Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

Dense, dated, and at times unnecessarily convoluted—but also genuinely fascinating in its exploration of how taste is shaped by class, education, and social structures. I couldn’t always tell whether the writing style was simply academic or quietly gatekeeping, but the core ideas are strong enough to push through the difficulty.

As someone interested in how people construct meaning (and perhaps feeling slightly outside those structures myself), I found it particularly compelling—especially reading it as an American now living in England, where class operates very differently but just as persistently. It also led to some mildly unsettling self-reflection on where my own tastes sit versus where I’d place myself socially.

Not an easy show more read, and certainly not for everyone, but one I really enjoyed and will likely return to—if only to bring it up at dinner parties and tipsy midnight sessions. show less

It's dated, overlong, and the prose is convoluted; however, the insights into the social construction of taste are thought provoking. Why do we like what we like? How much of our preferences are due to class envy, education, or economic circumstances?

The final chapter, on Kant's Critique of Judgment, shows how even so-called pure aesthetics is "grounded in an empirical social relation," how pleasure itself becomes part of the way "dominant groups...ride roughshod over difference, flouts distinction, [and] reduces the distinctive pleasures of the soul to the common satisfactions of food and sex."

Bourdieu also makes prescient comments on the tendencies of statisticians and sociologists to create artificial dichotomies and ends up show more suggesting that intellectuals may not be best placed to comment on bourgeois and working class taste. show less

Dense, but critical for understanding the connection between economic capital and cultural capital.

Wonderful work of obfuscation.

Hemingway is my favorite author. I read this after being determined to read whatever I could find by Hemingway. It may help that I'm originally from Florida and I like to drink ...

(just a few chapters for class)

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste by Pierre Bourdieu (2002)