Abstract
Through a close reading of the boys’ stories of being ‘different’, the way gender and class elide in the making of their particular musical habitus is discussed in this chapter. The argument is developed that the musical tastes, knowledge and skills of the choirboys delineate their symbolic distinction as bearers of legitimate culture, which enables them to counter the dominant cultural narrative that this type of singing is ‘feminine’. What inhabitants of this field share is an investment in a ‘well-rounded’ intellectual, physical and aesthetic education, and I argue that this is the crux of the choirboys’ middle-class power. I make an analogy between the cultivated bodily dispositions of the choirboy and the polymath of the classical Greek world. How the choirboys profit from reproducing old cultural narratives in new ways provides a rarely seen, close-up view of the operations of habitus in children’s everyday lives.
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Notes
- 1.
As mentioned in Chap. 3, feminist readings of Bourdieu’s work, particularly Masculine Domination (2001), criticise his shortcomings in theorising reflexive social change and performativity because of his refusal to engage with feminist theory (for example, Fowler, 2003; Krais, 2006). However, those critics that take up the invitation to think with and against Bourdieu where necessary conclude that the strengths in his conceptual tools outweigh the weaknesses (see for example, Dillabough, 2004; Lovell, 2000; McNay, 1999; Stahl, 2015). Following the broad perspective of these feminist researchers, I aim to demonstrate how the strengths in Bourdieu’s concepts can be useful for my discussion of gender and class.
- 2.
I acknowledge that the term ‘Renaissance man’ is problematic as it excludes the existence of many polymath women over the course of history.
- 3.
‘Oz’ meaning ‘Australia’.
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Hall, C. (2018). Vocalising Gender and Class. In: Masculinity, Class and Music Education. Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50255-1_7
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