Verspieltes Kapital? Der gesellschaftliche Rollenwandel des Samuraistandes im Zuge der Meiji-Restauration

This paper addresses the question as to whether serial quality TV has the potential to valorize its fans. We draw on Bourdieu’s theory of distinction, assuming that demonstrated preference for a specific cultural taste has consequences for the attribution of capital endowment overall, and especially within an adept group. These assumptions are tested via a 3 (preference for high-culture vs. conventional television vs. quality TV series) x 1 online experiment with between subject design plus control group (N = 389). Results showed that conspicuously favouring serial quality TV has the potential to function as a distinctive sign – at least to some extent. Significantly more cultural capital is ascribed to a quality TV fan than to a person showing a preference for conventional television. Within a certain group of connoisseurs, a quality TV taste is even worth as much as a preference for high-culture. Implications are discussed with regard to the theory of distinction and quality TV series as the object of investigation.

The article shows that the work of Thorstein Veblen and Pierre Bourdieu builds a foundation of a mentality-driven contextual economics. In order to achieve this goal, it will be demonstrated that Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of distinction, and his concept of habitus, is a widely overlooked descendant of Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class and that both approaches highlight the necessity for including mental models into economic analysis. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to develop a comparative analysis of Veblen’s and Bourdieu’s theories of cultural capital and mental models to demonstrate the proximity of both concepts to contemporary economic thought. In short, I argue that Bourdieu’s habitus concept must be understood as a logical progression of Veblen’s theory of distinction, and that the findings from both approaches call for a turn towards mentality-driven economic analysis. JEL Codes: B15, B25, B41, B52, Z1, Z13

Reviewing Symbolic Capital

In today’s digital culture, everyday objects such as tumblers have become symbols of social identity, mediated through memes. This study analyzes memes in social media, especially Instagram posts that show “Kasta Tumbler di Tempat Kerja” shared by an account @luarsekolah, which represents hierarchical position in the workplace through tumbler brand choices. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of distinction and Stuart Hall’s concept of representation, this study examines how brand preferences in choosing tumbler reflect job positions and memes' role as a medium of social criticism in the context of digital culture. Through content analysis and contextual interpretation, the findings of the study highlight how tumbler is not only seen as a bottle only, but also shows lifestyle, social status, and identity in the digital era. In the end, someone’s tumbler choice not only reflects individual preferences, but also social status and how they want to be seen in the community.

The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America

This study explores the multifaceted portrayal of class in Annie Ernaux’s autosociobiographical narrative A Woman’s Story, focusing on both visible and invisible layers of class distinction. The research problem stems from Ernaux’s own witness to class distinction at first within her family; between her father’s modest working-class values and her mother’s aspirational bourgeois outlook and later, within herself; between her roots and the elite world she enters through education. These personal contradictions disrupt the simplistic view of class as purely economic, instead calling for a deeper psychosocial investigation. The study delves into the apparent class distinction through the depiction of three generations: her grandparents, parents and Ernaux’s own. It explores that after their social ascent to middle class, her father clings to working-class origin but her mother wants to learn and implement bourgeoisie’s norms, values and cultures to keep up one’s position. Not only in terms of their contrasting tastes, but class distinction also becomes more apparent in their markedly different lifestyle choices, usage of languages and manners they exhibit. Moreover, the study investigates how class distinction operates at the deeper psychological level of the class immigrants through their deeply internalized experiences of humiliation, inferiority and social dislocation. Furthermore, situating itself within the broader framework of social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, this study concludes that A Woman’s Story exposes class distinction as a psychological and symbolic burden, not merely economic condition.

《位置》(La Place)和《一個女人》(Une Femme)為法國當代作家安妮．艾諾(Annie Ernaux)兩部關於其父親和母親的自傳式文學作品。本論文研究主要是希望透過上述兩部當代文學作品分析，探討以文學作品為基礎的社會階級問題，所有和社會階級相關的議題，都由資本做為核心擴展開來，其中主要研究主題包含階級區分、階級衝突，以及階級再生產和階級流通。 第一章「當代法國社會階級之於安妮．艾諾與皮耶．布爾迪厄」，從研究文本作家安妮．艾諾，以及運用的社會學理論巨擘的皮耶．布爾迪厄背景開始探討，以背景探究艾諾與布爾迪厄的關聯性，並解釋布氏社會學的資本、場域、慣習三大分析要素的定義，轉而切入本論文研究主題：資本與社會階級。 第二章「社會階級區別與衝突」，開始文本分析，以文本人物艾諾、艾諾父母和艾諾家周邊顧客、工人等為分析對象，透過資本區別各角色的社會階級，並剖析文本中的社會行為者以經濟、文化、象徵資本為首的階級衝突。 第三章「社會階級再生產與流通」，本章引用期刊論文〈誰是台大學生〉的台大學生來源背景，來驗證《位置》和《一個女人》中，經濟、文化資本的再生產對於社會行為者後代的階級再生產和階級流動的重要性和其關鍵作用。

The article deals with the sociological paradox of chess. On the one hand, this game gives people who belong to its social world a kind of desirable distinction, but on the other hand this distinction is not connected with the class position. In Pierre Bourdieu’s terms, if we treat chess as part of the sports field, then class distinction should be interconnected with it. Why is chess extremely popular and widespread, and therefore egalitarian, although it seems to be an excellent instrument for increasing class advantage? What makes so many people play chess, and how does chess confer the transclass distinction upon them? In answering these questions I will focus on the accessibility and openness of chess, its social nature, the totality of chess experience and the impossibility of defining it within one field: sport, science or art, and – last but not least – on the possibility of manipulating chess’s illusio.

American Writers in Europe: 1850 to the Present

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewDer Kampf um die Wahlfreiheit im Kaiserreich: Zur parlamentarischen Wahlprüfung und politischen Realität der Reichstagswahlen 1871–1914. By Robert Arsenschek. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Parlamentarismus und der politischen Parteien, volume 136. Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 2003. Pp. 420. €49.80.Margaret Lavinia Anderson Margaret Lavinia AndersonUniversity of California, Berkeley Search for more articles by this author University of California, BerkeleyPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 78, Number 1March 2006 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/502763 Views: 11Total views on this site Permission to reprint a book review printed in this section may be obtained only from the author.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

This article examines Elegancias, a Paris-based fashion magazine published between 1911 and 1914, as a vehicle for the transmission of legitimate taste and cultural capital to Latin American elites. Through a historiographical approach grounded in Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of distinction, it analyzes how the magazine offered rationalized models of bourgeois refinement through fashion journalism, social chronicles, and advertising. Rather than simply reflecting trends, Elegancias functioned as a pedagogical tool that mediated access to the codes of French haute couture, enabling Latin American readers to participate in the symbolic struggle for distinction and to disassociate themselves from stigmatized figures such as the rastaquouère. By foregrounding the intersections of consumption, symbolic power, and transatlantic cultural exchange, the study reveals how Elegancias operated as an informal yet influential mechanism within the cultural field of early twentieth-century fashion.

Food and Culture in Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf: Culinary Civilization examines the literary representation of food in the first half of the twentieth century. Embodying a transition from late nineteenth-century concerns to the upheavals of twentieth-century modernity, their works exhibit fascinations with sensual and aesthetic taste and the implications of food preparation and consumption in Britain, America, and France. Representations of everyday culinary practices provide these authors with a way to articulate concerns about the state of civilization, particularly in peacetime. This book proposes that food is significant to literary modernism in two major ways. The first is that food culture provides a means for thinking about the dialectic between the concepts of civilization and barbarism. The second is that writing about food is necessarily grounded in material history, and this book establishes the contexts and conditions of food culture in the first half of the twentieth century, particularly with regards to women’s experiences of dining. Drawing on sociological thinking from Norbert Elias’s conception of the civilizing process and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of distinction, and using close reading and biographical and historical analysis, Food and Culture in Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf reveals Ford’s, Stein’s, and Woolf’s investment in the connections between culinary practices and social and political change that contribute to a positive vision of civilization.

This article explores the complexity of taste in today’s Chinese social media fandom through a detailed analysis of bishilian (chain of contempt) and using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of distinction. We examine bishilian both in relation to wider practices of taste in contemporary Chinese society, and in relation to platform-specific dynamics within Chinese-language social media. Two dilemmas emerge through the taste as a marker of social distinction in Chinese social media: first, that between the subjectivity of personal preference and the objectivity of high-low taste hierarchies; second, that between the desire to maintain the exclusivity of highbrow fandom and the desire for a higher impact through expansion, which may compromise exclusivity. The prerequisite for a better, rather than deeper, aesthetic literacy of Chinese society is a clearer understanding taste as a marker of social distinction in the context of Chinese social media fandom by the public.

Introduction: identity has been one of the most important aspects of shaping the social identity of individuals and social groups in Iran, and such a major and fundamental force has historically played a role in social changes in Iran. Moreover, identity is not a closed and homogeneous whole and has a variety of dimensions and components. On the other hand, the media, especially and television, are not always detached from their social and political space, so they represent the content of their message, influenced by the dominant socio-political discourses, in a special way, highlighting a number of dimensions and ignoring others. Method: This study seeks to study how different religiosity dimensions of social classes are represented in post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. The dimensions of religiosity considered in the present study are derived from the Glock and Stark's model of religiosity, as well as the implications of the class is based on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of distinction in which, the composition and volume of various capitals are involved in the class formation. Finally, these two theoretical levels are analyzed in the context of Stuart Hall's constructivist approach to representation. Out of the dozens of movies in Iranian cinema, two levels of theoretical and typical sampling was conducted and finally two film in each decade that were theoretically more closely aligned with the research criteria were selected and analyzed. The films included: Pure Repentance (1983), Two Blind Eyes (1984), from Karkheh to Rhein (1991), Smell of Camphor, Scent of Jasmine (2000), A House Built on Water (2001), Book of Law (2008), Scandal (2012) and Sensitive Class (2013). These films have been examined by John Fisk's Critical Semiotics at three levels of reality, representation, and Results and discussion: Finally, the combination and integration of the first two levels is represented in the last level, i.e., ideology. Critical semiotics of films have also shown that the representation of the five dimensions of religiosity of each social class, influenced by the discourses of each decade, has undergone significant changes, including reduction in the religiosity dimensions of the lower class, especially emotional dimension, compared to the 1960s, the relative stability of the dimensions of middle-class religiosity from the 1970s onwards, and the growing emphasis on the ritual dimension of religiosity of the upper class in the last decade. Such changes and fluctuations in the representation system of itself have been affected by changes in the discourses that govern each decade. Conclusion: The results of this study, on the other hand, confirmed that cinema, based on its representative nature, show the complex relations between the fundamental forces in Iranian society, namely religiosity and class relations, through the lens of cinema. It is important to note, however, that in comparison with literature of the study, which considers religious cinema to be stable in contrast to current trends in society, or without considering class formations, or impose single discourse on Religious subjects, this study shows that despite the existence of specific political, social and economic discourses in each decade, such discourses do not affect the dimensions of religiosity of all classes in a similar and integrated way, moreover, representation of the dimensions of religiosity of different social classes have had significant fluctuations and changes.

This paper examines how foodways-taste preferences, eating habits, and culinary practices-function as borderlands that shape racial, ethnic, and class identities in David Wong Louie’s The Barbarians Are Coming. Drawing upon Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of distinction and Guillermo Verdecchia’s concept of borderlands, it explores how the protagonist Sterling Lung’s culinary journey reveals tensions between assimilation and cultural memory. By analyzing food as a semiotic system of class and cultural hierarchy, the study argues that foodways delineate imaginary homelands and social boundaries that both constrain and define identity formation in diasporic contexts.