Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
No judgement of taste is innocent - we are all snobs. First published in 1979, 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. In the course of everyday life, we constantly choose between what we find aesthetically pleasing and what we consider tacky, merely trendy, or ugly. Bourdieu demonstrates that our aesthetic choices are distinctions – that is, choices made in opposition to those made by other classes. There is no pure aesthetics, no judgement of taste untainted by the power relations within which minute distinctions become the basis for social judgement.