Distinction
Why our tastes in food, music and art mark our social class, from a landmark French study.
Pierre Bourdieu’s study of taste in 1960s France, based on large surveys of what people ate, read, listened to and bought. He argues that taste is not a private preference but a mark of social class, and that cultural capital, the knowledge and manners learned at home and at school, sustains inequality alongside money.
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Juliet Schor
Bourdieu is very much foundational in terms of understanding consumer culture. In contrast to many accounts that focus on advertising and marketing as somehow beaming desire into people, Bourdieu shows how the patterns of consumption that dominate in a society come out of structures of social inequality.
Interview · March 2012
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