ABSTRACT
It is widely agreed that the growth of broadcasting media since Distinction was published has generated a range of shared tastes and cultural practices that is inconsistent with Bourdieu’s depiction of sharply polarised class cultures. Bourdieu’s own account might even have been different had he paid adequate attention to the role of broadcasting media in mid-1960s France. He asked only two questions exploring radio and television programme choices. Although the ownership of radio sets in France was widespread at the time, he does not directly address his findings relating to radio, tending to subsume these in his more general discussions of musical tastes. Television also grew from being a relatively restricted aspect of French cultural life to a mass medium during the period (1963-1968) in which the fieldwork for Distinction was conducted: while only 13per cent of Frenchhouseholds owned television sets in 1960, this had grown to 52 per cent by 1967 (Lahire, 2004: 628). Again, though, Bourdieumade little use of his findings relating to television preferences and converted his one extended discussion of television into a vehicle for another purpose by interpreting workingclass resistance to formalist experiments in television as a proxy for working-class attitudes to formal innovations in modern art (Bourdieu, 1984: 33).
