Distinction (book)
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Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement, 1979) by Pierre Bourdieu, is a sociological report about the state of French culture, based upon the author's empirical research from 1963 until 1968. The English translation was published in 1984, and, in 1998, the International Sociological Association voted Distinction as an important book of sociology published in the 20th century.[1]
Summary
As a social critique of the judgements of taste, Distinction (1979) proposes that people with much
The social inequality created by the limitations of their habitus (mental attitudes, personal habits, and skills) renders people with little cultural capital the social inferiors of the ruling class. Because they lack the superior education (cultural knowledge) needed to describe, appreciate, and enjoy the aesthetics of a work of art, 'working-class people expect objects to fulfil a function' as practical entertainment and mental diversion, whilst middle-class and upper-class people passively enjoy an objet d'art as a work of art, by way of the gaze of aesthetic appreciation.[2]
The acceptance of socially dominant forms of taste is a type of
Theory
In the development of social-class identity, the aesthetic choices that people make for themselves also create social-class factions, which are in-groups that distance members of a social class from each other and from other social classes. The
The cultural tastes of the ruling class (communicated through the dominant ideology) determine what is good taste and what is bad taste for the middle class and for the working class. Therefore, the concept of good taste is an example of cultural hegemony, of how a ruling class exercise social control by their possession of the types of capital (social capital, economic capital, cultural capital) that ensure the social reproduction and the cultural reproduction of themselves, as a ruling class. Because persons are taught their cultural tastes in childhood, a person's taste in culture is internalized to their personality, and identify his or her origin in a given social class, which might or might not impede upward social mobility.
Methodology
As researchers, Bourdieu and the statistician Salah Bouhedja applied geometric data analysis, as part of a multiple correspondence analysis, of "the complete system of [social] relations that make up the true principle of the force and form specific to the effects recorded in such and such correlation" using correspondence analysis of the data from two surveys: (i) the "Kodak survey" (1963) and (ii) the "Taste survey" (1967), and subsets of data from the "dominant classes" and from the "petite-bourgeoisie".[6]
Reception
In 1998, the International Sociological Association voted Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979) an important book of 20th-century sociology, like The Civilizing Process (1939), by Norbert Elias and The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (1966), by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann.[1]
References
- ^ a b "ISA - International Sociological Association: Books of the Century". International Sociological Association. 1998. Retrieved 25 July 2012.
- ISBN 0-674-21277-0.
- ^ Bourdieu, Pierre; Wacquant, Loic (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Polity Press. p. 167.
- ISBN 0-674-21277-0.
- ^ Distinction, Bourdieu 1984 p. 56.
- ISBN 978-1-4020-9450-7.
External links
- Petri Liukkonen. "Pierre Bourdieu". Books and Writers.
- Marxists.org