Distinction

by Bourdieu, Pierre; Nice, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780674212770
• ISBN10: 0674212770
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1987-10-15
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

No judgement of taste is innocent. In a word, we are all snobs. Pierre Bourdieu brilliantly illuminates this situation of the middle class in the modern world. France's leading sociologist focusses here on the French bourgeoisie, its tastes and preferences. Distinction is at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind.In the course of everyday life people constantly choose between what they find aesthetically pleasing and what they consider tacky, merely trendy, or ugly. Bourdieu bases his study on surveys that took into account the multitude of social factors that play a part in a Frenchperson's choice of clothing, furniture, leisure activities, dinner menus for guests, and many other matters of taste. What emerges from his analysis is that social snobbery is everywhere in the bourgeois world. The different aesthetic choices people make are all distinctions-that is, choices made in opposition to those made by other classes. Taste is not pure. Bourdieu finds a world of social meaning in the decision to order bouillabaisse, in our contemporary cult of thinness, in the "California sports" such as jogging and cross-country skiing. The social world, he argues, 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.The topic of Bourdieu's book is a fascinating one: the strategies of social pretension are always curiously engaging. But the book is more than fascinating. It is a major contribution to current debates on the theory of culture and a challenge to the major theoretical schools in contemporary sociology.

Author Biography

Pierre Bourdieu is Professor of Sociology at the College de France, Paris

Table of Contents

Preface to the English-Language Edition	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste	p. 9
The Aristocracy of Culture	p. 11
The Titles of Cultural Nobility	p. 18
Cultural Pedigree	p. 63
The Economy of Practices	p. 97
The Social Space and Its Transformations	p. 99
Class Condition and Social Conditioning	p. 101
A Three-Dimensional Space	p. 114
Reconversion Strategies	p. 125
The Habitus and the Space of Life-Styles	p. 169
The Homology between the Spaces	p. 175
The Universes of Stylistic Possibles	p. 208
The Dynamics of the Fields	p. 226
The Correspondence between Goods Production and Taste Production	p. 230
Symbolic Struggles	p. 244
Class Tastes and Life-Styles	p. 257
The Sense of Distinction	p. 260
The Modes of Appropriation of the Work of Art	p. 267
The Variants of the Dominant Taste	p. 283
The Mark of Time	p. 295
Temporal and Spiritual Powers	p. 315
Cultural Goodwill	p. 318
Knowledge and Recognition	p. 319
Education and the Autodidact	p. 328
Slope and Thrust	p. 331
The Variants of Petit-Bourgeois Taste	p. 339
The Declining Petite Bourgeoisie	p. 346
The Executant Petite Bourgeoisie	p. 351
The New Petite Bourgeoisie	p. 354
From Duty to the Fun Ethic	p. 365
The Choice of the Necessary	p. 372
The Taste for Necessity and the Principle of Conformity	p. 374
The Effects of Domination	p. 386
Culture and Politics	p. 397
Selective Democracy	p. 399
Status and Competence	p. 405
The Right to Speak	p. 411
Personal Opinion	p. 414
The Modes of Production of Opinion	p. 417
Dispossession and Misappropriation	p. 426
Moral Order and Political Order	p. 432
Class Habitus and Political Opinions	p. 437
Supply and Demand	p. 440
The Political Space	p. 451
The Specific Effect of Trajectory	p. 453
Political Language	p. 459
Conclusion: Classes and Classifications	p. 466
Embodied Social Structures	p. 467
Knowledge without Concepts	p. 470
Advantageous Attributions	p. 475
The Classification Struggle	p. 479
The Reality of Representation and the Representation of Reality	p. 482
Postscript: Towards a 'Vulgar' Critique of 'Pure' Critiques	p. 485
Disgust at the 'Facile'	p. 486
The 'Taste of Reflection' and the 'Taste of Sense'	p. 488
A Denied Social Relationship	p. 491
Parerga and Paralipomena	p. 494
The Pleasure of the Text	p. 498
Appendices	p. 503
Some Reflections on the Method	p. 503
Complementary Sources	p. 519
Statistical Data	p. 525
Associations: A Parlour Game	p. 546
Notes	p. 561
Credits	p. 605
Index	p. 607
Tables
Class preferences for singers and music	p. 15
Aesthetic disposition, by education capital	p. 36
Aesthetic disposition, by class and education	p. 37
Knowledge of composers and musical works, by education and class of origin	p. 64
Furniture purchases in the dominant class, by education and social origin	p. 78
Some indicators of economic capital in different fractions of the dominant class, 1966	p. 117
Some indicators of cultural practice in different fractions of the dominant class, 1966	p. 118
Types of books preferred by different fractions of the dominant class, 1966	p. 119
Social origin of members of the dominant class, by class fraction, 1970	p. 121
Rate of employment of women aged 25-34, by education, 1962 and 1968	p. 134
Changes in morphology and asset structure of the class fractions, 1954-1975	p. 136
Changes in morphology and asset structure of the class fractions, 1954-1968	p. 138
Morphological changes within the dominant class, 1954-1975	p. 140
Morphological changes within the middle class, 1954-1975	p. 140
Changes in class morphology and use of educational system, 1954-1968	p. 158
Annual household expenditures on food: skilled manual workers, foremen and clerical workers, 1972	p. 181
Yearly spending by teachers, professionals and industrial and commercial employers, 1972	p. 184
Table of Contents provided by Rittenhouse. All Rights Reserved.