| Abstrakt: |
This study extends recent tests of Bourdieu?s theory of sports as cultural capital. It compares Bourdieu?s theory to Lamont?s work on symbolic boundary making, which found that moral capital is highly salient in the U.S. It tests these two theories and the cultural omnivore, ?prole? sport, and middle brow sport hypotheses on data of U.S. adult participants in sixteen sports from the 1998 National Health Interview Survey. It finds that many sports are highly class exclusive, especially the ?fitness? sports, which are more associated with cultural than economic capital. Competitive sports are more associated with economic capital, but only golf and tennis are used to draw boundaries between the dominant and lower middle classes. Other masculine competitive sports have a ?middle brow? class structure. None of the sports were ?prole? sports; there is strong support for the ?cultural omnivore? thesis. The structure of the field of adult sports fits Bourdieu?s expectations about the practices of the dominant and dominated fractions of the dominant class and Lamont?s ?self-actualizing? type of cultural boundary making fits the sports that are most culturally exclusive. The structure of the field of participatory sports closely fits Bourdieu?s descriptions of the gendered construction of class boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
