ABSTRACT

If the analyses presented throughout the preceding chapters have often rubbed against the limits of what can be meaningfully uncovered by statistics and survey-research, the intrinsic limitations of the latter tend to come fully to the fore when dealing with those who are situated in the central regions of social space. Neither high nor low, dominant nor dominated, refined nor vulgar, the relationship to the body of the middle-classes or petit-bourgeoisie is often notoriously difficult to pin down. There are in fact several ways in which this relationship eludes the mechanics of survey-research. First and foremost, there is the inevitable effect produced by the survey (as a synchronic “snapshot”) of freezing a given state of the power-struggles between social positions which define the structure of social space at any given moment. If, in general, this often leads the analyst to treat the social world as a simple collection of self-contained and clearly delineated groups and to ignore what each of these groups owes to its (antagonistic) relationships with others, it becomes particularly problematic when studying a set of social positions which, like the middle-classes, derive a large number of their characteristics precisely from these relationships (Wacquant, 1992). Being defined as much by the lifestyle of the working-class, from which they aim to distinguish themselves, as by that of the dominant class, towards which they tend to aspire, the petit-bourgeois relationship to the body only becomes fully intelligible when it is related to these opposites. This synchronizing effect of the survey not only tends to downplay the importance of these antagonistic relationships, but also freezes the movements of various groups throughout social space of which its middle region is in a sense the “crossroads”. In fact, what the survey registers as “intermediate” or “middle” positions often prove to be the meeting point, at any given time, of groups that

occupy a fairly “stable” position within the petit-bourgeoisie (the teachers for instance), those that are caught in a downward trajectory (the small shopkeepers) and those that are propelled in an upward movement (such as those employed in the financial services, like real-estate or insurance). Given that such varied trajectories are themselves constitutive of differences in class-dispositions – like the optimistic, “subversive” dispositions of the upwardly mobile or the pessimistic, “regressive” dispositions of those who are marked by a downward trajectory – the label “middle-class” tends to group agents who are often the product of quite divergent social condition(ing)s. It is this dynamic character of the middle-classes which also highlights a second limitation of survey-analysis, namely the inherent difficulty of using established taxonomies of status to adequately define what are often ill-defined locations in social space. In fact, given that such taxonomies are, at least partly, the outcome of the struggle of groups for official recognition (on this point see Boltanski, 1987; Desrosières, 1991), they in a sense always tend to arrive “after the battle”, that is, when groups have already succeeded in gaining inclusion into the official (i.e. state-sanctioned) systems of classification. While this essentially applies to all social groups, it is especially problematic when trying to delineate those who occupy “intermediate” social positions, that is, categories which are still in the process of becoming (mental coach, colour-therapist, sustainability expert, etc.). Finally, these limitations do not only apply to the process of locating groups within a highly dynamic sector of social space, but also to the task of identifying the particularity of their practices. In fact, while the survey is an invaluable instrument in helping to gauge the absolute probability that a certain class (fraction) is associated with a certain practice, property or opinion, it tends to be more limited in its ability to grasp the specific modality of practice, that is, to differentiate the manner in which agents consume, appropriate, enact or adhere to such practices, properties and opinions. As already discussed in the case of surveys on household-consumption (see Chapter 5), such differences in modality are nevertheless crucial in aiming to distinguish the relationship to the body of those who have the “means”, but lack the “manners” to appropriate certain categories of practices or goods – i.e. the “nouveaux riches”, the “parvenus” or the “pedants” of all stripes – from those whose comportment and appearance derive their distinguished value from a long-standing familiarity with these categories. This means that on a wide range of indices, the survey tends to artificially efface or compress some of the central differences between the dominant and petitbourgeois relationship to the body. If one adds to this the ways in which this relationship itself is further differentiated in terms of particular class-fractions endowed with specific types of capital, it becomes clear that the term “middleclass” covers quite a mixed bag.