It
seems that major modern philosophers at 70s and 80s had a same issue – social contexts of
something dominant, e.g. Foucault talked about social context of prison and
punishment, and so did Said about social context of orientalism. Pierre
Bourdieu did the same in his book “Distinction – A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste”.
Bourdieu
argues that even our judgment of taste is not free from social context. We
think we know what is culturally noble, but it is just the reflection of power
of social classes, according to Bourdieu. He reckons that the definition of
cultural nobility is the product of a struggle between groups differing in
their ideas of culture and of the legitimate relation to culture and to works
of art. In his definition, social class is more than the “class” that Marx mentioned long before. The classes are defined based on
education, origin of birth, jobs, income, social status, etc.
The
logic is understandable. All social classes follow their incentive structures,
and try to glorify cultures which are close to them. For instance, aristocrats in
Japan may want to emphasize the ascendancy of traditional arts, because in this
way they can keep their cultural dominance in the society.
What
is interesting in his argument is that he gathered as many data as possible to
prove his idea. For example, Bourdieu made survey to see how the cultural
preferences differ among social class and made “preference distribution” of cultural products. According to this distribution, “Well-Tempered Clavier” is less popular among
manual workers, domestic servants, shopkeepers, and the other people with
low-paying jobs (approx. less than 3% of people preferred), but more popular
among secondary teachers and higher-education teachers (more than 30%). His book is full of this kind of facts showing
certain relationship between social class and tastes.
Artists
may disagree with the idea. However, even though the pure intention of artists
is that of a producer who aims to be autonomous, they are following the old
hierarchy of doing and saying – the interpretations superimposed a posteriori on his work.
Remark
The
concept that Bourdieu argued doesn’t sound new, but what is conspicuous in his work is the solid facts
to prove his argument. His works show that even sociological argument can be proved
through facts and numbers, and tell us that we should not abandon ourselves to
despair that somewhat vague concepts cannot be measured.
Reference
Pierre
Bourdieu, “Distinction:
A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste”, Harvard
University Press; Reprint edition, 1987/10/15
