Lahire, Bernard

Cultural distinctions and the struggle within oneself: “Hating one’s own popular part” - 2005.


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The boundary between “cultural legitimacy” and “cultural illegitimacy” separates not only the different social classes, but also the different cultural practices and preferences of the same individuals in all classes. The cultural distinction process bring into play not only social classes and their symbolic struggles for the monopoly of legitimate definition of legitimate tastes, but also the intra-individual (diachronic and synchronic) variation of behaviours. The “popular” figure frequently serves also as a foil in the struggles of oneself (legitimate) against oneself (illegitimate) that lead all those who express a fear of cultural regression or fall because of their cultural practices mixity. If social world is, indisputably, a field of struggles between groups or classes, individuals characterized by heterogeneous or dissonant cultural profiles are themselves often the arenas of a classifications’ struggle.