1 Schwarz / Cultures of Choice The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in The British Journal of Sociology, and is available online at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-4446.12305/full. © London School of Economics and Political Science. Cultures of Choice: Towards a sociology of choice as a cultural phenomenon Ori Schwarz Bar-Ilan University Abstract The article explores different ways to conceptualize the relationship between choice and culture. These two notions are often constructed as opposites: while sociologies of modernization (such as Giddens') portray a shift from cultural traditions to culturally disembedded choice, dispositional sociologies (such as Bourdieu's) uncover cultural determination as the hidden truth behind apparent choice. However, choice may be real and cultural simultaneously. Culture moulds choice not only by inculcating dispositions or shaping repertoires of alternatives, but also by offering culturally specific choice practices, ways of choosing embedded in meaning, normativity, and materiality; and by shaping attributions of choice in everyday life. By bringing together insights from rival schools, I portray an outline for a comparative cultural sociology of choice, and demonstrate its purchase while discussing the digitalization of choice; and cultural logics that shape choice attribution in ways opposing neoliberal trends. Keywords Bourdieu, choice, choosing techniques, consent, culture, digitalization, Giddens, neoliberalism, online dating, sociological theory Our everyday lives are densely populated with choices, or at least widely believed to be so. Countless moments in the lives of contemporary individuals are framed and experienced as choices: everyday customer choices between different brands of toothpaste or pasta at the supermarket; self-presentation choices such as what to wear today; autobiographical 'big' decisions such as whom to marry, where to live, and what occupational training to undertake; and moral choices, such as whether to sacrifice one's own good for one's family, or whether to obey unjust laws. Some of these decisions are made through formal calculation, others are the result of informal lengthy deliberations, and yet others are spontaneous and hardly reflexive, yet all are often framed as choices, as actors are perceived to freely choose among several viable options and commit themselves to a certain path of action. Choice is widely experienced as a ubiquitous dimension of human life in general and Western late-modern lives in particular. This ideology of choice is epitomized in Giddens' famous preposition that 'in post-traditional contexts, we have no choice but to choose how to be and how to act’ (Giddens 1994:54). While some sociologists celebrate the era of choice, others criticize this account. Trying to refute this 'ideology' of choice, they insist that what appears to be free reflexive choice is still informed and constrained by social structure; and that reflexivity and the capacity to act upon it are themselves unevenly distributed privileges (Adams 2003, Atkinson 2007, Bauman 2007; Hughes 2010). However, within these important debates on structure and agency, both parties relegate culture to a narrow range of roles. While the problem of choice has haunted sociology since its dawn, the answers usually offered fail to fully grasp choice's cultural dimension. This neglect is surprising since during the last 25 years the sociological mainstream has shifted away from structural or economic determinism towards a growing recognition of culture's role in shaping