Contenu du sommaire : Nouvelles directions dans les recherches sur la distinction sociale

A comparative analysis of the methods and logics of social distinction in a wide range of contexts leads to pointing out the limits of grand theorizations with universal pretensions. This article first of all underlines the reductive, often ethnocentric character – as well as a tendency to extrapolation – of many explanatory schemas having based their theories on the study of a particular situation in a certain period. It contends that taking varied scenarios into account facilitates the implementation of more satisfactory interpretation grids. Favouring original approaches (such as research on the priority vectors of distinction specific to societies) while at the same time returning to thematics that were dealt with in an overly dogmatic fashion (involving the rather unconscious or strategic character of the distinctive practices, for example), it insists on the virtues of an inductive approach avoiding a prioris. This contribution, which offers an unprecedented summary – in French – of the author's The Sociology of Elite Distinction and Rethinking Social Distinction, concludes with considerations of an epistemological and methodological order.

The article attempts to show the sociological and theoretical difference between distinction and differentiation, between a model of social distinction and a model of social differentiation. To do so, it examines the conceptualization P. Bourdieu developed in his work La distinction. Domination, holism, elitism and objectivism form four cha­racteristics of what we might call a structural conception of distinction. After returning to the sometimes confused uses of the two concepts and to the unjustified extension of distinction to differentiation, the article develops the characteristics of a social differentiation, namely the individual or collective difference permitted and supported by the objects of cultural practice and the affirmation of taste, through public expression of oneself, through an increased capacity for autonomous choice in relation to fa­milial, religious and cultural tutelages and, finally, through civic engagement.

Despite the rise of the “moral economy” as a frame for analyzing increasing inequality, few scholars have explored the moral dimensions of elites' experience and interpretations of their own privilege. Based on in-depth interviews with 50 affluent New York parents, this paper focuses on how they manage the peculiar concept of “entitlement”. In U.S. political culture, this concept links individuals' dispositions and behaviors to whether they deserve resources, as studies of welfare recipients have established. I argue that a similar analysis is needed for elites. These privileged actors want to interpret themselves as legitimately deserving of (i.e., entitled to) their social advantages, which means not being “entitled” in a behavioral and dispositional sense. They cast legitimate entitlement as depending upon moral worth in three areas: hard work, reasonable consumption, and “giving back”. They also feel a strong obligation to raise children who share the­se values. In invoking these criteria of worth, affluent respondents primarily attach themselves to the symbolically-worthy American middle class. The paper concludes with a discussion of how this relationship between dispositions and distributions justifies inequality.

This article questions the relevance, in the Japanese case, of an approach in terms of a “legitimate culture” which would be at the basis of social distinction. It begins with Pierre Bourdieu's theorization intending to break with the relativism and principle of autonomy of cultures in placing the accent on the relationships between social classes and the upper classes' domination. Yet we are shown why applying the model turns out to be rather delicate in Japan, the question arising of knowing the extent to which they are essentially “traditional” codes or imported practices (in beginning with Western classical music concerts) which structure distinction. Relying on surveys carried out in 1995 and 2015 involving stratification, social mobility and class consciousness, this work concludes that there are indeed dominant codes but that they are relatively contradictory, making the implementation of an analysis in terms of “legitimate culture” rather complex. Only very thorough research work would allow us to clarify its composition.

This article describes transformations in members of the Lions Clubs in Benin following policy changes initiated on an international scale. The criteria defining the “good” candidate will no longer depend exclusively on the legitimate culture associated with a living space (see Bourdieu's La distinction), the conjunction of family and educational capital being no longer relevant. The investigation carried out among younger members and those of “popular” origin shows that professional capital has become an important factor and influences cultural capital. The arrival of new members thus widens the club's social spectrum. The separation between popular and legitimate culture has become blurred in the new clubs, whereas it is still in effect for the older members and within the older clubs. Distinction is henceforth measured by engagement and personal investment (Bennett, 2013; Glevarec, 2013), favouring a rapprochement in living space and confirming the obsolescence of a vertical and dominant stratification in the structuration of cultural practices.

This article studies the social construction of ages, and particularly of youth and the passage towards adulthood. Based on the results of qualitative research on sexuality and masculinity among young Moroccan men (between 20-30), immigrants in Europe, the text proposes studying the transition towards adulthood from the angle of the processes of gender identification and the interviewees' sexual experience. The article shows how the power of heterosexuality, whose action is imbricated with the expression of intra- and inter-generational and intra- and intercultural relations, fashions age representations for these young men and participates in producing significations attri­buted to their biographical experiences in a migrant milieu. The goal is to show the interest in approaching age categories in terms of gender and sexuality in order to envisage youth and the transition towards adulthood as social relationships fitting into a wider ensemble of relationships of domination.

The article retraces the emergence of work-study methodology in the landscape of higher education in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and, more particularly, within universities, spearheaded by the primacy of a logic of competencies and the spectre of instrumentalizing knowledge. Following a historical overview of work-study instruction in the French-speaking Community of Belgium, the authors first attempt to analy­se the misgivings and issues related to the deployment of the first work-study university master's, notably questioning this phenomenon through an interpretation grid composed of three “ideal-typical cases”. The article then questions the role of the university in these dynamics of formation where the power to train is shared, and its abilities for organizing work-study master's programmes without losing the specificities of its instruction, with special attention to the adaptability of this secular institution in facing contemporary and future challenges.