Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Routledge Classics) - Softcover

Bourdieu, Pierre

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415567882 ISBN 13: 9780415567886

Publisher: Routledge, 2010

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

'In this rich and probing guide to the strategies of pretension in contemporary France, Bourdieu describes how class segments separate from each other by their contrasting attitudes towards art and beauty.' - The Observer

From the Back Cover:

This is at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind. The subject is the study of culture, and the 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0415567882
• ISBN 13: 9780415567886
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 640