Slate’s David Plotz has a sharp, withering critique of David Brooks. Trying to explain why liberals seem to be suddenly turning against Brooks, he comes up with a couple of reasons. First, there’s the war, for which Brooks has been cheerleader but strangely detached from the particulars. Second, Brooks’ comic sociology has tipped over into a glib utopia of consumer identities. Plotz writes,
He ignores that not every distinction is cultural and that much more is at stake than self-esteem… By making Americans merely smug emperors of our own little consumer worlds, he ignores the bigger, brutal battles that we fight against each other.
True enough. Thing is, today Brooks has a pretty good op-ed in the Times on political polarization. Drawing on a distinction that has marked much of his work, he suggests that what we see as political polarization has a lot to do with the sharp division in the elites, between a cultural elite and a managerial, money-oriented elite.
Many people bitterly resent it when members of the other group hold power. Members of the knowledge class tend to think that Republican leaders are simple-minded, uncultured morons. Members of the business class tend to think that Democratic leaders are decadent elitists. In other words, along with the policy and cultural differences that divide the groups, there are disagreements on these crucial questions: Which talents should we admire most? Which path to wisdom is right? Which sort of person deserves the highest status?
In effect, this is a restatement of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology (which Brooks backhandedly cites in Bobos); in Distinction, Bourdieu sketches out twin poles of class difference. On one hand, differences in the total amount of capital differentiate individuals in society, both by objective life-chances and internalized modes of culture. On the other hand, the composition of one’s capital - the proportion of economic and cultural capital - situates individuals according to (often competing) status claims, around which they organize seemingly innocent taste preferences (e.g. college professors will show preference for minimalist decor or cheap opera seats, maximizing cultural benefit from economic expenditure).
Brooks may not be firing any new intellectual shot in his op-ed. And Bourdieu’s sociology, we should note, is more than about two groups of people. But it’s important to counter the tendency to talk of elites (and elites manquees) without sociological specificity at all. Meanwhile, in my view, Bourdieu can always use a little more popularization in the States.
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