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More About This Textbook
Overview
No judgement of taste is innocent. In a word, we are all snobs. Pierre Bourdieu brilliantly illuminates this situation of the middle class in the modern world. France's leading sociologist focusses here on the French bourgeoisie, its tastes and preferences. Distinction is at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind.
In the course of everyday life people constantly choose between what they find aesthetically pleasing and what they consider tacky, merely trendy, or ugly. Bourdieu bases his study on surveys that took into account the multitude of social factors that play a part in a Frenchperson's choice of clothing, furniture, leisure activities, dinner menus for guests, and many other matters of taste. What emerges from his analysis is that social snobbery is everywhere in the bourgeois world. The different aesthetic choices people make are all distinctions-that is, choices made in opposition to those made by other classes. Taste is not pure. Bourdieu finds a world of social meaning in the decision to order bouillabaisse, in our contemporary cult of thinness, in the "California sports" such as jogging and cross-country skiing. The social world, he argues, functions simultaneously as a system of power relations and as a symbolic system in which minute distinctions of taste become the basis for social judgement.
The topic of Bourdieu's book is a fascinating one: the strategies of social pretension are always curiously engaging. But the book is more than fascinating. It is a major contribution to current debates on the theory of culture and a challenge to the major theoretical schools in contemporary sociology.
Editorial Reviews
Commonweal
A book of extraordinary intelligence.
— Irving Louis Horowitz
Partisan Review
One of the more distinguished contributions to social theory and research in recent years...There is in this book an account of culture, and a methodology of its study, rich in implication for a diversity of fields of social research. The work in some ways redefines the whole scope of cultural studies.
— Anthony Giddens
Vogue
Bourdieu's analysis transcends the usual analysis of conspicuous consumption in two ways: by showing that specific judgments and chokes matter less than an esthetic outlook in general and by showing, moreover, that the acquisition of an esthetic outlook not only advertises upper-class prestige but helps to keep the lower orders in line. In other words, the esthetic world view serves as an instrument of domination. It serves the interests not merely of status but of power. It does this, according to Bourdieu, by emphasizing individuality, rivalry, and 'distinction' and by devaluing the well-being of society as a whole.
— Christopher Lasch
Product Details
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Table of Contents
Preface to the English-Language Edition
Introduction
PART I A SOCIAL CRITIQUE OF THE JUDGEMENT OF TASTE
1. The Aristocracy of Culture
The Titles of Cultural Nobility
Cultural Pedigree
PART II THE ECONOMY OF PRACTICES
2. The Social Space and Its Transformations
Class Condition and Social Conditioning
A Three-Dimensional Space
Reconversion Strategies
3. The Habitus and the Space of Life-Styles
The Homology between the Spaces
The Universes of Stylistic Possibles
4. The Dynamics of the Fields
The Correspondence between Goods Production and Taste Production
Symbolic Struggles
PART III CLASS TASTES AND LIFE-STYLES
5. The Sense of Distinction
The Modes of Appropriation of the Work of Art
The Variants of the Dominant Taste
The Mark of Time
Temporal and Spiritual Powers
6. Cultural Goodwill
Knowledge and Recognition
Education and the Autodidact
Slope and Thrust
The Variants of PetitBourgeois Taste
The Declining Petite Bourgeoisie
The Executant Petite Bourgeoisie
The New Petite Bourgeoisie
From Duty to the Fun Ethic
7. The Choice of the Necessary
The Taste for Necessity and the Principle of Conformity
The Effects of Domination
8. Culture and Politics
Selective Democracy
Status and Competence
The Right to Speak
Personal Opinion
The Modes of Production of Opinion
Dispossession and Misappropriation
Moral Order and Political Order
Class Habirus and Political Opinions
Supply and Demand
The Political Space
The Specific Effect of Trajectory
Political Language
Conclusion: Classes and Classifications
Embodied Social Structures
Knowledge without Concepts
Advantageous Attributions
The Classification Struggle
The Reality of Representation and the Representation of Reality
Postscript: Towards a 'Vulgar' Critique of 'Pure' Critiques
Disgust at the 'Facile'
The 'Taste of Reflection' and the 'Taste of Sense'
A Denied Social Relationship
Parerga and Paralipomena
The Pleasure of the Text
Appendices
1. Some Reflections on the Method
2. Complementary Sources
3. Statistical Data
4. Associations: A Parlour Game
Notes
Credits
Index