ABSTRACT
Bourdieu's point of entry into the murky waters of political sociology is, in fact, somewhat unconventional: he begins not with the correspondence between class position and political positions or opinions, as might be expected, but with the differential tendency attached to class position to feel one even has a political position or is entitled to an opinion. In mainstream political sociology what Bourdieu called 'political' issues such as wealth redistribution, industrial relations, property ownership are generally referred to as 'materialist' questions. Bourdieu did not construct his space of political position-takings on the basis of both materialist and liberal/authoritarian attitudes, but his multidimensional model of class nevertheless reframes the whole debate. The cynicism, powerlessness and disenfranchisement of the dominated class and, to a lesser extent, fractions of the intermediate class may well correspond with relatively long-standing perceptions of not being listened to or taken seriously by politicians in capitalist society.
