Taste, Consumption and Social Class - the views of Bourdieu.
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pragsmbagmailcom (student)
Taste and Consumption- Bourdieu
Pierre Felix Bourdieu was a French sociologist. His investigations mainly focused on social, cultural and symbolic aspects of society. His work emphasized on concepts of habits, field and violence to reveal the strength of power relations in modern life. He opposed the western philosophy of tradition. Bourdieu explains the theory of class fractions by the concepts of social, economic and cultural characteristics. Society encourages symbolic factors and regards these factors to be ideal weapon to achieve distinction (Bourdieu, 1984). He explains that cultural capital is a determining factor for differentiating classes across the society (Bourdieu, 1984). Bourdieu explains that people inherit cultural attitudes from their elders and preach the same to the generations following them.
He explains the indications of food, taste and cultural presentations are influenced greatly by socio-economical capital of individuals (Bourdieu, 1984).All these typical characteristics inculcated from the beginning of childhood form a basis of choosing food tastes. The tastes depend on class of the people and are different for different class of people in the society. Each fraction of class has varied tastes and their consumption depends on their position in the society (Bourdieu, 1984). Each fraction of people has their own magnitude of consumer interests and posses their own aesthetic criteria in consumer related interests (Bourdieu, 1984). Taste is defined as a social pleasure or a sense of one’s interest in a particular thing. Different preferences arise according to different ways of acquiring material in the nature (Bourdieu, 1984).
