Green Tastes in Social Space: Environmentalism, Cultural Legitimacy, and the Scholastic-Ascetic Disposition

A recent wave of authors claim that pro-environmental attitudes are increasingly associated with high-status cultures, where "green distinctions" represent a new "eco-habitus,". This paper explores this claim. By constructing a model of the social space constituted by economic and cultural capital, I examine how attitudes towards green issues correlate with the amount and type of capital held by individuals. Like the more recent authors, I find that pro-environmental attitudes vary significantly with position in social space. But important qualifications emerge. The two-dimensional model of social space brings out that it is among those with more cultural than economic capital we find the more environmentalist positions. Those with a predominance of economic capital, appear no more pro-environmentalist than the average. The connection with cultural capital appears the most pronounced in questions concerning trade-offs between environmental and more material or economic concerns. Avoiding the crude materialist reading that it would be “easier to be generous when you have plenty”, I show that those rich in economic capital are not particularly “generous” with respect to these trade-offs. The expressed readiness to pay a higher price for eco-friendly goods and to prioritize the environment over employment is the highest among the fractions with an overweight of cultural capital. I suggest that this indicates the operation of the “ascetic” disposition that informs many other stances among people in these positions. Furthering this exploration, I look at how pro-environmental attitudes are connected to other manifestations of this disposition. Aligning with the argument, I demonstrate a connection between pro-environmentalism and other expressions of cultural legitimacy and the ascetic disposition, such as a liking for jazz or classical music, and the distancing from money and material wealth.