Read: Bourdieu, Distinction, pp. 1-17, 177-225 (Moodle article)
Woodward, Why Women Wear What they Wear
Pham, Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet, Chapter 2, "Style Stories, Written Tastes, and the Work of Self-Composure" (Moodle article)

1. Bourdieu states, "Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier" (6). What does he mean by this? (Hint: consider how Bourdieu defines taste, how people acquire taste, and how taste relates to status.)

2. What is Bourdieu's notion of culture? How is culture acquired? What role do education and social origin play in this acquisition?

3. How, according to Bourdieu, do objects for consumption express sociological differences? How do individuals decide what to consume? What are the strengths and weaknesses of Bourdieu's argument?

4. What research methods did Woodward employ? What kinds of questions are those methods well suited to address? What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of her approach?

5. How, according to Woodward, do women decide what pieces go together? What is the relationship between looking and feeling, between fitting in and being distinct, in the process of getting dressed?

6. Woodward uses Gell's idea of objects as having "secondary agency" to describe the effects that garments have on their wearers. What are these effects? Do you agree that objects can exert a kind of agency? How?

7. Do the personal style stories by Asian superbloggers (Pham) produce written clothing with effects similar to what Barthes described for fashion magazines? How are they connected to the hierarchies of taste, as analyzed by Bourdieu? How, according to Pham, are Asian superbloggers positioned with respect to a dominant fashion system because of the taste work that they perform?

For more information, contact:  aleshkow@holycross.edu