The substantialist mode of thought, which characterizes common sense-and racism-and which is inclined to treat the activities and preferences specific to certain individuals or groups in a society at a certain moment as if they have substantial properties, inscribed once and for all in a kind of essence, leads to the same mistakes, whether one is comparing different societies or successive periods in the same society. One could thus consider the fact that, for example, tennis or even golf is not nowadays as exclusively associated with dominant positions as in the past, or that the noble sports, such as riding or fencing, are no longer specific to nobility as they originally were (this is also the case for martial arts in Japan), as a refutation of the proposed model [...] An initially aristocratic practice can be given up by the aristocracy, and this is most often the case when this practice is adopted by a growing fraction of the bourgeoisie or petit-bourgeoisie, or even the lower classes (this is what happened in France to boxing, which was enthusiastically practiced by aristocrats at the end of the nineteenth century); conversely, an initially lower-class practice can sometimes be taken up by nobles. In short, one has to avoid turning into necessary and intrinsic properties of some group (nobility, samurai, as well as workers or employees) the properties which rest with this group at a given moment because of its position in a definite social space and in a definite state of the supply of possible goods and practices. Thus, at every moment of each society, one has to deal with a set of social positions which is bound by a relation of homology to a set of activities (the practice of playing golf or the piano) or of goods (a second home or a master painting) that are also characterized relationally.
Bourdieu P (1991) First Lecture. Social Space and Symbolic Space: Introduction to a Japanese Reading of Distinction. Poetics Today 12(4): 630
