culturalist left

[kelley]

At 11:45 AM 1/6/01 -0600, Peter K. wrote:
> >Social Status Tends to Seal One's Fate, Says France's Master Thinker
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/06/arts/06BOUR.html
>
>
>[clip]
>
> > This resulted partly from a conviction that, as Douglas Holt, a
> >professor of marketing at the Harvard Business School, put it,
> >"we're not a class-based society and that status works in a crasser
> >way here: it's driven by money, not culture." Moreover, even
> >researchers interested in class had found that consumption habits
> >did not tend to reveal very much about class affiliation: you
> >cannot distinguish rich from poor on the basis of who shops at the
> >Gap or listens to Eminem.
>
>The U.S. isn't class-based and yet there's class affiliation?
>Is it me or is this paragraph wacked?

the article is saying that the researchers concluded that there isn't much 
to indicate class affilitation.  that is, if you look at 
income/occupation/education level and then look at their 'habitus' you 
don't necessarily find sharp divisions as to where people shop, what kinds 
of cars they drive, what kinds of food they it.  i would disagree based on 
my unsystematic surveys of about 1000 students at different kinds of unis, 
but i just write to say i think you're misreading.  for an interesting 
discussion of this see michele lamont's work in Money, Morals, and Manners.

kelley