· 2018· Book chapter
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste*
- 20,382citations
- 2018year
Short summary
Taste is not merely personal preference but a social tool used to assert distinction from the working class and its basic needs, particularly through the consumption of luxury versus necessity goods.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Key points
- Taste functions as a social marker to differentiate from the working class.
- Luxury food consumption signifies a distance from basic needs and necessity.
- Spending patterns and body image are key mediators in defining socially approved foods.
- The relationship with food is a dimension of a broader bourgeois engagement with the social world.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
The basic opposition between the tastes of luxury and the tastes of necessity is specified in as many oppositions as there are different ways of asserting one's distinction vis-a-vis the working class and its primary needs, or-which amounts to the same thing-different powers whereby necessity can be kept at a distance. The taste for rare, aristocratic foods points to a traditional cuisine, rich in expensive or rare product. The system of differences becomes clearer when one looks more closely at the patterns of spending on food. The quasi-conscious representation of the approved form of the perceived body, and in particular its thinness or fatness, is not the only mediation through which the social definition of appropriate foods is established. The relation to food-the primary need and pleasure-is only one dimension of the bourgeois relation to the social world.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source., 2018 · DOI ↗
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Field: Sociology and Political Science
Sociology and Political ScienceSocial Sciences