Bobo is a portmanteau word used to describe the socio-economic bourgeois-bohemian group in France, the French analogue to the English notion of the "champagne socialist". The geographer Christophe Guilluy has used the term to describe France's elite class, whom he accuses of being responsible for many of France's current problems. [1]
The term was introduced into the English language by the cultural commentator David Brooks to describe the 1990s descendants of the yuppies in the book Bobos in Paradise (2000). Brooks describes Bobos as "highly educated folk who have one foot in the bohemian world of creativity and another foot in the bourgeois realm of ambition and worldly success". [2] Brooks describes the relation between the two cultural groups in Paris starting in the 1820s when the Bourgeoisie had "displaced the aristocracy as the moving group in society" and the bohemians "really rose up" to express their disgust, expressed by Stendhal:
“Hatred of the bourgeoisie is the beginning of all virtues, and they make him want to weep and vomit at the same time.” [3] [4]
The two groups continued to coexist in a culture war for decades: the bohemians displaying contempt, loathing, etc. for their enemy, and the bourgeoisie ignoring the bohemians and embracing "useful, prosaic virtues: self-discipline, frugality, order, punctuality, moderation, industry, temperance, fidelity, and faith". [3] The
bourgeois were materialists and the bohemians were antimaterialists. The bourgeois were polite; the bohemians were raw. The bourgeois were career-oriented, so the bohemians were experience-oriented. The bourgeois pretended to be chaste, and the bohemians pretended to be promiscuous. [3]
In the 1960s, a sea change occurred, when bohemianism evolved (in the United States at least) from a fringe phenomenon of artists and writers, to a mass movement sometimes called the counterculture or Hippie movement. Their enemy was the Vietnam War and segregation, but also Bourgeois values, as expressed by author of The Making of the Counter Culture Theodore Roczak:
“The bourgeoisie ... is obsessed by greed. Its sex life is insipid and prudish. Its family patterns are debased. Its slavish conformities of dress and grooming are degrading. Its mercenary routinization of life is intolerable ...” [5] [3]
Brooks describes middle class conformists as finally paying attention to bohemians and reacting against them in the 1980s. "Yuppies" (a "sort of bourgeois on steroids") being a reaction against bohemianism, and conservative authors decrying the "self-indulgent nihilism" and social destructiveness of bohemianism. [3] Nonetheless, within time though the Counter Culture did not over throw capitalist culture it did have a significant cultural impact. By 2000, when Brooks was writing, "arty coffee shops", "gourmet bread stores", "vegetarian dog biscuits", "Basmati rice", and "all-natural hair colorings", that had previously been the domain of counterculture bohemians, had spread to conservative upper and upper middle class communities.
They’ve taken all the things that were from the ‘60s of interest to teenagers, like free love and nudity, and gotten rid of them, and kept all the things that are of interest to middle-aged hypochondriacs, like whole grains and fancy rice. [3]
Along with the generational influence of the counter culture, Capitalism evolved to produce an "information age", where "ideas and creativity are as important as finance capital and natural resources to producing wealth", and ideas and creativity is the world of bohemia. [3]
The bourgeoisie are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between peasantry and aristocracy. They are traditionally contrasted with the proletariat by their wealth, political power, and education, as well as their access to and control of cultural, social, and financial capital.
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores. A countercultural movement expresses the ethos and aspirations of a specific population during a well-defined era. When oppositional forces reach critical mass, countercultures can trigger dramatic cultural changes. Countercultures differ from subcultures.
Yuppie, short for "young urban professional" or "young upwardly-mobile professional", is a term coined in the early 1980s for a young professional person working in a city. The term is first attested in 1980, when it was used as a fairly neutral demographic label, but by the mid-to-late 1980s, when a "yuppie backlash" developed due to concerns over issues such as gentrification, some writers began using the term pejoratively.
The middle class refers to a class of people in the middle of a social hierarchy, often defined by occupation, income, education, or social status. The term has historically been associated with modernity, capitalism and political debate. Common definitions for the middle class range from the middle fifth of individuals on a nation's income ladder, to everyone but the poorest and wealthiest 20%. Theories like "Paradox of Interest" use decile groups and wealth distribution data to determine the size and wealth share of the middle class.
The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the intelligentsia consists of scholars, academics, teachers, journalists, and literary writers.
Bohemianism is a social and cultural movement that has, at its core, a way of life away from society's conventional norms and expectations. The term originates from the French bohème and spread to the English-speaking world. It was used to describe mid-19th-century non-traditional lifestyles, especially of artists, writers, journalists, musicians, and actors in major European cities.
In Marxist philosophy, cultural hegemony is the dominance of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who shape the culture of that society—the beliefs and explanations, perceptions, values, and mores—so that the worldview of the ruling class becomes the accepted cultural norm. As the universal dominant ideology, the ruling-class worldview misrepresents the social, political, and economic status quo as natural, inevitable, and perpetual social conditions that benefit every social class, rather than as artificial social constructs that benefit only the ruling class.
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There is a book by American conservative political commentator David Brooks. It was first published in 2000.
In Marxist philosophy, the term dominant ideology denotes the attitudes, beliefs, values, and morals shared by the majority of the people in a given society. As a mechanism of social control, the dominant ideology frames how the majority of the population thinks about the nature of society, their place in society, and their connection to a social class.
Petite bourgeoisie is a term that refers to a social class composed of semi-autonomous peasants and small-scale merchants. They are named as such because their politico-economic ideological stance in times of stability is reflective of the proper haute bourgeoisie. In regular times, the petite bourgeoisie seek to identify themselves with the haute bourgeoisie, whose bourgeois morality, conduct and lifestyle they aspire and strive to imitate.
Bobo may refer to:
The modern social structure of France is complex, but generally similar to that of other European countries. Traditional social classes still have some presence, with a large bourgeoisie and especially petite bourgeoisie, and an unusually large proportion, for modern Europe, of farming smallholders. All these groups, and the remaining industrial working class, have considerable political power, which they are able to flex when required.
The Pope's Children: Ireland's New Elite is a book by journalist and economist David McWilliams.
The 21st-century hipster is a subculture. Fashion is one of the major markers of hipster identity. Members of the subculture typically do not self-identify as hipsters, and the word hipster is often used as a pejorative for someone who is pretentious or overly concerned with appearing trendy.
Karl Marx's idea that the state can be divided into three subject areas: pre-capitalist states, states in the capitalist era and the state in post-capitalist society. Overlaying this is the fact that his own ideas about the state changed as he grew older, differing in his early pre-communist phase, the young Marx phase which predates the unsuccessful 1848 uprisings in Europe and in his later work.
Sorelianism is advocacy for or support of the ideology and thinking of Georges Sorel, a French revolutionary syndicalist. Sorelians oppose bourgeois democracy, the developments of the 18th century, the secular spirit, and the French Revolution, while supporting Classicism. A revisionist interpretation of Marxism, Sorel believed that the victory of the proletariat in class struggle could be achieved only through the power of myth and a general strike. To Sorel, the aftermath of class conflict would involve rejuvenation of both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Bildungsbürgertum is a social class that emerged in mid-18th-century Germany, as the educated social stratum of the bourgeoisie, men and women who had received an education based upon the metaphysical values of idealism and classical studies of the Graeco–Roman culture of Antiquity. In sociological contrast to the Kleinbürgertum, the petite bourgeoisie of Germany, the Bildungsbürgertum were the intelligentsia or the upper economic-stratum of the German bourgeoisie.
Bon chic, bon genre is an expression used in France to refer to a subculture of stylish members of the Parisian upper class. They are typically well-educated, well-connected, and descended from "old money" families, preferably with some aristocratic ancestry. The style combines certain fashionable tastes with the appearance of social respectability. The expression is sometimes shortened to BCBG.
"Bobo Brand" is an informal name used to refer to a product that is sold inexpensively under an unpopular brand name. These products are perceived as inferior to better-known brands. Though they are less expensive, they are often not lower quality.
Andreas Reckwitz is a German sociologist and cultural theorist. He is professor at the institute of social sciences at Humboldt University Berlin.