Distinction Class and Lifestyle in Singapore

							Distinction: Class and Lifestyle
   of the Middle Classes in
           Singapore
         By Wong Meisen
       Outline of Presentation

   Bourdieu’s Distinction (1979)
   Research question and aims of study
   Decontextualisation of Bourdieu’s study
   Lifestyle and Consumption
   Methodology
   Significance of research study
                     Distinction
   Highly empirical study of French society’s various class
    factions and consumption patterns
   Shows that taste is not pure; the different aesthetic
    choices that people make are all distinctions vis-à-vis
    other classes.
   Concepts like habitus, cultural capital, social space etc.
   Focus: the petite bourgeois in France and the concept of
    transverse mobility.
   Transverse mobility: the conversion and reconversion
    strategies where economic capital is used to accumulate
    cultural capital, or vice versa.
           Distinction (con’t)
   This process can take place for several
    generations.
   Pervasive amongst the petite bourgeois.
   Aspirations of entering the bourgeois class.
   Bourdieu claims that this consumption of
    cultural capital (and its translation into
    economic capital) will eventually help the
    petite bourgeois gain entry into bourgeois
    class.
           Question and Aim

   Research question: Is Bourdieu’s claim
    valid in an advanced capitalist, Asian
    society like Singapore?
   Site of research: Singapore
   Aim of research is to deconstruct
    Bourdieu’s argument through a
    decontextualisation of his study.
     Decontextualisation of Bourdieu
     Problems with Bourdieu:
1.    Claims universality of results
2.    Difference of class strata and its
      evolution
3.    Late introduction of ‘cultured’ activities
4.    Definitions of middle class (MC) and
      social mobility
        Cultural Capital as Lifestyle
              Consumption
   Bourdieu defines taste as:
    The propensity and capacity to appropriate (materially and
    symbolically) a given class of classified, classifying objects or
    practices, is the generative formula of lifestyle, a unitary set of
    distinctive preferences which expresses the same expressive
    intention in the specific logic of each of the symbolic sub-space,
    furniture, clothing, language or body hexis. (173)
   Taste as a system that expresses a particular class
    of conditions of existence.
   Manifested by different lifestyles.
   Lifestyle as a mode of operation, a practice
    through which all agents of the same class,
    display stylistic affinity (expressed by their
    consumption patterns) that is transferable to one
    field to the next.
   Objects consumed become a sign-system that
    experiences social qualifications.
   Lifestyle consumption becomes an investment
    in cultural capital when the object consumed is a
    practice, strategy or site of expression that works
    to convert cultural capital into economic use or
    status distinction.
   Research study will focus on the investment of
    cultural capital through the consumption of
    lifestyle objects (e.g. interior design of house,
    furnishings, formal education, restaurants
    frequented, alcoholic drinks consumed, leisure
    activities such as visiting art galleries or theatre).
   Does this lifestyle consumption facilitate upward
    social mobility for the middle classes?
   Research claim: NO, it does not. It only serves
    to accumulate more wealth, better material
    conditions and status distinction.
               Methodology
1.   Statistical data
    secondary data e.g. Census data
    look at social class indicators such as income
     levels, educational levels or housing ownership
    also statistical data on consumption patterns
     for initial understanding
    Construct a class hierarchy of Singapore to
     obtain research sample for qualitative research.
2.   Textual Analysis
    Newspapers and lifestyle programs on
     television.
    Analyze the discourse of the system of objects
     involved in lifestyle consumption.
    How do these features or reviews perpetuate
     the discourse that produces the meaning that
     consuming agents might attach to the process
     of consuming the object itself?
3.   Participant Observation
    Choices that one makes in lifestyle consumption is
     based on tacit knowledge(s) that enables one to
     ‘classify’ and ‘distinguish’ what to consume or
     not.
    Everyday life in social agents.
    Employ ethnomethodology—close interaction with
     sample group to uncover these tacit knowledge(s);
     ‘rituals’ behind lifestyle consumption as a
     presentation of self in everyday life.
    Hanging out.
4.   In-depth interviews
    Goes hand-in-hand with participant observation.
    Interview sample group in their houses about their
     consumption patterns, knowledge of lifestyle
     objects; while looking at their furnishings, etc.
    Another group is the ‘critical reviewers’ of
     lifestyle objects that help educate you. E.g. interior
     decorators, architects, lifestyle journalists, golf
     instructors, wine-tasters,etc.
    Help to perpetuate the discourse on the system of
     lifestyle objects.
      Sociological Significance
1.   Intellectual value
    Questions the relevance of Bourdieu’s findings when
     decontextualised and located within advanced
     industrial, Asian economies like Singapore.

2.   Change fundamental beliefs of lifestyle and class.
    Shed light on some of the strategies of status
     distinction.
    Create a typology of status groups within the MC.
    Understand the anxieties of consumption among the
     MC.
The End
Thank You!!