I. Pierre Bourdieu and the Taste of Class

A. Veblen: Consumption displays pecuniary status; fitting in and distinguishing self
B. Barthes: Consumer desire is created semiotically
C. Hebdige: Disrupting meaning production = resistance, exposes arbitrariness of conventional meanings
D. Sociological (clothing behavior, Veblen) and semiotic (clothing meanings, Barthes, Hebdige in part) approaches both see clothing as forming a coherent system of values, possibly a language; McCracken disputes that claim
E. Bourdieu: classes differ according to taste, "Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier" (6)

1. Tastes enable understanding and assessment of new cultural objects
2. What we desire reflects our belonging to a specific group

 

II. The Acquisition of Class Taste

A. Education: proximity and practice

1. Semiotic decoding to determine object's meaning and significance
2. Ability to decode varies by class: Art "has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded" (2)
3. Museum scene from Manhattan, dir. Woody Allen, 1979
4. Example of haute couture in magazines
5. Proximity and practice ==> internalize criteria of discernment associated with one's social position

B. Intentional education: schools inculcate and reproduce elite knowledge
C. Proximity establishes history, movements of style and taste

 

III. Three Types of Capital

A. Proximity and practice reflect social position and educational attainment, linked through three types of capital
B. Cultural capital: criteria for discernment, associated with groups

1. Individual preferences and tastes
2. Different types of goods have different status associations
3. Academic credentials

C. Economic capital: money, property
D. Social capital: personal connections
E. Three types of capital need not correspond, i.e. starving artist
F. Usually, 3 capitals reinforce each other

1. Schools tend to legitimate middle and upper class knowledge
2. Wealthy use social and economic capital to get cultural capital, limit access to others

G. Class = specific configurations of amounts and types of capital, expressed in taste preferences

 

IV. Two Examples: Food and Clothing

A. Food

1. Working classes = "being," "convivial indulgence" (179), simple, plentiful, filling
2. New rich = extreme working class tastes, fatty, costly
3. Professionals = "seeming," light, refined, delicate
4. Teachers = high cultural capital, international food, use chopsticks
5. Example: local organic chicken scene from Portlandia

B. Clothing

1. Working class = utilitarian, fewer types of clothes
2. Bourgeois, professional = appearance is instrumental, more items, more variety

C. How do groups come to share tastes? Habitus

1. "subjective but not individual system of internalized structures, schemes of perception, conception, and action common to all members of the same group or class and constituting the precondition for all objectification and apperception" (Bourdieu 1977 [Outline of a Theory of Practice]:86)
2. Habitual patterns of thought and action
3. Stems from objective economic and social conditions
4. Becomes internalized, used to rank and categorize

D. Construct grid: objects, lifestyles, amounts and types of capital

1. System of objects
2. System of lifestyles
3. Example of a cap
4. Habitus mediates between group and individual preferences, but is internalized so we don't see it as connected to class

E. Strengths of Bourdieu

1. Shows patterns of individual tastes, links with class
2. Consumption and status involve knowledge

F. Problems

1. Scheme too rigid: do all people in class possess the same tastes?
2. Too much specificity: group identities fade into individual preferences
3. Too little specificity: individual agency disappears
4. Risks focusing too much on classification, too little on decision-making