Culture, Class, and Connections

Bourdieu's analysis of class and culture errs in neglecting two important aspects of social structure: social networks and class relations at work. He expects high-status culture to be useful in class because it is correlated with class, but culture used at work includes both genres related to class (used in domination) and genres unrelated to class (used in coordination). High-status culture is correlated with class but excluded, not used, in the competitive private sector. The most widely useful cultural resource is cultural variety, and social network variety is a better source of cultural variety than is class itself.