Does cultural capital structure American consumption?

This study examines one of the most debated questions in the sociology of culture: Does Pierre Bourdieu's theory relating levels of cultural capital to consumption patterns apply to the contemporary United States? First, I summarize the innovative characteristics of Bourdieu's theory in relation to the Warnerian tradition of social class research. Next, I critique American appropriations of Bourdieu's theory of tastes and suggest that, in the contemporary United States, the theory should be reformulated to focus on consumption practices rather than consumption objects and on mass rather than high culture. Using this reformulation, I conduct an interpretive empirical study to investigate whether differences in cultural capital resources structure patterns of taste in a mideastern American county. Analyzing a series of ethnographic interviews, I describe six dimensions of taste that distinguish informants with high versus low cultural capital resources: material versus formal aesthetics, referential versus critical interpretations, materialism versus idealism, local versus cosmopolitan tastes, communal versus individualist forms of consumer subjectivity, and autotelic Versus self-actualizing leisure. These findings suggest that consumption continues to serve as a potent site for the reproduction of social class.