Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of TasteNo judgement of taste is innocent - we are all snobs. Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction brilliantly illuminates the social pretentions of the middle classes in the modern world, focusing on the tastes and preferences of the French bourgeoisie. First published in 1979, the book is at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind. In the course of everyday life we constantly choose between what we find aesthetically pleasing, and what we consider tacky, merely trendy, or ugly. Taste is not pure. Bourdieu demonstrates that our different aesthetic choices are all distinctions - that is, choices made in opposition to those made by other classes. This fascinating work argues that the social world 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. |
Contents
Part II The Economy of Practices
| 91 |
Part III Class Tastes and LifeStyles
| 255 |
Classes and Classifications | 468 |
Towards a Vulgar Critique of Pure Critiques | 487 |
Appendix 1 Some
Reflections on the Method | 503 |
Appendix 2
Complementary Sources | 521 |
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Common terms and phrases
agrégation analysis artistic autodidact avant-garde baccalauréat beautiful BEPC boulevard theatre Bourdieu bourgeois choice class fraction classical clerical workers commercial employers competence constituted craftsmen cultural capital defined discourse distinction dominant class dominated fractions economic capital educational capital educational system effect especially ethical example expressed fact field France Françoise Hardy function Giscard grandes écoles groups habitus hierarchy IFOP intellectual interest judgements junior labour Le Figaro Le Nouvel Observateur legitimate culture less life-style logic manual workers means object occupations one’s opinion opposition painting Paris particular percent ofthe petite bourgeoisie pleasure political popular position practices primary teachers principles production professions properties proportion qualifications question refusal relation relationship Salvatore Giuliano scholastic secondary senior executives sense shopkeepers social capital social classes social origin social space social world specific structure struggle survey symbolic taste tends theatre things tion trajectory Well-Tempered Clavier women working-class