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Title: Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste by Pierre Bourdieu, Richard Nice ISBN: 0-674-21277-0 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: September, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Forget What's In It... Where Is It?
Comment: In 1998 Pierre Bourdieu's *Distinction* was voted by members of the International Sociological Association to be the sixth most important sociological treatise of the 20th century: but if Bourdieu's "theodicy" for the cultural market of the hexagonal 70s maintains its appeal today we have plenty of reasons. Presented with a country in stasis and a market full of options, Bourdieu took the liberty of declaring the case for economic determinism airtight: in his theory of social fields (presented to the reader in a variety of ways) we are given "templates" for freedom of economic choice which maintain their plausibility *in the breach*.
In the *pathetiques* gamely reporting likes and dislikes, and that matter-of-fact two-dimensionality characterizing interactions guided by cultural partisanship, we have something less than postwar French culture and something more than a damning indictment of Fifth Republic scandals: *Distinctions* is veritably a history of 70s France *as it was available to the common man*, and as such provides a model for cultural history well worth emulating for various purposes. Bourdieu's later union agitation to the contrary, it is advisable that a tenable market is absolutely the precondition of "edifying" cultural products: and here he goes quite a distance towards *vetting* France in this respect. A great work for a wide readership.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Must Read!
Comment: This is a fantastic explication of how social class prearranges our tastes and interests. I disagree with the reader who thinks that it is not applicable to American society--to the contrary. It is true that American culture is not so obviously stratified in the exact same ways as French culture (of the 1960s, I would add, when Bourdieu collected his data). Also, in American culture there is less of a tendency to exploit the social markers (dress, etc.) that one might find in Europe, and it's hip nowadays for the middle-class to adopt the style and dress of the street (e.g., hip-hop); nevertheless, I'd say that this is a veneer of street-cred, and that if you were to look at how the middle-class actually lives compares to those where hip-hop originated, you'd find some pretty significant differences.
However, his basic differentiation between working class/petit bourgeois (small business owners, clerical workers and the like)/grand bourgeois (professionals, executives, and large industrialists) certainly carries over into American society. And most interesting is his claim that the higher up in the food chain one goes, the more one's taste in the "aesthetic" inclines towards Kant's idea of disinterested formalism, while the lower classes tend to want their art to be informed by ethics and morality.
Bourdieu sees these tendencies as "embodied" and largely unconsciously adopted through our upbringing. One only has to watch a television show like "The O.C." and how they cast Ryan's mother in comparison to the trophy wives of Orange County to see that even in America class and taste and body language are still encoded in our body language, choice of dress, manners, and conversational style. The economic reality of America is that a Wal-Mart worker or transcontinental trucker is NOT middle-class in the same way as a doctor, whether in terms of taste or salary. Anyone who thinks so is either deluding themselves or doesn't want to see the truth.
Bourdieu does not neglect to mention sex (although he doesn't have as much to say about race), and has sections on women's body image (the richer, the thinner) and how the different classes deal with food (high-fat, high-carb for lower classes, fresh veggies and lean meats for higher classes). In America, our current epidemic of obesity is not only the result of marketing campaigns, but also (perhaps largely) the result of poor quality food (e.g. fast food, prepared food) being made much more affordable than high quality food (fresh produce, fish, organic). If you can't afford to eat well in America, you probably won't.
Moreover, Bourdieu makes the observation, which holds true in America as much as anywhere else, that formal education (which reinforces "legitimate" taste) can change one's tastes and values, but that one's early social upbringing will lead to a quicker assimilation of "legitimate" culture. As someone who went to bourgeois schools without a bourgeois background, and who has subsequently taught at state universities in poor areas, this truism is so obvious as to hardly need explication. Much of the poor performance of underclass or non-bourgeois students is as much due to lack of early acculturation (by this I mean exposure to "culture" like non-Hollywood films, art museums, etc., but also the habits and customs associated with school learning and higher education) as it is to any basic intelligence.
Finally, it's true that Bourdieu's style is rather ponderous, repetitive, and academic, and the book is very long indeed. Nevertheless, I can't agree that it compares with the difficulty of Derrida, Jameson, Bhabha, or other high theorists. Bourdieu's sentences are sometimes long and have many subordinate clauses, but their basic subjects and verbs are easily identifiable! The Conclusion and Postscript do raise the level of difficulty, but the Introduction and body of the main text are accessible and basically say everything he has to say (many times). Anyone with a basic undergraduate education (one that has done its job properly) should be able to handle Bourdieu's style in this particular book.
Rating: 4
Summary: read it for the diagrams
Comment: Distinction is the most cited book from Bourdieu, one of France's most prolific scholars. The book tends to assume that its readers are familiar with his key terms, developed mostly in _Outline of a Theory of Practice_ and _Logic of Practice_. Although it is the most cited, beginning readers of Bourdieu should probably start with _Partical Reason_ to get a handle on these concepts before getting involved in this larger tome.
Word for word, Bourdieu's writing style is not economical, and he is almost as cumbersome as Derrida. He does not approach the overly-complex mode of Deleuze and Guattari. His concepts bear the most resemblance to those of an early Baudrillard or a late Gramsci in terms of their interpretation of the social world, although he will depart into some more Marxist modes of interpretation.
Bourdieu's _Distinction_ is most valuable for his diagrams, as they provide a clear graphic representation of what he is trying to say. If one wants the read Bourdieu for content and/or argument, she would be better directed to one of his other books named above, as his arguments are more on-point and rpecide.
In addition, _Distinction_ is careful to limit itself to a data set collected in the late 60s and early 70s. Although the theory seems to be a sound one, Bourdieu makes claims of greater applicability in his books about the Bayle: _Outline_ and _Logic_. For discussions of modern Europe, his newer _Weight of the World_ provides a better, and more recent, analysis of the same social trends as in _Distinction_.
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Title: The Field of Cultural Production by Pierre Bourdieu, Randal Johnson ISBN: 0231082878 Publisher: Columbia University Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1993 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Outline of a Theory of Practice by Pierre Bourdieu, Richard Nice ISBN: 052129164X Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 02 June, 1977 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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Title: Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action by Pierre Bourdieu, Randal Johnson ISBN: 0804733635 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: July, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Logic of Practice by Pierre Bourdieu, Richard Nice ISBN: 0804720118 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: August, 1992 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (Meridian-Crossing Aesthetics) by Pierre Bourdieu, Susan Emanuel ISBN: 0804726272 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: August, 1996 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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