Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste

By:

Bourdieu, Pierre

Contributor(s):

Nice, Richard [Translator]

Publication details: Routledge Oxan 2019Description: xxx, 607 pISBN:

9780367331313

Subject(s):

DDC classification:

305.550944 BOU

Summary: 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. (https://www.routledge.com/Distinction-A-Social-Critique-of-the-Judgement-of-Taste/Bourdieu/p/book/9780415567886)

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Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Call number	Copy number	Status	Date due	Barcode
Book	Indian Institute of Management LRC General Stacks	Public Policy & General Management	305.550944 BOU (Browse shelf(Opens below))	1	Available		006305

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.

(https://www.routledge.com/Distinction-A-Social-Critique-of-the-Judgement-of-Taste/Bourdieu/p/book/9780415567886)

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