Producing `Pride' in West Hollywood: a Queer Cultural Capital for Queers with Cultural Capital

Abstract

This paper applies Pierre Bourdieu's theorization of class positioning and cultural capital to a case study of conflicts between the working class organizers of an urban LGBT pride celebration and the local gay press, gay government and gay professional community. I conclude with a discussion of two developments in the LGBT movement more broadly, that have implications for how professionalism, good taste and skill are being defined by powerful stakeholders in pride festival organizing: a) the growth of gay capitalism and, b) the disappearance of a broad-based LGBT movement ideology. According to Bourdieu, judgments of taste and skill serve the interests of power by constantly creating new categories of distinction, and thus new class-based means of competition and ownership. The case presented here suggests that these trends have begun to destabilize the grassroots ownership of pride celebrations and naturalize class-based evaluations of the tastes and skills of event organizers.