Distinction (Routledge Classics)

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. Pierre Bourdieu Distinction A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste Copyright Contents Tables Figures Illustration Credits Preface to the English-Language Edition Introduction to the Routledge Classics Edition Introduction to the First Edition Part I A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste 1 The Aristocracy of Culture The Titles of Cultural Nobility Cultural Pedigree Part II The Economy of Practices 2 The Social Space and Its Transformations Class Condition and Social Conditioning A Three-Dimensional Space Reconversion Strategies 3 The Habitus and the Space of Life-Styles The Homology between the Spaces The Universes of Stylistic Possibles 4 The Dynamics of the Fields The Correspondence between Goods Production and Taste Production Symbolic Struggles Part III Class Tastes and Life-Styles 5 The Sense of Distinction The Modes of Appropriation of the Work of Art The Variants of the Dominant Taste The Mark of Time Temporal and Spiritual Powers 6 Cultural Goodwill Knowledge and Recognition Education and the Autodidact Slope and Thrust The Variants of Petit-Bourgeois Taste The Declining Petite Bourgeoisie The Executant Petite Bourgeoisie The New Petite Bourgeoisie From Duty to the Fun Ethic 7 The Choice of the Necessary The Taste for Necessity and the Principle of Conformity The Effects of Domination 8 Culture and Politics Selective Democracy Status and Competence The Right to Speak Personal Opinion The Modes of Production of Opinion Dispossession and Misappropriation Moral Order and Political Order Class Habitus and Political Opinions Supply and Demand The Political Space The Specific Effect of Trajectory Political Language Conclusion: Classes and Classifications Embodied Social Structures Knowledge without Concepts Advantageous Attributions The Classification Struggle The Reality of Representation and the Representation of Reality Postscript: Towards a ‘Vulgar’ Critique of ‘Pure’ Critiques Disgust at the ‘Facile’ The ‘Taste of Reflection’ and the ‘Taste of Sense’ A Denied Social Relationship Parerga and Paralipomena The Pleasure of the Text Appendix 1. Some Reflections on the Method Appendix 2. Complementary Sources Appendix 3. Statistical Data Appendix 4. Associations: A Parlour Game Notes Index No judgement of taste is innocent - we are all snobs. This book 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 Distinction is at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind. Bourdieu's subject is the study of culture, and his objective is most ambitious: to provide an answer to the problems raised by Kant's Critique of Judgment by showing why no judgment of taste is innocent. In "Distinction", Pierre Bourdieu brilliantly illuminates the social pretentions of the middle classes in the modern world. Focusing 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