| Summary: | Studies in sociology and political economy typically depend on a shared, problematic vision of social space; what I call the “separate spheres” model, which divides social space into discrete, quasi-geographical bounded domains labelled “culture”, “economy”, “politics” and so on. Where this “separate spheres” model underpins and informs theoretical or empirical work, it creates various analytical difficulties, including, historically, the treatment of culture as the derivative “effect” of other spheres. The recently emergent field of cultural economy attempts to remedy this deficiency in various ways, and while it succeeds in revaluing culture as a causal force itself, it fails to fully resolve the difficulties associated with the underlying map of social space. In this paper, I put forward a cultural materialist map of social space, which, drawing on and developing the work of Raymond Williams and Pierre Bourdieu, refuses this demarcation of social space into discrete bounded “spheres”, and offers a means of conceptualizing the causal power of the cultural without succumbing to idealism. Remaining resolutely attentive to the sociality and materiality of the world, this approach reaffirms the importance of the earlier “cultural studies” of Williams and Bourdieu to the new paradigm of cultural economy.
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