Disgust with excess and the production of a dominant ecology

While the ecologisation of bourgeois experiences of the world takes different forms in the upper left and upper right of social space, it comes up against the inertia of lifestyles on both sides. The members of the cultural bourgeoisie regret this misalignment between their ecological voluntarism and its practical translation, while those in the economic pole accept it as proof of their pragmatism. In both cases, these ecologisations, deemed imperfect, favour the formation, activation and updating of a reforming disposition that also attests to the moral and ideological proximity of these two class fractions over and above their contrasting lifestyles. Based on an analysis combining forty-four in-depth interviews and 1,984 questionnaires, this article seeks to understand how the moral integration of the bourgeoisie resists the dispersal of its members’ ecological ideas and practices. It shows that within the dominant classes, the social conditions do not exist to make the environmental issue a status marker capable of converting these differences in attitude into competition between their fractions. On the other hand, these conditions are apparent on the fringes of the petty bourgeoisie, where the reformist tendency becomes less central as the forms of sociability and politicisation more often lead to make ecology an issue of placement and social ranking.