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No 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.
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In a nutshell, the book describes how a person's taste is a product not just of their own innate desires, but is actually something that comes from that person's position in the social field. A central concept employed by Bordieu is that of 'habitus': this is essentially a distillation of our own objective social position, which fundamentally determines the choices we make as we go about the business of living our lives. Another central concept is that of capital. Bourideu argues that different types of groups are generally in possession of different types of capital; some groups possess economic capital (i.e. money and property), some possess cultural capital (such as knowledge of artistic, literary, and academic fields), and some are rich in social capital (links with 'movers and shakers', 'old boys' networks') and so on.
There is so much contained in this book, it is frankly a huge injustice to try and sum it up in less than 1000 words. It was written with French society in mind, but the arguments employed can just as easily be applied, with a little discretion, to any other modern capitalist nation. And although Bourdieu's style of writing (or that of the translator) can at times seem long-winded, you soon realise that this is necessary in order to convey the subtlety of his arguments.
My review has brutally hacked up bits of Bourdieu's ideas which unfortunately does them little justice; the whole book is characterised by subtlety, detail and perceptiveness. It has enriched my view of the social world immeasurably, and now when people make judgements on the taste or choices of others, I feel I have a clearer idea of where these judgements come from and on what basis they are made. I wholeheartedly recommend this astonishingly perceptive work.
The thesis in brief: Aesthetic judgment as such is intended to construct a mystified form of social superiority. High culture defines itself by devising endless baroque unsatisfying "aesthetic" pleasures. Angry professors play the game harder than anyone, and resent the fact that it doesn't make them rich. The workers know they can't really play at all, but must give it a go, and look silly. Even the most angry leftists fail to recognise the cultural machine of their alienation, and find themselves helpless in its grip. The bureaucratic and professional Top Cats (this is France, after all...), the products of the grandes e'coles, know (without realising) that it's all a game for their benefit, and escape the trap by not being serious about what they make everyone else worry over - thereby establishing their "natural" right to inherit everything and rule the world.
The book is nostalgic for "pure" class politics (precisely as a guarantee of Bourdieu's purity of heart, to be proven to a purely academic audience). Thus, we have direct, deeply reverent, appeals to Marx (and hardly anyone else), and gush about the "realism" of the working class, the Worker as Noble Savage, deprived and oppressed and confused but mysteriously In Touch with Really Important Stuff. Mysticism is predictably derided.
The annoying thing is that Bourdieu is very, very penetrating and intelligent. He does his job so well that he manages to corrode the self-confidence of anyone who wants to make even the most modest assertion of cultural autonomy. The notions of critical distance and of disinterested truth are given the same kind of treatment that the USAF gave Laos. That Bourdieu persuaded himself to write it is either proof that he's quite wrong or evidence of how completely right he is. Or both at once?
The text contains not one redundant word, but does not devalue itself by brevity. It states, without apology, the factors that militate upon taste in social classes. Whilst the analysis is broadly of the Marxist discipline, the author factors in opinions upon developing trends in taste, particularly in regard to fast food, that display original thought not corralled by slavish adherence to doctrinaire requirements.
As a trained Chef and a qualified Social Scientist, I found this book to be perceptive from both viewpoints. Furthermore, the intensity of the arguments, the quality of language employed and the cogency of the authors intellectual debate put to shame the rambling, inconclusive and theory-riddled works of Sociological Post-Modernists who apologetically paw at truth like an elderly bachelor feeling middle-aged cabbages in a dowdy market.
Thoroughly and totally recommended. An academic gem in these days of fudge.
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