I just became acquainted with Pierre Bourdieu’s 1979 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, published by of all people MIT Press. While I no longer have much patience for the tortuous language of a certain genre of postmodern French intellectuals, Bourdieu’s observations, drawn from the empirical study of 1960’s French society, are intriguing.
Our preferences regarding cultural phenomena — art, music, clothing styles, other consumer goods — are not simply matters of personal preference but are shaped by, and become signifiers of, our social position. Class status and social inequality are maintained by generational transmission of one’s cultural capital. Cultural institutions such as museums and schools perpetuate inequalities by favoring certain forms of cultural capital over others. Your sense that you are a person of good taste is reinforced by, and becomes a powerful reinforcer of, your sense of social belonging, largely unconsciously.
This wonderful article draws out the implications to the succeeding decades’ more modern culture through the author’s introspection on their own tastes, while skewering the obfuscating complexity of the discourse (itself a cultural signifier) and recasting the argument in plain English.
