classes at the top of social space, the middle classes, and the lower or dominated classes at the bottom, with cultural class fractions on the left and economic fractions on the right side for each of these three classes (see Figure 1 and also Flemmen and Haakestad, 2018; Flemmen et al, 2022). 3…”