Bourdieu, the boom

and cashed-up Bogans

Barbara Pini
Griffith University, Australia

Josephine Previte
University of Queensland, Australia

Abstract
For a number of years the social and cultural landscape of Australia has been
haunted by the figure of ‘the Bogan’, which, although malleable, has typically
been deployed as a negative descriptor of the white working-class poor. The
nation’s most recent resource boom has, however, seen the emergence of a
new classed figure that of the ‘CUB’ (cashed-up Bogan). In examining the
figure of the CUB, this article draws on Bourdieu’s notions of capital, distinction
and taste in light of Skeggs’ claim that Bourdieu may not be as useful in the
Australian context. Her point of departure is that class involves more a ‘display
of money rather than the display of culture’. We demonstrate the importance
of cultural capital in defining and disparaging the CUB and in asserting the
legitimacy of elite cultural dispositions, while pointing to the emergence of
spiritual capital and environmental capital as part of this process.
Keywords: Australia, Bogan, Bourdieu, class, mining

Towards the end of 2011, the Wall Street Journal published a rare article
dealing with Australia entitled, ‘The $200,000 a Year Mine Worker’ (Miller,
2011). The article focused on James Dinnison, a Western Australian mining
employee, who was identified as a ‘CUB’ that is, ‘a Cashed-Up Bogan’,1
which, as the writer explained to United States readers, is an Australian col-
loquialism for a blue-collar worker. At the same time, the headline, along
with discussions of Mr Dinnison’s $44,000 custom-made motorcycle and
even more expensive Chevy Ute, suggested that the identity CUB may
not be so easily applied to the all-encompassing figure of the ‘blue-collar

Journal of Sociology © 2013 The Australian Sociological Association, Volume 49(2-3): 256–271
DOI:10.1177/1440783313481742 www.sagepublications.com
 Pini & Previte: Bourdieu, the boom and cashed-up Bogans  257

worker’. Notably, also highlighted in the short article were Mr Dinnison’s

lack of formal further education, a violent episode from his school days,
and his tattoos.
In its original form and then in subsequent iterations, the article elicited
a significant groundswell of online opinion with hundreds of references on
blogs and the tweetersphere. The extent of the discussion was such that this
then became a story for the Australian media with articles such as
‘Cashed-up Bogan from Mandurah sparks debate in Wall Street Journal’
(Schmitt, 2011) and ‘He drills. He earns. He spends. He doesn’t apologise’
(Thomson, 2011). These local engagements with the original story were
then matched by hundreds of online posts and tweets radio programs and
feature articles. The story was given additional impetus by coinciding with
the publication of David Nichols’ (2011) The Bogan Delusion, which itself
was preceded by the books Things Bogans Like (McSween et al., 2011) and
Boganomics (McSween, 2011) both written under pseudonyms. Collectively,
these texts meant that the CUB, which was dismissed simply as a ‘new
“Buzz” word’ in 2006 (Lewis, 2006: 62), was, by 2011, a frequent figure in
national public debates.
In this article, we draw on the ‘conceptual cornerstones of Bourdieu’s
oeuvre’, namely, capital, field and habitus (Bennett and Silva, 2011: 429) to
examine representations of the CUB in the public domain over the past
year.2 In doing so, we use, as a starting point, reflections by Beverley Skeggs
(2006) in a podcast discussion focused on the classed as well as gendered
dimensions of cultural capital. In a wide-ranging conversation, Skeggs’
(2006) observes that, while Bourdieu may be particularly apposite to a
study of class in a country such as England, ‘which has a culture quotient
measure of class’, his theorising may not be as useful in understanding class
in Australia, as this is a place where class relations are informed more by a
‘display of money, rather than the display of culture’.
Skeggs’ (2006) comments speak to Bourdieu’s (1986) theorisation of
social space (the field) as a site of contestation and struggle over capital, and
his assertion that it is not just the accumulation of economic capital that is
of consequence to our location in the field, but also our accumulation of
social, cultural and symbolic capital. The composition of one’s capital will
be shaped by our habitus – that is, acquired modes of thought, actions,
orientations, dispositions that are unthinking (habits) – the ‘strategy gener-
ating principle enabling agents to cope with unforeseen and ever changing
situations’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 72). Johnson (2002: 205) asserts that ‘by the
time children enter school, they have learned the grammar of their native
language and the “rules” of their habitus, including their classed habitus’.
This is not to suggest that we are determined by habitus. Rather, Bourdieu
and his proponents argue, while habitus governs and shapes our practices
it also has generative and dynamic capacities (McNay, 2000; Reay, 1998,
2004b).
258  Journal of Sociology 49(2-3)

While one form of capital may be converted to another, not all capital
is traded equally. This is because, as Bourdieu famously argued in
Distinction (1984), assignations and determinations of cultural value are
not objective, neutral or natural. He noted the way in which what is
afforded distinction – that is, what is legitimated and deemed worthwhile
culturally – is what is valued by the hegemonic middle class; he referred to
this as symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1989: 17). Two processes may flow
from such symbolic capital: at one level, elite tastes are normalised as more
worthwhile; more symbolically violent is the stigmatising of working-class
taste, thus imposing a ‘definition of the social world’ that is consistent with
elite interests (Bourdieu, 1979: 13).
An important context for Skeggs (2006),3 that is, commentary on the
efficacy of Bourdieu for the Antipodes, is the large-scale national study of
Australian tastes undertaken by Bennett et al. (1999). As Woodward and
Emmison (2009) note, despite Australian sociological interest in the ques-
tion of class, few studies have drawn on Bourdieu, and so he is particularly
useful in orienting our own work. Bennett et al. (1999) report on a distinc-
tion between what they label ‘inclusive’ and ‘restricted’ modes of cultural
practice. The former, which involves cultural competence across high/low
boundaries, is associated with high levels of education, urbanity, youth and
women as opposed to men, as well as the occupational groups of profes-
sionals and managers. The latter, in which cultural competence and taste is
confined to a narrow range of activities, is associated with low levels of
education, rurality, age and men rather than women, as well as the manual
working class. However, beyond this broad categorisation, the authors find
that there is no singular hierarchy of cultural legitimacy in contemporary
Australia (see also Emmison, 2003; Turner and Edmunds, 2002). Reviewing
this finding they write:
Watching the football on Saturday, playing beach cricket, growing giant pump-
kins for the show, driving a stock car, walking a bush trail, doing voluntary work
for a service club, playing bridge, gardening, working out, going to the movies or
to a dance club … each of these is diversely configured and specifically valued in
ways that do not sustain generalization. (Bennett et al., 1999: 263)

Bennett et al.’s (1999) conclusion resonates with the wider literature which,
as Bennett and Silva (2011) summarise, has found little to support
Bourdieu’s original thesis of a clearly differentiated hierarchical structure of
cultural practices in contemporary western societies, and specifically, a set
of fixed aesthetic dispositions associated with elites. In response, Savage et
al. (2000: 19) have advocated that, rather than abandoning Bourdieu’s
framework for understanding symbolically informed social distinctions,
there is a need to recognise the ‘fluidity and complexity of the processes
defining cultural distinction’ (see also Prieur and Savage, 2011). It is this
perspective which guides our analysis of the CUB.
 Pini & Previte: Bourdieu, the boom and cashed-up Bogans  259

The mining man: from archetypal

working-class hero to CUB
The CUB stands in significant contrast to traditional Australian and inter-
national representations of ‘the miner’ as the quintessential working-class
man. In both academic and popular fields, the miner has been collectively
imaged as a taciturn, resilient, unassuming and simple man, devoted to his
work, family and community, dealing with the vicissitudes of nature in
work that is tough, dangerous and difficult (see Mayes and Pini, 2010; Pini
et al., 2010a). He has been portrayed as struggling against poor pay and
conditions, as having a heightened sense of class consciousness, and a rebel-
liousness embedded in a concern with redressing exploitative working con-
ditions. Across disparate contexts, including Australia, the types of positive
characteristics and dispositions for which the miner has been idealised has
seen him elevated as a representative figure of the nation (Pini and Mayes,
2013a, 2013b; Stratton, 2006).
It is against these historical imaginings of the Australian nation and the
working-class man that the most recent iteration of the figure of ‘the miner’,
that is, the CUB, emerges. Debates over the CUB are thus part of broader
struggles over identity which have become embedded in changing social,
political and economic narratives. Even those changes most readily identi-
fied with the specifics of ‘the (current resources) boom’ are noteworthy.
These include the demand for resource sector labour, which has fostered
comparatively high salaries for the highly demarcated sector of the working
class who have the skills and capital required to be employed in mining
(Goodman and Worth, 2008). Equally, the boom has been problematic for
other sectors of the economy (e.g. manufacturing), as well as escalating the
cost of living for all, including the majority of Australian employees not
working in mining but in the service sector (Mitchell and Bill, 2006).
Meanwhile, the mining sector has seen a decline of union membership and
a transfer in the employment relationship from collectivism to individual-
ism, as well as a shift to the use of temporary and contract labour (Pini and
Mayes, 2011). The mining industry has also moved largely to fly-in fly-out
(FIFO) operations, which involve mine employees working in relatively
remote locations, where food and lodging are often provided for them at
the work site, and where schedules dictate a fixed number of days on-site
followed by a fixed number of days at home (McDonald et al., 2012).
The dominant tropes about the ‘mining man’ discussed above have not
been completely erased in representations of the CUB, as illustrated in a
2011 article in the Australian Financial Review. In the article, journalist
Deirdre Macken (2011: 40–1) identifies ‘new tribes’ of Australians. Along
with ‘Toddlers with Tablets’, ‘Boomer Athletes’, and ‘Smiley Farmers’4 are
‘Bogan Miners’. She recognises that the label is not particularly ‘fair’ as
‘Bogans are not all miners’ but the ensuing text, along with the accompany-
260  Journal of Sociology 49(2-3)

ing cartoon, suggests otherwise. The man is dressed in King Gees,5 Jackie
Howe6 singlet, and steel-capped boots, and wears a hard hat with helmet
light. He stands with stubbie7-in-hand in front of what is perhaps the most
ubiquitous CUB signifier – the ute.8 In an acknowledgement of the reso-
nance of the figure of ‘the miner’ in the Australian psyche, Macken writes:
‘The Aussie miner might have been turned into a Bogan by big incomes but
he’s always been part of our national character’ (Macken, 2011: 42). Despite
this assertion, it is precisely the incomes of miners which render them prob-
lematic as a representational figure of working class/nation. Macken’s
(2011) own ambivalence about the figure of the CUB is evident as she charts
similar territory as others in contrasting the CUB’s economic capital against
their assumed lack of institutional cultural capital. Thus she catalogues the
wages of mine employees and notes the disparity between these earnings and
those of ‘arts professionals’ and further asserts, ‘They’re getting more than
their teacher ever thought they’d earn and they’re spending it now.’ This
emphasis on a lack of cultural capital, set in opposition to the prevalence of
economic capital, underpins the majority of texts. Illustrative is the follow-
ing response to one iteration of Jimmy Dinnison’s story:
Ticks me off that I busted my guts at Uni for actual degrees and studied my rear
off at school while this clown gets a free ride by being a dim bulb dropkick high
school dropout reject who can barely tie his shoelaces. Wait till the boom is
over.… A sad day when some cretin whose school years [were wasted] and gets
rewarded for his efforts while the rest of us who busted our guts and struggled
and fought to be somebody, get rewarded by being taxed to the hilt and job
scarcity/insecurity. (Thomson, 2011)

The posting reveals the vitriol directed at the CUB, and the sense conveyed
in this vitriol that ‘the game’ – Bourdieu’s commonly engaged metaphor –
has delivered incorrect/or unfair results to players. Like all of us, the poster
is engaged in the ‘games of society’ (Bourdieu, 1986: 241) and, as such, tells
us that he has ‘struggled and fought’ with the aim of ‘rewards’. That is, he
strategically invested time and other resources in obtaining valuable cul-
tural capital in the form of educational credentials, but there is no (immedi-
ate) conversion into economic capital. In contrast, there is the CUB, whose
habitus allows no ‘feel for the game’ to attain equivalent cultural capital,
but despite this, the CUB is prospering economically (Bourdieu, 1998: 98).
The shifting of the rules of the game or potential loss of the game expressed
by the above poster may, as he recognises, be rectified when the resource
boom ends. As a consequence, it is a time gleefully anticipated by many who
express a loathing for the CUB.
The distinctions drawn between the CUB’s economic capital (as mani-
fest in the reported salary of Jimmy Dinnison) and the CUB’s attributed
impoverished cultural capital are often underpinned by both spatial
imaginaries and by discourses of morality. In terms of the former, the CUB
is associated largely with the states of Western Australia and Queensland.
 Pini & Previte: Bourdieu, the boom and cashed-up Bogans  261

This not only indicates that the majority of the nation’s mining operations
are located in these locations, but also represents the way class designa-
tions are spatialised (Gidley and Rooke, 2010). CUBs occupy a range
of specific places beyond particular states, such as the outer suburbs,
McMansions and gated communities. Along with the geographic markers
used to characterize the CUB are discourses of morality which may either
be implicit in texts (e.g. in relation to terms such as ‘rewards, ‘waste’,
‘struggles’ as above), but equally often rendered explicit as the following
exemplifies:
I just do not believe people doing that job deserve $800 a day and it is not like
he has skills as a doctor, teacher etc. Like I said it is disgusting…It’s about prin-
ciples and morals which a lot of people have lost through greed or whatever.
(Thomson, 2011)

Woodward (2001: 131) notes that in Bourdieu’s (1984) ‘model of taste and
aesthetic judgement, morality and ethics play an insignificant part in strat-
egies of distinction’. However, subsequent theorising on class relations that
critically engages Bourdieu, emphasises the importance of morality in the
process of establishing and mobilising cultural categories of distinction
(e.g. Lamont, 1992; Sayer, 2005; Skeggs, 2005a). Collectively, this work
exposes the way morality is invoked to create classed boundaries, and to
provide a rationale for class-based inclusions and exclusions. This is echoed
in representations of the CUB, not only to differentiate the CUB from the
middle class but also to differentiate the CUB as ‘other’ to a more respect-
able ‘working class’, who are variously named ‘traditional Bogans’, ‘stereo-
typical Bogans’, ‘genuine Bogans’, ‘plain Bogans’, ‘good old Bogans’ and
‘old school Bogans’, in opposition to CUBs or synonyms such as ‘aspira-
tional Bogans’, ‘postmodern Bogans’, ‘new age Bogans’, ‘Bogan made good’
(BMG) or ‘upwardly mobile Bogans’. For example, one poster celebrates
the ‘old school Bogan’ who ‘stood for something’, and was intent on ‘chal-
lenging the middle-class order’ and, in contrast to the CUB ‘looked on
consumerist shit with absolute disgust’. In this process, ‘the Bogan’ is reha-
bilitated from a long history of vilification to become a figure of decency,
propriety and morality while working-class culture is appropriated as a
‘resource; fixed, fragmented and plundered for elements for others to
authorise themselves through’ (Skeggs, 2005b: 66). This is revealed in a
post to the website, Larvatus Prodeo, where a contributor repeats the
well-rehearsed mantra that the poor working class has no culture9 before
turning to criticise the CUB:
Although there has always been plenty of jokes about working class vulgarity,
or pretension, that was a bit cruel, because the poor working class didn’t have
the opportunity to be much different, and the wealth differential made for a
real power imbalance. But Cashed-up Bogans are fair game. They have the
wealth, but not only do they prefer glittery toys, slobbiness and tasteless, trashy
“fashions” – they’re proud of it! (comment XX on Bahnisch, 2011)
262  Journal of Sociology 49(2-3)

The final statement, ‘They’re proud of it!’ introduces another pervasive

theme in negative representations of the CUB’s lack of cultural capital. That
is, they do not express an appropriate sense of inferiority in their dealings
with the middle class. It may be this presumed refusal to acknowledge the
middle-class habitus as superior and one’s own as inferior that explains the
ferocity of some posts. In other words, what Bourdieu (1984: 56) labels the
violence of ‘aesthetic intolerance’ may be magnified for a group not demon-
strating imitative behaviours or shame and deferential dispositions in terms
of their supposed lack of appropriate capitals. As the following section will
argue, this includes not only social, cultural and symbolic capital, but also
spiritual and environmental capital.

Representations of the CUB and struggles over

new forms of cultural capital: spiritual and
environmental capital
Some scholars have extended Bourdieu’s rendering of terms such as ‘cultural
capital’ to encompass new arenas of taste and competence (e.g. information
capital; see Emmison and Frow, 1998) and/or suggest new modes of capital
that are important to creating and sustaining contemporary social hierar-
chies (e.g. emotional capital; see Reay, 2004a). In examining the CUB texts
we turned to this literature, particularly that which has identified ‘spiritual’
and ‘environmental’ capital – two types of capital that emerged as signifi-
cant in definitions and characterisations of the CUB.
Theoretical discussions about spiritual capital began with the notion of
‘religious capital’ which Iannaccone (1990: 299) defines as the ‘skills and
experiences specific to one’s religion, including religious knowledge, famil-
iarity with church ritual and doctrine, and friendships with fellow worship-
ers’. While building on this and other contributions (e.g. Stark and Finke
2000), Verter (2003) coined the term ‘spiritual capital’ to designate a mode
of capital not necessarily connected to hierarchical institutional religion,
but which was more individualistic and personal. He views spiritual capital
as ‘a form of cultural capital’ which, like other forms of cultural capital, can
be transacted for other forms of capital. Again, however, this is dependent
upon hierarchical struggles for legitimacy and value (Verter, 2003: 158).
Such struggles for legitimacy and value around the CUB occur as they are
described as ‘spiritually undernourished’ largely because they have ‘too
much’ economic capital. A website, for example, documents ‘Adam’s story’
which is one of significant earnings, drug and alcohol abuse, and a relation-
ship background. We are informed that this is a trajectory that is ‘a common
one among Western Australia’s new rich, the army of workers in our boom-
ing mining industry’. Despite one lapse when he ‘started working again in
the mining industry’, Adam has and is now clean with a ‘new spiritual side
and new found emotions’.10
 Pini & Previte: Bourdieu, the boom and cashed-up Bogans  263

In explaining the notion of ‘spiritual capital’, Verter (2003) turns to the

three modes of cultural capital as outlined by Bourdieu. The different forms
of spiritual capital, that is, as embodied state, as an objectified state and as
an institutional state, are all seen as lacking in the CUB. Typically, as with
Adam’s story, the CUB is largely depicted as having no interest in any form
of spiritual capital. On the occasions when the CUB is associated with
spirituality, it is of the wrong kind (e.g. a Buddhist statue from K-mart),
producing a lack of embodied and institutional spiritual capital that renders
any purchased spiritual objects meaningless as the following indicates:
The female bogan is then able to experience an increased sense of affiliation with
thousands of years of leaning, sacrifice and suffering, conveniently distilled into
a domestic decoration that will go well with the new cushions in the Grand
Sitting Area. Fortunately for the household, the female does not expect the rest
of the family to understand the philosophy behind the iconography, largely
because she doesn’t either.11

A further demonstration of the connection between the CUB and a lack of

spirituality, as well as the problematising of the CUB’s economic capital as
inherently incompatible with spirituality, entails a posting to a newsgroup
for orthopaedic surgeons. The discussion thread, which began around
cricket, morphed into musings about the proliferation of tattoos in contem-
porary Australia with one contributor contending:
We now see a generation of people who have never read a book, gone to church
or had any exposure to the Judeo/Christian liberal democratic values that under-
pin western civilization. These uneducated Cashed-up Bogans have no sense of
cultural identity or spirituality so they steal from other cultures – hence the tatts.
These people worship money and bling. They have no values, only money.12

The CUB is inherently superficial – only able to ‘steal’ aspects of spirituality

in a piecemeal fashion and then embellish their already problematic classed
body with a tattoo. Meanwhile, middle-class spiritual capital is associated
with authenticity. It is manifest in institutional churches or at least a knowl-
edge and understanding of the traditions and background of the religions of
such churches. Above all, while the CUB’s spiritual dispositions and prefer-
ences are judged as inferior and wrong, those of the middle class are ‘mis-
recognised as natural attributes, rather than socially constructed ones’, and
are thus afforded privilege and prestige (Verter, 2003: 169).
Just as the CUB is castigated for lacking spiritual capital, so too are they
attacked for what is characterised as a deficiency of ‘environmental capital’.
The notion of a type of resource/asset connected to the environment, which
is convertible with other forms of capital, is understood by Karol and Gale
(2004: 5) as consisting of ‘primarily knowledge about the environment’,
which, if accumulated, can allow one to ‘adapt to a habitus of sustainabil-
ity’. In comparison, Johnson and Clisby (2009) offer a more useful perspec-
tive that attends to the dynamic social processes by which Bourdieu’s
264  Journal of Sociology 49(2-3)

capitals are acquired, transmitted and valued. They write that environmen-
tal capital includes ‘the social values associated with talking and acting in
ways deemed to be environmentalist, the processes through which that talk
and action are recognized as legitimate and the power and prestige such talk
and action accrues’ (Johnson and Clisby, 2009: 173).
It is perhaps not surprising, given the nature of mining and the highly
contested relationship between mining and the environment, that CUB
representations would focus on their environmental knowledge and prac-
tices. However, the uneasy relationship between the CUB and the environ-
ment is pronounced in representations of the CUB’s life well beyond the
workplace. This is evident in the following 2011 post in response to the
Boganomics blog:
The other classic thing to remember is the complete disregard for the environ-
ment. Forget carbon emissions from the coal mine where all the lolly comes from.
These are the people who leave Maxtreme bottles and cans everywhere at the
lake or beach, rip up fire trails13 in the wet so they can’t be used, leave fishing
tackle everywhere, chuck confetti round at the slightest excuse, shoot native
wildlife if they can’t find pigs, release pigs into the wild etc. That’s just the tip of
the (melting?) iceberg.14
The above poster’s suggestion that the CUB is completely lacking in envi-
ronmental capital is challenged elsewhere, such as on the thingsboganslike
website. It suggests that CUBs may have certain environmental knowledge
and engage certain environmental practices, but, like their spiritual disposi-
tions, these are derivative, misplaced and superficial. This is a group that is
said to have garnered their environmental politics from celebrities, and their
environmental knowledge from viewing ‘Al Pacino’s’15 An Inconvenient
Truth, while their environmental action has been limited to supporting
dubious carbon offset tree planting schemes.
Though the above post does not mention it, a pervasive subject in discus-
sions of the CUBs’ environmental capital is consumption. In a wide range
of texts, the CUB’s consumption practices are derided for being excessive
and vulgar. While this continues a long tradition of the demonising of
working-class culture (Walkerdine 1997), a new development is to link this
to a lack of environmental capital. The types of cars and houses bought,
along with particular leisure items purchased (boats and jet skis) are all
ridiculed for a lack of environmental credentials. Why the consumption
desires and practices of elites, which may also be environmentally detrimen-
tal (e.g. frequent travel overseas and second homes) are not negatively
evaluated in the same manner, is explained by Lawler (2000: 121). He
draws on Bourdieu (1984) to explain that ‘tasteful’, middle-class consumer
goods ‘can be coded as hardly material at all’.
As with other negative characteristics attributed to the CUB, those per-
taining to the environment are put forward to back up broader narratives
of decline in Australian society. Thus, the CUB is presented as illustrative of
 Pini & Previte: Bourdieu, the boom and cashed-up Bogans  265

the lack of environmental capacity and concern among Australians. This

was given artistic form in an exhibition ‘Bogan Proof Fence’ at the
Substation Gallery in Melbourne, which had, as a centerpiece, a scale
replica of an Holden torn apart and full of cigarette butts (Lee, 2011).
The oversized ashtray was dedicated to the CUB. The CUB was therefore
not just to be seen as polluter of the environment, but of the nation itself.

Conclusion
In this article, we have engaged with debates about the appositeness of
Bourdieu’s theories for discussion of the CUB in a different national con-
text to explore Skeggs’ (2006) assertion that Bourdieu’s theorising on class
and culture may not be germane to a study of Australia, where economic
capital is likely to be valued over cultural capital. In mapping the CUBs’
access to different types of capital, and how this positions them in social
space, we demonstrated that a ‘classed relation to the aesthetic’ (Bourdieu,
1984: 56), and indeed, ‘disgust’ as the inverse of the aesthetic (see Lawler,
2005: 440), are critical to generating and defining ways of being in con-
temporary Australia. Even though CUBs may have a volume of economic
capital, they lack the types of cultural competences and skills legitimated
by the middle class to such an extent that they are unable to enhance their
social status as a result of their material success. The types of cultural
resources referenced in the textual material we examined included those
well documented by Bourdieu (1984), such as a formal tertiary education
and engagement in reading. However, it is notable that new forms of cul-
tural capital are emerging in Australia to differentiate class factions,
including spiritual and environmental capital.
As our analysis demonstrates, while the ‘culture quotient measure of
class’, which Skeggs (2006) writes is so important in Britain, is constantly
invoked in characterisations of the CUB, this does not suggest that tradi-
tionally defined high/low culture distinctions are always relevant in
Australia. Indeed, in reviewing the ‘career highlights’ of the concept of cul-
tural capital, Bennett and Silva (2011: 432) report that the types of aesthetic
dispositions that Bourdieu used to characterize French class factions have
not been evident in subsequent research across disparate contexts, including
Australia. Across the texts analysed, we found only one reference locating
the CUB against what is classified as ‘high culture’ (that is, opera and the-
atre). In fact, it was clear that the CUB and the CUB casualties, such as
Adam, share many cultural practices with non-CUB Australians, but under-
take them differently. Mention was made, for example, of the CUB acting
inappropriately at cricket matches (swearing, racism, drinking) while the
poster sought to ‘enjoy the finer points of the game’. In another discussion,
attention focused on the beer-drinking habits of the CUB as inappropriate.
266  Journal of Sociology 49(2-3)

It was not beer drinking or going to the pub that were cause for ridicule,
but the type of beer drunk and the disposition while at the pub. This would
suggest that what is at stake in terms of status is not necessarily which
cultural practice one undertakes, but how one undertakes it.
The struggles over cultural capital that imbue representations of the CUB
are thus complex and often nuanced. They are also, as the cricket and beer
drinking references demonstrate, strongly masculinised. Media reports have
suggested that some working-class women have been able to convert tradi-
tional feminised dispositions into cultural capital to obtain relatively lucra-
tive work as dump truck drivers on mine sites. Employers assert that
women’s ‘natural’ sense of caution and attention to cleanliness, along with
their caring and gentle ‘natures’, mean fewer accidents and lower vehicle
replacement costs (Corby, 2007; Goffet 2012; Kock and Walker, 2010).
This shift, however, appears not to have feminised the CUB narrative, dem-
onstrating that imaginaries of the working class remain deeply masculine
and unequivocally white.16 The intense symbolic struggles over identity that
manifest themselves in representations of the CUB thus reveal a project that
is both racialised and gendered, highlighting the arguments by Skeggs
(2006) and Bennett and Silva (2011) that clarifying how cultural capital is
differentiated not just by class, but also by ethnicity and gender, remains an
important theoretical project.
A key limitation of this analysis is that it does not include the voices
and perspectives of those marked as CUBs and/or those who identify as
CUBs. Apart from Jimmy Dinnison, whose views were, of course, medi-
ated by journalists, we located only one other text in which a person
named themselves as a CUB and expressed an opinion about the types of
issues raised in this article. This was a posting to the thingsboganslike
website on the question of ‘What is a Bogan today?’ The contributor said
they found the discussion and its largely derogatory comments ‘hilarious’
and then explained that s/he worked in mining as did a son and son-in-
law, that they made a ‘fortune’, which they spent on overseas holidays,
boats and ‘big fuel guzzling 4WDs that are great in the city for barging all
the wankers in eco cars out of the way’. The parting comment was, ‘I say
to anyone with any drive to join in and go for it.’ This contribution con-
trasts markedly with other research we have undertaken that has docu-
mented the sense of frustration, sadness and disempowerment of those
marked as CUBs (Pini et al., 2010a, 2010b). There is consequently much
more that needs to be known about CUBs, including the extent to which
such an identity is taken up, embraced or resisted. For this to occur ‘the
boom’ will need to be explored beyond the disciplinary fields of politics
and industrial relations, and will need to be examined by Australian soci-
ologists not simply as an economic phenomenon but one that is also
fundamentally social and cultural.
 Pini & Previte: Bourdieu, the boom and cashed-up Bogans  267

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, com-
mercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes
  1 We have used inverted commas around our first use of the terms ‘CUB’ and
‘cashed-up Bogan’ to signify their constructed and contested nature. In the
interests of the readability of the text however, we have not continued this
throughout.
  2 We draw on texts from January 2010 up to and including February 2012. These
include a variety of online sites (e.g. parenting, stock broking, real estate, travel
sites) as well as a large corpus of online and print media. Online postings
responding to reports about CUBs were also included in the analysis. For
example, a post by Mark Bahnisch (2011) on the Larvatus Prodeo website
pointing readers to a story about Bogans by Humphreys (2011) elicited 211
posts, while the story by Beth resulted in an additional 62 posts. The use of
public texts to understand contemporary class relations has been well substan-
tiated in the literature (see, for example, McRobbie, 2009; Tyler, 2008). We
used both online and offline sources – in fact, any publicly available material in
which the CUB was referenced, as a means to ‘understand the world as it is
revealed in the everyday experiences, encounters and utterances recorded in
written texts’ (Cloke et al., 2004: 312). We began with a detailed and close
reading of the texts, and coding them using both emic codes (that is, those aris-
ing from the texts themselves) and etic codes (that is, those derived from the
theory and literature on cultural studies of class). Relationships between these
codes were then identified and attention given to issues such as potential gaps
and/or incongruities along with what was unique, different and/or similar.
  3 Skeggs (2004: 143) discusses the study in her book Class, Self, Culture.
  4 The group ‘Toddlers with Tablets’ was used to refer to young children’s engage-
ment with new technologies while ‘Boomer Athletes’ grouped Baby Boomers
(born 1946 to 1964) who are focused on fitness. ‘Smiley Farmers’ was used to
categorise the farmers who are currently enjoying boom prices for a range of
commodity groups.
  5 King-Gee is a well known Australian brand of work-wear.
  6 Jack ‘Jackie’ Howe (26 July 1861 (?) – 21 July 1920) was a legendary Australian
sheep shearer at the end of the 19th century. He shot to fame in pre-Federation
Australia in 1892 when he broke the daily and weekly shearing records across
the colonies. Jackie Howe became the name given to navy blue singlet tops.
According to legend this is what Howe was wearing the day he broke the
record.
 7 The Australian 375 ml short glass bottle used for beer is generally called a
stubby.
  8 ‘Ute’ is a Australian colloquialism for utility vehicle.
  9 It is notable that this comment is suggestive of Bourdieu’s claim that working-
class culture is tied to necessity (see Bennett, 2011 for a detailed critique of this
claim).
10 Story found on a website in 2012 that is no longer operative.
11 See: http://thingsboganslike.com/tag/battlers/
12 See: www.noigroup.com/Marketing/last_months_march11.pdf
13 A fire trail is a rural road built specifically for the purpose of access for fire
management purposes.
268  Journal of Sociology 49(2-3)

14 See: www.macrobusiness.com.au/2011/02/boganomics/
15 The CUB is oblivious to mistaking Al Pacino to Al Gore.
16 In a search of media representations of the broader term ‘Bogan’ over a period
going back to 2006 to the present we elicited only a single reference to
Indigeneity. This was from an article in The Monthly by Anne Funder (2007) in
which she reports on a writers’ festival panel investigating the Bogan at which
Indigenous poet Samuel Wagan Watson referred to himself as an ‘Abo-gan’.

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Biographical notes
Barbara Pini is a professor in the School of Humanities at Griffith
University. Recent publications include Gender and Rurality (Routledge,
2011) with Lia Bryant, and the edited collections Sexuality, Rurality and
Geography (Lexington Books, 2012) with Andrew Gorman-Murray and
Lia Bryant, and Men, Masculinities and Methodologies (Palgrave, 2013)
with Bob Peace. Address: Griffith University, 170 Kessels Rd Nathan QLD
4111, Australia. [email: b.pini@griffith.edu.au]

Josephine Previte, PhD, is a lecturer in the UQ Business School at the

University of Queensland. Her research focuses on social marketing and a
critical marketing analysis of gender, technology and marketplace behav-
iours. Her research has appeared in Journal of Marketing Management,
European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector
Marketing and Journal of Macromarketing.