Culture as Class Symbolization or Mass Reification? A Critique of Bourdieu's Distinction

@article{Gartman1991CultureAC,
  title={Culture as Class Symbolization or Mass Reification? A Critique of Bourdieu's Distinction},
  author={David Gartman},
  journal={American Journal of Sociology},
  year={1991},
  volume={97},
  pages={421 - 447}
}
  • D. Gartman
  • Published 1 September 1991
  • Art
  • American Journal of Sociology
Pierre Bourdieu's theory of culture as a system of symbols furthering a misrecognition of class is critically compared to the Frankfurt school's theory of culture as reifying cimmodities furthering an unrecognition of class. Because of their approaches to history, both theories recognize only part of the complex reality of modern capitalist culture. Bourdieu's ahistorical structuralism fails to grasp the historical changes produced in culture by capitalism, while critical theory's essentialism… 
View on U Chicago Press
voidnetwork.gr
146 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
5
Background Citations
57
Methods Citations
3
Results Citations
1

146 Citations

Bourdieu's Theory of Cultural Change: Explication, Application, Critique

Pierre Bourdieu's theory of cultural change is more powerful and comprehensive than other recent theories, which neglect one or another of the important dimensions of cultural markets. Bourdieu's…

Bourdieu and Adorno: Converging theories of culture and inequality

The theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Theodor Adorno both conceive culture as legitimating the inequalities of modern societies. But they postulate different mechanisms of legitimation. For Bourdieu,…

Bourdieu and Adorno: Converging theories of culture and inequality

The theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Theodor Adorno both conceive culture as legitimating the inequalities of modern societies. But they postulate different mechanisms of legitimation. For Bourdieu,…

Fields of Fashion

Bourdieu’s sociology of culture has been central to studies of consumption. However, although it offers rich insights into his sociology of cultural production and consumption, his work in the field…

The strength of weak programs in cultural sociology: A critique of Alexander’s critique of Bourdieu

Jeffrey Alexander’s recent book on cultural sociology argues that sociologists must grant the realm of ideas autonomy to determine behavior, unencumbered by interference from instrumental or material…

Thinking with Bourdieu against Bourdieu: A ‘Practical’ Critique of the Habitus

There are two strands in Bourdieu's sociological writings. On the one hand, Bourdieu argues for a theoretical position one might term his “practical theory” which emphasizes virtuosic interactions…

Distinction in America? Recovering Bourdieu's theory of tastes from its critics

The symbolic production of culture in discourses on fashion in Le Monde and The Guardian : a critical application of the work of Bourdieu

By way of a textual analysis of the reports on high fashion shows of the French newspaper Le Monde and the British newspaper The Guardian, this study is a reflection on Bourdieu's sociology of…

Forms of Capital and Social Structure in Cultural Fields: Examining Bourdieu's Social Topography

This article tests one key assumption of Bourdieu's theory of culture fields: that actors are positioned in a "topography" of social relations according to their endowments of economic, social, and…

Varieties of Misrecognition: Connecting Bourdieu and Fanon toward an Analysis of Racialized Islamic Fields

This article explains variations in misrecognition of domination among the racialized subaltern. I draw on a comparative analysis of the fields of Islam in France and India, informed by the work of…
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 40 REFERENCES

Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture

The theory of mass culture--or mass audience culture, commercial culture, "popular" culture, the culture industry, as it is variously known--has always tended to define its object against so-called…

Marxism and Form

Marxism and Form is a collection of several self-contained but intimately related essays in aesthetic theory written between 1967 and 1970 on Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse, Bloch, Lukács, and Sartre,…

Towards a Reflexive Sociology: A Workshop with Pierre Bourdieu

Over the last two decades, the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has emerged as one of the most innovative, wide-ranging, and influential bodies of theories and research in contemporary…

Bordieu: What Makes a Social Class?: On the Theoretical and Practical Existence of Groups

One of the main obstacles to scientific sociology is the use we make of common oppositions, paired concepts, or what Bachelard calls "epistemological couples:" constructed by social reality, these…

Cultural capital and school success: The impact of status-culture participation on the grades of U.S. high-school students

Ethnographers and other students of interaction have documented the impact of status factors on students' success in school. Yet survey research data consistently show the absence of family…

Cultural Democracy in a Period of Cultural Expansion: The Social Composition of Arts Audiences in the United States

Students of American society, from the times of Tocqueville and Veblen, have been concerned with the social role of high culture in a democracy. The debate over the extent and consequences of elite…

Reproduction in education, society and culture

Preface to the Second Edition - Pierre Bourdieu Foreword - Tom Bottomore PART ONE: FOUNDATIONS OF A THEORY OF SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE PART TWO: KEEPING ORDER Cultural Capital and Pedagogic Communication…

The Elite Arts, More or Less de rigueur: A Comparative Analysis of Metropolitan Culture

The prevalence of elite art institutions-theater and dance companies, museums, orchestras, and opera-in the largest 125 metropolitan places in the United States is the focus of this investigation.…

America's Working Man

What's on the worker's mind? The urgency of this question for socialists, for business executives, for politicians, for advertisers, and for trade unionists has produced a steady flow of journalistic…

Material Culture and Mass Consumption

Part 1 Objectification: Hegel and objectification Marx - objectification as rupture Munn - objectification as culture Simmel - objectification as modernity. Part 2 Material culture: material culture…