When Fields Are Destabilized: Mobilizing Gendered Capital to Resolve Hysteresis

Abstract

In the fight for legitimacy, understanding the rules of status games is critical. This idea holds true in the wedding marketplace. However, when legalization of marriage for same-sex couples disrupted the binary wedding script, the rules of the game became less clear to consumers. Couples sometimes found their gendered bodies, roles, and expressions were out of sync with the evolving script of a destabilized wedding field, thus raising legitimacy questions. This situation is defined as hysteresis—meaning delays in the realignment between habitus and the field. Hysteresis results in consumers’ disorientation about what forms of capital are valued as well as perceived absences of materials or recognition from the market. This study investigates consumers’ attempts to mobilize gendered capital to resolve hysteresis through realignment of habitus and the script. Grounded in a Bourdieuian field-level analysis of depth interviews with 30 same-sex couples and ethnographic observation in the wedding field, four consumption alignment strategies are identified that consumers leverage to address hysteresis: confronting, masking, collaborating, and experimenting. Consumers’ variations in gendered capital explain which consumption alignment strategies they use, with different possibilities for updating habitus and expanding the script. Throughout this process, consumers’ moral judgments hinder this pursuit.