Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

Citation

Bourdieu, P. (2010). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (R. Nice, Trans.). Routledge. (Originally published in French in 1979.)

Chapter Summary

The book is a vast study of taste and social class in France, about 640 pages in the English edition. The publisher describes it as at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind. Its premise is that everyday aesthetic choices, between what seems pleasing and what seems tacky, merely trendy or ugly, are never innocent: they are distinctions, choices made in opposition to those of other classes. The social world, the book argues, works simultaneously as a system of power relations and as a symbolic system in which minute differences of taste become the basis of social judgement. It has eight chapters in three parts, framed by an introduction and a conclusion, and followed by a postscript and appendices.

Preface to the English-Language Edition; Introduction

These two opening texts come before the three parts: a preface written for the English-language edition and the introduction.

Part 1, Chapter 1: The Aristocracy of Culture

Part 1 is titled "A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste", the subtitle of the whole book, and consists of this one chapter. Its title, taken together with the Part 1 heading, shows that it takes up the judgement of taste and its social critique.

Part 2, Chapters 2–4: The Economy of Practices

Chapter 2, The Social Space and its Transformations, presents the space in which classes and groups are located. Chapter 3, The Habitus and the Space of Life-Styles, connects the concept of habitus to the range of life-styles found in that space. Chapter 4, The Dynamics of Fields, turns to fields and their dynamics. These three chapters supply the conceptual machinery the rest of the book uses.

Part 3, Chapters 5–8: Class Tastes and Life-Styles

Chapter 5, The Sense of Distinction, Chapter 6, Cultural Good Will, and Chapter 7, The Choice of the Necessary, take the book's concepts to the tastes and life-styles of particular class positions, as their Part 3 heading indicates. Chapter 8, Culture and Politics, closes the part by relating culture to politics.

Conclusion: Classes and Classifications; Postscript: Towards a "Vulgar" Critique of "Pure" Critiques

The conclusion draws together the analysis of classes and the classifications by which they are judged. The postscript, titled Towards a "Vulgar" Critique of "Pure" Critiques, plays on the book's own subtitle, a social critique of the judgement of taste.

Key Concepts

Introduction and Part 1

• Judgement of taste: the aesthetic evaluation that the book treats as socially conditioned.
• Distinction: choices of taste that mark opposition to other classes' choices.

Part 2: The Economy of Practices

• Social space: the structured space in which social positions are located (Chapter 2).
• Habitus: the concept linking social position to a range of life-styles (Chapter 3).
• Fields: the structured arenas whose dynamics Chapter 4 examines.

Part 3 and Conclusion

• Life-styles and class tastes: the patterns of preference studied in Chapters 5–8.
• Classes and classifications: the pairing of the Conclusion's title, linking social groups to the categories used to rank them.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A large, integrated project. The Routledge description presents the book as an ethnography of a society and an analysis of a class at once. That scope shows in the three-part design, in which a theoretical opening is followed by conceptual chapters and then detailed accounts of different class tastes.
• A theory built out of concepts. Part 2 carries the names of the key concepts in its chapter titles (social space, habitus, fields), so a reader can find their definitions and development easily.
• Influence recognized by reviewers. The Observer review quoted by the publisher calls it a rich and probing guide to the strategies of pretension in contemporary France, showing how class segments separate through contrasting attitudes to art and beauty.
• A deliberately provocative thesis. "No judgement of taste is innocent" gives the book a central claim that is easy to state, discuss and contest.

Limitations

• Length. At 640 pages with a postscript, appendices and notes, it is a long book, and most readers will want to select.
• A specific society and moment. The study is of France as it was when the book first appeared in 1979, so a reader today must decide how far the findings carry to other societies and periods.
• Concepts arrive in the middle. The chapter titles show habitus, fields and social space being developed in Part 2, after the opening chapter, so a reader who goes strictly in order meets the vocabulary only after the first chapter.

Where It Fits in the Course

This is a primary text of contemporary social theory, best read with some secondary support. Elliott's Contemporary Social Theory: An Introduction and Rob Stones's edited Key Sociological Thinkers are introductory overviews that can prepare the ground for Bourdieu, and Baert and da Silva's Social Theory in the Twentieth Century and Beyond places him within a wider history of theory. Contemporary Sociological Theory is a reader that includes a part on Bourdieu, so it can serve as a shorter first encounter.

Giddens's The Constitution of Society is another major work that tries to overcome the divide between action and structure, and reading it alongside Bourdieu's habitus and fields is a natural comparison. Distinction itself is not a general theory textbook; it is a substantial piece of empirical-theoretical argument about culture and class.

How to Use This Book

The book suits upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in sociology, cultural studies and related fields who have some prior reading in sociological theory. A reader new to Bourdieu may first want an introductory account of habitus and fields.

A practical plan:

• Core: the Introduction, Chapter 1, and then Part 2 (Chapters 2–4) for the concepts.
• Applications: Part 3 (Chapters 5–8) shows the concepts at work on class tastes and life-styles; a reader short of time can sample one of Chapters 5–7, then Chapter 8 and the Conclusion.
• Optional on first pass: the Postscript and appendices.

After each chapter, note one everyday preference (a kind of music, food or leisure) and ask how the book would relate it to class position; then ask what evidence for or against that reading would look like in your own setting.