The U.S. Space of Lifestyles and Its Homologies

Abstract

Pierre Bourdieu’s influence on the study of lifestyles in the United States has been profound, yet the vast majority of relevant research operates with methods and assumptions at odds with Bourdieu’s own. His specifically relational or geometric understanding of social structures, and lifestyles, has been overlooked, meaning that no one has yet done for the contemporary United States what Bourdieu did for France, that is, construct a model of the “space of lifestyles” and its homologies. This paper does precisely that, deploying Bourdieu’s own favored technique of multiple correspondence analysis on survey data from 2017 to 2018. It finds a remarkable continuity between 1970s France and the contemporary United States, specifically in the existence of axes relating to economic and cultural capital. The paper also explores the correspondence of sociodemographic factors with the space, and importantly, it unveils associated patterns of symbolic domination.