Distinction

A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

By: Pierre Bourdieu, Richard Nice (Translator)

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Paperback | 12 March 2010 | Edition Number 1

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640 Pages

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27.3 x 16.6 x 7.1

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No judgement of taste is innocent - we are all snobs. Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction brilliantly illuminates the social pretentions of the middle classes in the modern world, focusing on the tastes and preferences of the French bourgeoisie. First published in 1979, the book is at once a vast ethnography of contemporary France and a dissection of the bourgeois mind.

In the course of everyday life we constantly choose between what we find aesthetically pleasing, and what we consider tacky, merely trendy, or ugly. Taste is not pure. Bourdieu demonstrates that our different aesthetic choices are all distinctions - that is, choices made in opposition to those made by other classes. This fascinating work argues that 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 judgement.

Industry Reviews

'In this rich and probing guide to the strategies of pretension in contemporary France, Bourdieu describes how class segments separate from each other by their contrasting attitudes towards art and beauty.' The Observer

'Full of insights of fundamental importance.' Tom Gretton, Oxford Art Journal

'Brilliant insights ... richly informative and insightful.' Barry King, Reviewing Sociology

'In this rich and probing guide to the strategies of pretension in contemporary France, Bourdieu describes how class segments separate from each other by their contrasting attitudes towards art and beauty.' - The Observer

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