bourdieu distinction a social critique of the judgement of taste

Consider Clement Greenberg's distinction between kitsch and avant-garde. 'Tasteful' works in this tradition are non-sensical to someone who has not learned this code, and betray a philistine's inferiority to the world of high art, which is nested within the elite power structure, proving the person unworthy of joining its ranks and justifying his/her low social position.Ĭomparing Bourdieu's class-based analysis of taste-so backed up with sociological data-with other Marxist writings on culture and media is illuminating.

This taste is closely related to educational capital and to social origin. Bourdieu plays the empiricist to Kant's disinterested philosopher deducing notions of taste within his own mind, pointing to how a society-dependent concept like aesthetic taste is inextricably tied to the realities of a class-based industrial society and its means of reproducing itself.įor Bourdieu, 'good taste' is the product of an expensive education from elite, stratification-reinforcing institutions, and is indicative of a familiarity with the story of art history and the ability to recognize allusions and advancements within that history. Bourdieu uses his training in sociology to illustrate how this works, actually studying who has access to artistic education and who does not, and what position these people occupy within society with statistical analysis. Bourdieu instead defines taste as a product of history reproduced by education, used to distinguish a society‘s elite from the rest of the masses and tautologically provide proof of its superiority. The subtitle of this book tips you off explicitly to what's under attack: The Kantian model of the notion of taste being universally accessible to any rational mind provided it positions itself to appreciate beauty within a state of disinterestedness. His book preceding The State Nobility, and the focus of my article annotation, is entitled Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. His book The State Nobility argues that the grand ecoles and universities in France not only train the elite who run and enjoy the greatest spoils of society, but create a funneling system that uses enough meritocratic means of distinction to lend justification and legitimatization to this class.

One of the main themes French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu grapples with in his large ouevre is how advanced industrial and post-industrial societies produce, reinforce, and justify a social elite.

Bourdieu distinction a social critique of the judgement of taste