Distinction at Work: Status Practices in A Community Production Environment

While it is well established that bureaucratic organizations channel status competitions into formal hierarchies, status competitions in nonhierarchical organizational contexts are less well understood. Using a Bourdieusian analysis of practices of status distinction, we analyze the case of an organization that is structurally flat, in order to investigate how status hierarchies and ascribed inequalities are produced and reproduced in a context where formal hierarchy is absent. Our research is based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork at a “makerspace,” an aspirational egalitarian organization that shares tools and space. We find that the absence of formal hierarchy resulted in high levels of informal status competition and an emphasis on cultural capital as a means of gaining status.