Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste Book

This is Bourdieu's most famous book. And it is long, with much of part 3 probably of only passing interest even to people a bit obsessed with Bourdieu. The problem is that the data is all quite old now and so unless you are particularly interested in how various social fractions of the French class structure reacted to life in the 1960-70s … you get my point.

I've been trying to work out how to write this review - you see, the problem is that there's a bit of a back story to this book and I don't want to just assume you understand Kantian aesthetics before I start. So, I'm going to start with the bits of Kant that are important to understand so that this book might make a bit more sense.

What is the beautiful? For Kant, the beautiful is essentially subjective. But he means this in a way that might be a bit strange to our ears. He means that beauty is something that happens in our heads, rather than necessarily being something that exists in the object we find beautiful. All the same, because we humans essentially all have the same faculties - pretty much, ways of seeing and understanding the world (god, I'm really simplifying this, so be kind with me if you are a Kantian scholar) then we all should (more or less) agree on what is beautiful. That means that beauty is both subjective (happens inside our heads) and is universal (all of us ought to think the same things are beautiful merely by the fact we are humans).

For Kant the beautiful doesn't have a purpose - and so you can't say, 'this is beautiful because it is really useful'. It is not a thing's purpose that makes it beautiful, but rather what Kant called its purposiveness - what you could call its 'disinterested purpose'.

Okay, all that is a bit hard, but it has a point. Kant was trying to come up with a basis upon which to build an entire aesthetic theory - a theory of taste. And to do that he effectively said, all humans ought to think the same things are beautiful and that the beautiful is an object of disinterested interest to humans - it doesn't have a purpose, it is just beautiful.

Bourdieu disagrees and wants to show that taste is anything but disinterested - rather it a stake in the game of life, it is used by the different social classes as a way for them to assert their own distinction. Taste separates the classes and is used by them to keep out the riff-raff and to decide what is and is not 'for the likes of us'.

The point of this book isn't just to disagree with Kant, of course, but rather to show how taste is both manifest in the various social classes of French society, and then to also seek to show that these tastes are not merely an 'expression of free will' - which is what we think our tastes are (I love Taylor Swift purely for her singing), but rather that our tastes are structured by our social location in society.

But it is also more than this too. We don't just adopt our tastes as a kind of 'stuff you' to other social classes - but rather those tastes become literally embodied in us. It is not that they are an 'added extra', they are part of us in ways that make them seem utterly natural and even inevitable. In fact, our tastes are literally what distinguish us from 'the other', and especially from the 'class other'. People from different social classes from us, particularly from 'lower' social classes, have tastes we can barely understand and that we literally find disgusting. And Bourdieu makes sure that the idea of 'taste' isn't missed here. He literally means 'taste' - and how so often 'refined tastes' in food mean eating things that other people find disgusting. The word 'companion' is from Latin and it means 'with bread' - that is, someone you share food with - disgust in taste is the surest means of ensuring someone never becomes your 'companion'. But this is also true in terms of all matters of taste, from home decorations to art to music to magazines and to political parties. Taste and disgust classify us and in turn we are classified by them.

This book was written on the basis of an analysis of a series of surveys regarding things as disparate as choice of magazines, likelihood of attending an art gallery, ability to name composers from their works, what you believe makes a good photograph, or what is your favourite meal. And then this data was analysed according to the social class of the people responding.

Certain tastes can only be acquired after considerable effort has been expended. To be able to appreciate much of modern painting, you need to have acquired that disposition by either learning a lot about the history of art, or you need to have spent a lifetime immersed in art. This forms one of Bourdieu's main distinctions - between the scholar and the gentleman, as he refers to them. Because the gentleman has been immersed in art all of his life, he brings a naturalness to his appreciation of art that is almost impossible for others to impersonate or fake. The scholar, who has probably come to be associated with art later in life and via the education system, always has a kind of reverence for art that the gentleman doesn't have, and ironically enough, this makes the scholar less authentic in his appreciation of art. This means the gentleman is more 'natural' around art and his taste appears less forced and more free. I'm using the male pronoun here for a reason - firstly, Bourdieu's term is literally 'gentleman', but mostly because he was criticised for not stressing the role played by women in the construction and reproduction of taste.

The lower classes of society often reject upper class notions of taste as being more or less crazy. They often prefer their art to be realistic, consider modern art to be a complete joke, and they are the least likely to know any of the major works of the 'canon'. That is, they are more likely to know a Strauss waltz than the Goldberg Variations. And while they might say that a play is better and more mind-expanding than a film, they are unlikely to choose to see a play over a film, not least due to the expense. Bourdieu says of the lower classes in society that they believe they are making choices, but really these are all forced choices that are made with the fewest options available. That is, in believing they are making a choice, they are really making a virtue of necessity, in choosing the only things left to them to choose.

But what is particularly interesting is that the middle classes, who desperately want two things: that is, to not be associated with the lower class, and to thus seem more like the upper class - do virtually everything opposite to what the lower class does. So, where the working class are more likely to prefer a simple and hearty meal, the middle classes prefer smaller and more elegant little portions. Here literal taste is defined in a way to separate and distinguish oneself from those beneath you. And this taste is embodied - with Bourdieu discussing how 'urgent' so many things related to food is for the working class - particularly men, in the speed of eating, in the noises made while eating, in the portion sizes.

It is hard to say just how influential this book has been. It is a stunning book of sociology and one of the key books on the subject from the 20th century.

p.s.

I meant to say last night, but forgot - the reason why it is important to begin with Kant is that this is a kind of refutation of his Critique of the Judgement. The point Bourdieu is making is that Kant sees as universal the very particular taste of the dominating class, that is, all other class tastes are ill-formed and a mistake of the ugly for the proper beautiful. That is, everyone ought to have access to this universal taste, but it isn't Kant's concern if certain people or groups of people do not. There is a nice bit in part 3 of this where Bourdieu says (and I don't remember the groups he mentions, but will just make them up) that the fact, say, a school teacher and someone from the elite go to the art gallery 3 times a years doesn't in the least mean they are doing 'the same thing'. The teacher is likely to have to go with the gallery is packed and will only have a very short time for their whole visit - the person from the elite can go when the gallery is empty and can stroll and contemplate and immerse themselves in the works. The attitude to time and the pace of living also being highly classed.