Skip to product information
1 of 1

Publish: 麥田

Distinguishing: a social critique of judgments of taste

Distinguishing: a social critique of judgments of taste

Regular price MOP$307.00
Regular price Sale price MOP$307.00
Sale Sold out / Pre-order

This is a starting point book to see how "culture will challenge or consolidate class"!

French ideological master Bourdieu carries a masterpiece
The most classic must-read book on cultural sociology in the 20th century
Published for more than 40 years, literally translated from French. Traditional Chinese version is available for the first time !

Sociology has rarely been so similar to social psychology when it comes to the study of taste.
This is one of the most life-or-death stakes in the game of struggle between the dominant class and the field of cultural production.
Judgment of taste combines understanding and perception and is the highest expression of "judgment".
Scholars can understand but cannot feel; celebrities enjoy this judgment but do not understand it well.
Therefore it can define whether a person is perfect or not.
And because all social etiquette indicates:
Any idea that defines this indefinable,
will be regarded as obviously vulgar and intolerable.
Whether it is the social etiquette of the college or the rules of celebrities,
Both regard taste as the clearest indicator of nobility.
If you want to own it, there is nothing you can do but taste it yourself.
──Buchdieu. "District Judgment"

  • Ranked among the ten classics of sociology in the 20th century, it is a masterpiece of French sociology master Bourdieu on taste judgment and aesthetic shaping!
  • A must-read book that explores "how the hidden structures of politics, economy, entertainment, ordinary people's lives, etc. embody the subtle differences in taste between classes"!
  • Collecting more than a hundred various field survey questionnaires and diagrams, re-exploring the social landscape of France in the 1970s!
  • This book received subsidy support from the "Classic Translation and Annotation Project of the National Science Council", and was selected by Li Mingqin and translated/guided by Qiu Deliang!

Any taste judgment in society has its origin. "District" brilliantly illustrates the pretentiousness of the middle class in the modern world. Published in 1979, it is a huge ethnography of contemporary France and a profound analysis of social class thinking. In our daily lives, we are constantly making decisions between things we think are beautiful and things we think are tacky or ugly. Taste is not pure. These different aesthetic choices are "differentiations," that is, "choices that are opposed to the choices of other classes." The world operates on both a system of power relations and a system of symbols, and the fine distinctions of taste become the basis for social judgment.

Bourdieu overturned never-questioned categories of beauty, art, and culture: categories of "judgment" depended on one's place in the social hierarchy. The factors that determine them are, on the one hand, "cultural capital", that is, educational level; on the other hand, "economic capital," that is, social situation. By analyzing the changes in the relationship between different social classes and education systems, general behavioral rules are distinguished in each class, making it possible to establish a "system" of lifestyle. The "differentiation" displayed by the social subject through its members, that is, the difference between delicious and ordinary, beautiful and ugly, chic and tacky, outstanding and vulgar, unfolds against the classification system (taste) and living conditions (class) Analysis is transformed into the form of objective systematic selection, thus triggering "social criticism of taste judgments." This book reveals that these patterns are inseparable from the description of social classes and their lifestyles. It is supplemented by a large number of field tune results and theoretical criticism and analysis, sorting out all the reformulations of traditional issues such as beauty, art, taste and culture.

There is no doubt that "District" is a classic that has had the greatest impact on contemporary social sciences. The International Sociological Association (ISA) has listed it among the ten most important sociological works of the 20th century. Its influence spans various academic fields and has opened up the field of mathematics. A new approach to popular culture analysis in the past ten years. The speculation on aesthetic endowment he puts forward is enough to shake up the pure aesthetic theory since Kant, forcing researchers to re-explore the social conditions of taste production. No matter how the contemporary classic book list is updated, "District Judgment" will never be left out: it has changed the original appearance of cultural sociology.

SKU:9786263104402

View full details