Interesting post. Bourdieu’s theory in La Distinction was grounded in statistical analyses of the mapping of different tastes in the social space, so it is not devoid of empirical evidence. Regarding luxury beliefs, they could signal belonging to specific parts of the elite—those high in cultural capital, not necessarily those high in economic capital. The distinction between these two groups was present in Bourdieu and is also present in Piketty: Brahmin left vs. Merchant right.
Moreover, people get rich so their kids don’t have to. You’re an investment banker so your kid can work in “culture” or whatever because daddy is paying the bills.
The best example of this I saw was Gregory Clark, who once he used a wider version of “status” than mere money he found very low levels of social mobility over generations.
Polls have consistently shown that those with low earnings relative to their education are the most progressive group.
Cultural anecdote: A good movie depicting the conflict between the educated elite and the business elite in an implicit Bourdieusian fashion is the French movie "The Taste of Others".
Thanks! Yes, I was thinking more of the secondary literature. Given the amount of qualitative work which uses Bourdieu, one would expect much more quantitative work (and with the statistical methods which have developed since La Distinction was published). And yes, luxury beliefs is relevant to different parts of the elite. As I say in the piece, analysis of subsets/qualitative research might yield different results.
Hope all is well with the girls and life is treating you well! Anyway, a couple of questions that might well have been considered, but might help get a little closer to finding a satisfactory outcome.
1. I don't see why - under the definition given - luxury beliefs could only be 'progressive'. I know that's where it's derisively aimed, but it feels far from an axiom if we consistently apply the definition. Like, couldn't the sovereignty argument for Brexit equally meet the criteria of a luxury belief? And that's far from a progressive view.
2. The whole process starts from the foundational belief that holding progressive views has limited to no negative effect on the wealthy and ONLY negative effects on the mass of people that aren't as wealthy. This needs to be demonstrated. It can't be asserted and never returned to. And finally;
3. How would you go about demonstrating that anyway? How do you measure the effects of a generic belief system within which there's a mass of diverging views? The policies or actions that are promoted seems doable, but then you're not critiquing the belief system, you're critiquing policy proposals/promoted acts. This runs a massive risk of strawmanning, as in the example in the article, which is one I've heard before. How many people that would come up highly on the progressive scale you mention actually believe ALL of the specific issues you could measure to ascertain the positive/negative balance of an action? This seems an impossible ask.
So, as I see it (although I appreciate there will be far more to it than this, mind!) the hypothesis appears to boil down to: "Progressive views (in general) are damaging to poorer people, while having no negative effect on the wealthier people that hold them. They are also held cynically in order to obtain status."
This feels more like a polemic than a piece of research that can realistically be carried out with any reliability. But I'd love to hear - or read! - more to understand better.
Anyway, I'd also love to respond more in full and will attempt to soon.
Hi Tom, Nice to hear from you - all well here and hope you and family are well :-)
Broadly, I agree with everything you've said! As you say, the 'consequences' part of the argument is very difficult to research and we make this point in the book. In any case, I think that literature on the relationship between political values and exposure to phenomena like immigration/economic recession/crime shows quite a weak link, which is a further problem with the theory. The status part of the theory is more interesting and testable but, as I say in the article, there doesn't seem to be much evidence for it.
In considerations of a topic like this, survey questions on a questionnaire have at best a tenuous relationship to empirical evidence. You're merely adding an extra level of abstraction to the way individuals conceptualize the realm outside of their information silo, versus the realm within it. Instead of breaching the barrier, that approach adds another wall. All nice and scholarly-like.
Although the metaphorical shorthand expressed by the following two axioms is terribly reductive, at least it doesn't make that mistake. At least it doesn't turn consideration of the question into piffle. These two statements provide a broad hint at what Henderson is getting at:
"A Conservative is a Liberal who has just been mugged."
"A Liberal is a Conservative who's just been thrown into jail."
It doesn't matter if this hypothesis gets disproven in the future, it has become a talking point for populists. For now it's a right wing talking point but eventually it will become left wing because it fits their vibe better. The fact that this hypothesis gained so much traction without much evidence should tell you something.
I have always considered luxury beliefs to be a reference to the attributes of a type of person who lives in a particular place, has a reflective circle of friends or acquaintances, works in a certain line or endeavour, had a particular form of education and considered themselves as a bien pensant.
I have come across many of the type, they manifest as managerialists , those who think they know better than the common man, look down on manual labour, consider traditional values as primitive and, for example, berate Leavers as below the line and deplorable.
They seem to exist in certain areas of London, university cities and service industries that don't produce anything of real worth. They are insulated from the effects of their mismanagement and berate those who are very adversely affected by their blunders as being reactionary, tasteless, uneducated and uncouth.
I've come to be somewhat sceptical of the LB hypothesis because it is so conveniently derisive (and I would quite like it to be empirically validated for that reason). But the prevalence of progressive ideological sentiments among a certain segment of people seems - as you observe - more obviously correlated with age and sex than social status.
Sometimes I also wonder if older people who are personally little affected by perceived oppression of certain sexual or racial groups aren't just trying to identify with younger more 'current' people, as a psychological reassurance that it keeps them more 'modern' or 'relevant'.
Hi Thomas,
Interesting post. Bourdieu’s theory in La Distinction was grounded in statistical analyses of the mapping of different tastes in the social space, so it is not devoid of empirical evidence. Regarding luxury beliefs, they could signal belonging to specific parts of the elite—those high in cultural capital, not necessarily those high in economic capital. The distinction between these two groups was present in Bourdieu and is also present in Piketty: Brahmin left vs. Merchant right.
Moreover, people get rich so their kids don’t have to. You’re an investment banker so your kid can work in “culture” or whatever because daddy is paying the bills.
The best example of this I saw was Gregory Clark, who once he used a wider version of “status” than mere money he found very low levels of social mobility over generations.
Polls have consistently shown that those with low earnings relative to their education are the most progressive group.
Cultural anecdote: A good movie depicting the conflict between the educated elite and the business elite in an implicit Bourdieusian fashion is the French movie "The Taste of Others".
Thanks! Yes, I was thinking more of the secondary literature. Given the amount of qualitative work which uses Bourdieu, one would expect much more quantitative work (and with the statistical methods which have developed since La Distinction was published). And yes, luxury beliefs is relevant to different parts of the elite. As I say in the piece, analysis of subsets/qualitative research might yield different results.
Yes, the idea of luxury beliefs should initiate more empirical work, in particular to assess their potential/alleged benefits.
Hi Thomas, Tom from Liberal London Twitter here!
Hope all is well with the girls and life is treating you well! Anyway, a couple of questions that might well have been considered, but might help get a little closer to finding a satisfactory outcome.
1. I don't see why - under the definition given - luxury beliefs could only be 'progressive'. I know that's where it's derisively aimed, but it feels far from an axiom if we consistently apply the definition. Like, couldn't the sovereignty argument for Brexit equally meet the criteria of a luxury belief? And that's far from a progressive view.
2. The whole process starts from the foundational belief that holding progressive views has limited to no negative effect on the wealthy and ONLY negative effects on the mass of people that aren't as wealthy. This needs to be demonstrated. It can't be asserted and never returned to. And finally;
3. How would you go about demonstrating that anyway? How do you measure the effects of a generic belief system within which there's a mass of diverging views? The policies or actions that are promoted seems doable, but then you're not critiquing the belief system, you're critiquing policy proposals/promoted acts. This runs a massive risk of strawmanning, as in the example in the article, which is one I've heard before. How many people that would come up highly on the progressive scale you mention actually believe ALL of the specific issues you could measure to ascertain the positive/negative balance of an action? This seems an impossible ask.
So, as I see it (although I appreciate there will be far more to it than this, mind!) the hypothesis appears to boil down to: "Progressive views (in general) are damaging to poorer people, while having no negative effect on the wealthier people that hold them. They are also held cynically in order to obtain status."
This feels more like a polemic than a piece of research that can realistically be carried out with any reliability. But I'd love to hear - or read! - more to understand better.
Anyway, I'd also love to respond more in full and will attempt to soon.
All the best!
Hi Tom, Nice to hear from you - all well here and hope you and family are well :-)
Broadly, I agree with everything you've said! As you say, the 'consequences' part of the argument is very difficult to research and we make this point in the book. In any case, I think that literature on the relationship between political values and exposure to phenomena like immigration/economic recession/crime shows quite a weak link, which is a further problem with the theory. The status part of the theory is more interesting and testable but, as I say in the article, there doesn't seem to be much evidence for it.
In considerations of a topic like this, survey questions on a questionnaire have at best a tenuous relationship to empirical evidence. You're merely adding an extra level of abstraction to the way individuals conceptualize the realm outside of their information silo, versus the realm within it. Instead of breaching the barrier, that approach adds another wall. All nice and scholarly-like.
Although the metaphorical shorthand expressed by the following two axioms is terribly reductive, at least it doesn't make that mistake. At least it doesn't turn consideration of the question into piffle. These two statements provide a broad hint at what Henderson is getting at:
"A Conservative is a Liberal who has just been mugged."
"A Liberal is a Conservative who's just been thrown into jail."
It doesn't matter if this hypothesis gets disproven in the future, it has become a talking point for populists. For now it's a right wing talking point but eventually it will become left wing because it fits their vibe better. The fact that this hypothesis gained so much traction without much evidence should tell you something.
I have always considered luxury beliefs to be a reference to the attributes of a type of person who lives in a particular place, has a reflective circle of friends or acquaintances, works in a certain line or endeavour, had a particular form of education and considered themselves as a bien pensant.
I have come across many of the type, they manifest as managerialists , those who think they know better than the common man, look down on manual labour, consider traditional values as primitive and, for example, berate Leavers as below the line and deplorable.
They seem to exist in certain areas of London, university cities and service industries that don't produce anything of real worth. They are insulated from the effects of their mismanagement and berate those who are very adversely affected by their blunders as being reactionary, tasteless, uneducated and uncouth.
There are certainly *some* liberal snobs around!
Not liberal but illiberal. And I'd put the figure at about 10% and they are reciting a pseudo-elite narrative.
I've come to be somewhat sceptical of the LB hypothesis because it is so conveniently derisive (and I would quite like it to be empirically validated for that reason). But the prevalence of progressive ideological sentiments among a certain segment of people seems - as you observe - more obviously correlated with age and sex than social status.
Sometimes I also wonder if older people who are personally little affected by perceived oppression of certain sexual or racial groups aren't just trying to identify with younger more 'current' people, as a psychological reassurance that it keeps them more 'modern' or 'relevant'.
So would I!