ABSTRACT
Classification by physique is compounded, at least in stereotype, by clothing; the use of blue-collar and white-collar to categorise occupations is just one indication. Class uniforms have gone and, especially among younger people, jeans and a T-shirt have become universal attire transcending boundaries of class, gender and ethnicity. Nevertheless, what one wears continues to mark position; green Wellingtons, gold chains, headscarves, branded training shoes and hooded jerkins convey meaning. Sociologically such issues can be addressed in numerous ways but we start from Bourdieu’s insight that embodied attributes constitute cultural capital, with some features carrying more value than others. In the management of the body – through eating, clothing, exercise and medication – individuals and social groups exhibit difference. Mostly, difference is manifested in the same way as in other fields, as for instance where exercise regimes or preferences for different types of restaurant reflect social hierarchies. However, in addition,
as generations of comedy attest, dialect, accent, inflection of the voice, vulgarity of expression, facial expressions of contempt, body posture and movement, are indications of ‘attitude’ linked to social position. These features were hard to capture in our survey and required a focus less on a single field, and more on how bodily practices reflect the unequal distribution of cultural (and other types of ) capital.
