Alan Warde is Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester. His interests include the sociology of culture and the sociology of consumption. Among his recent books are: Bennett T, Savage M, Silva E, Warde A, Gayo-Cal M and Wright D, Culture, Class, Distinction, (Routledge, 2009), and Silva E and Warde A (eds.) Cultural Analysis and the Legacy of Bourdieu: settling accounts and developing alternatives, (Routledge, 2010).

This book offers critical reflection on Pierre Bourdieu's account of the relationships between class, culture, power and taste. It compares and contrasts different theoretical and conceptual approaches, and brings empirical investigations to bear on relevant theoretical issues about social distinction.

This book was published as a special issue of Journal of Cultural Economy.

1. Guest Editor's Introduction: Cultural consumption, classification and power Alan Warde

2. The Middle Classes and their Aristocratic Others: Culture as nature in classification struggles Steph Lawler

3. Revisiting Distinction: Bourdieu without class? Michèle Ollivier

4. The Cultural Disillusionment of School Massification in France from 1981 to 2003 Philippe Coulangeon

5. Towards the Cultural Contextualization of Social Distinction Jean-Pascal Daloz

6. Dimensions of a Social Theory of Taste Alan Warde