distinction: a social critique of the judgment of taste

Jessica Cassyle Carr

In his classic 1979 tome Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, French thinker Pierre Bourdieu created a diagram of foods as they relate to class and education. For example, by Bourdieu’s calculation, those with cultural wealth enjoyed recherché and the exotic while those with less of it preferred apéritifs and pâtisserie. He argued that taste itself, as related to consumer preferences, is a form of social positioning.