Class, Race and Lifestyles in the US: A Play of Spaces

Pierre Bourdieu's famous thesis on the homology between class and lifestyles has been accused of overlooking or downplaying race and ethnicity. The most sophisticated tests and updates of his thesis in statistical research have so far done little to counteract this, even though recent advances in theorising ethno-racial domination and its intersection with class have been inspired by Bourdieu's field theory. This paper attempts to bring the divergent threads of scholarship together by conceiving and exploring the relationship between class, race and lifestyles in terms of intersecting spaces. Using survey data from the US, I build models of the “social space” and lifestyle space and explore the intersection of class and race in differentiating cultural tastes and practices. While race has a cross-class effect on lifestyles, this is nonetheless modulated by capital holdings. For some groups, money is a more accessible route to dominant culture than Eurocentric highbrow taste and consumption.