“Taste” is arguably: a reflection about the accumulation of symbolic goods

• Main Author: Carla de Araujo Risso
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Universidade de São Paulo 2008-12-01
• Series: Matrizes
• Online Access: http://www.revistas.usp.br/matrizes/article/view/38219

In this expansive work, established through questionnaires in the period of 1963-1968, Bourdieu investigates the acquisition of symbolic capital and the implications of taste based on social class. According the thought of Bourdieu, 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 judgment. The different aesthetic choices people make are all distinctions – choices are made in opposition to those made by other classes. So, taste is not pure and no judgment of taste is innocent. Written in 1979, The Distinction is a major contribution to current debates on the theory of culture and a challenge to the major theoretical schools in contemporary sociology.