Introduction: Surveying the survey

Abstract

This article reviews the terms in which the Australian Cultural Fields project engaged with the concepts of fields, capitals, and habitus. It also places these concepts in the context of their longer histories of use and interpretation in Bourdieusian sociology, and identifies the new inflections acquired in bringing them to bear on the relations between culture and inequality in Australia. It involves a discussion of some of the key dynamics that have characterised the relations across and between the six cultural fields selected for study in the Australian Cultural Fields project – the art, literary, sport, television, heritage, and music fields – since the landmark 1994 Creative Nation cultural policy statement of the Keating Labor government. This analytical elaboration is followed by a summary of the main findings of both the survey and interview components of the project that are reported in Fields, Capitals, Habitus: Australian Culture, Inequalities and Social Divisions.