Upper-class students occupy sociology as a fashionable soft option preserving class distinction

Evidence

With this model it is also possible to account for the apparently paradoxical situation of a discipline like sociology, which is dis­ tinguished from the lowest-rated Arts disciplines by the social charac­ teristics of its clientele, though it resembles them in terms of academic characteristics (cf figure 3). If, in Paris, sociology enrols the highest proportion of upper-class students (68 percent as against 55 percent for Arts subjects as a whole), while disciplines like modern literature or geography, though close in terms of academic requirements as measured by previous performance, have the highest rates of workingor middle­ class enrolment (48 and 65 percent, respectively, compared with 45 percent for Arts as a whole), the explanation is that under-selected upper-class students are able to find a substitute for their class ambi­ tions in a subject which combines the advantages of a soft option with the glamour of fashion and which, unlike the courses leading to a teaching degree, does not sully the intellectual project with the vul­ garity of vocational training. — Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and…, 3059

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Bourdieu’s broader theory of distinction and cultural capital — classification of disciplines maps onto class reproduction.
• ADDENDUM: The class-coding of a discipline as a substitute for direct class ambition is a mechanism-worldbuilding parallel to how titles/dress/roles carry status in the immodesty and sacrifice articles.
• QUESTION: To what extent does this still hold today, when sociology has professionalized and lost its fashion status?