This chapter departs from the materialist-economic approach to class analysis and examines the formation of India's rural middle class from a perspective influenced by Pierre Bourdieu's approach to social classes. Bourdieu was concerned with symbolic representations, in the realms of culture, art, literature, science and language. However, it must be noted at the outset that although Bourdieu is a major theorist of class, his account of social classes is applied here differently to the way in which Marx and Weber's accounts were applied in Chapters 3 and 4. The fundamental difference arises from the fact that Bourdieu is critical of abstract conceptualisations, and his analyses of class are primarily drawn from empirical investigations and in relation to social practices. Bourdieu's approach is used in our analysis as a heuristic device, and not as a prescriptive definition of class membership. The chapter is arranged in four sections: the first examines Bourdieu's sociology and his approach to the study of social classes. The second section reviews existing scholarship on the urban middle class in India that is based on Bourdieu's approach to social classes. The third section suggests productive ways in which this sociology of class can be applied to the rural Indian context, prompted by a discussion of interior design and ‘living rooms’ in Rahatwade and Nandur.