SOURCE: Boyne, Roy. “Bourdieu: From Class to Culture, In Memoriam; Pierre Bourdieu 1930-2002.” Theory, Culture & Society 19, no. 3 (June 2002): 117-28.

In the following essay, Boyne compares Bourdieu's Distinction with The Weight of the World, tracing the differences in thought and empirical data that led to changes in Bourdieu's theory of sociology and art in later years.

I will try to establish two things: first the continuing use but outdated nature of the model of working-class culture found in Distinction; second, the relationship between that model and the work which is reported in The Weight of the World.¹ I hope it need not be said that critique is the most serious form of high regard.

Remnants of Necessitarianism

The empirical work upon which Distinction was based is now more than 20 years old. Characterizations of the working class in terms of their unreflexive ‘choice of the necessary’, and of the cultured...