The aim of this thesis is to study political opinions and party voting in relation to class. The range of opinions studied consists of a socioeconomic dimension, dealing with issues of economic equality, and a socio-cultural dimension, dealing with questions of culture and morality. Following Pierre Bourdieu, the object of the study is conceptualised as a field of consumption of political opinions consisting of a space of political opinions or stances, a space of political party preferences, and a space of social positions or opinion holders defined by (among other things) their cultural and economic capital. The field of consumption is examined through multiple correspondence analysis and Euclidean classification. Overall, the field of consumption of political opinions is found to be relatively homologous to the social space. The field of consumption is found to be a two-dimensional space, with one dimension separating left-wing from rightwing opinions and the second distinguishing between socio economic and socio- cultural opinions. The tendency to vote left wing and to have left-leaning socio-economic opinions corresponds to a low total volume of capital and possessions dominated by cultural capital, whereas the tendency to vote right wing and to have right-leaning socio-economic opinions corresponds to a high total volume of capital. Liberal socio-cultural opinions correspond to a high level of possession cultural capital (and its relative weight in the structure of the total possession of capital), whereas the opposite is true for conservative opinions. Furthermore, the socio-cultural dimension is found to harbour two different aspects: liberalism or conservatism with regard to traditional morality and liberalism or conservatism with regard to the idea of a national culture. This thesis also studies how individuals tend to combine opinions from the two dimensions into tangible constellations of opinions.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:oru-26825 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Enelo, Jan-Magnus |
| Publisher | Örebro universitet, Institutionen för humaniora, utbildnings- och samhällsvetenskap, Örebro : Örebro universitet |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Doctoral thesis, monograph, info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | Örebro Studies in Sociology, 1650-2531 ; 15 |
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