I’m reading Pierre Bourdieu‘s Distinction for two reasons:

First, because look at that cover, come on. Continental philosophy books like to PRETEND they’re not all about the cover, but they lie, that cover is a FLEX. (The other all-time champion)

Second, because Chester County is where big money from Philadelphia has always gone. Of course, there’s the main line, but then there’s zillions of country estates where captains of industry lived (and live), the colossal horse farms to the west and south and a whole industry of utopian fresh-air projects (Church Farm School, Children’s Country Week Association, the Philadelphia House of Refuge) and rural rich schools (Westtown, a finishing school for Quakers where I went to boarding school.)

There’s a portion of Chester County that has always prided itself on gentility (Did you know Disney’s the Fox and the Hound is based on a book written by a country squire in Fraser?) and finished manners. Chester County absolutely patterns itself after the Home Counties around London.

In other words… Chester County is where capital performs gentility, and gentility is what Distinction is about.

Reading it is… challenging in the sense that I feel challenged when I read it, because I went to Quaker boarding school here, gamboling about the well-tended lawns and sprawling around the gorgeous brick architecture, and BOY do Quakers have a big case of patting-themselves-on-the-back when it comes to social issues, even though Quakers are IN IT when it comes to capitalism and, you know… :being a part of it:.