Alternative explanations of the social construction of taste

Alternative explanations of the social construction of taste

The notion that the primary influence on the social construction of taste is social class has come under heavy criticism in recent years. Bourdieu, in particular, has been criticized on many grounds, most of them related to the view that a class analysis of taste (or anything else) is outdated in modern society ^[3] and/or is not relevant outside of France. One set of arguments suggests that tastes have become standardized as the result of a process of levelling down of culture generally and the processes of rationalization, democratization and industrialization. The concept of standardization thus challenges the framework put forward by Bourdieu to explain how tastes are constructed. A further set of arguments takes an almost opposite view, suggesting that we are no longer restricted by wider social structural processes such as social class (or gender or race for that matter) but that we are free to create our own identities/make choices, etc. This can be linked to a body of thinking called postmodernism. In some versions of this stream of thought individuals are not conceived of as completely atomized and rootless but as members of shifting groups and alliances (Maffesoli, 1988), a sort of tribal society rather than an individualistic society (refer to Chapter 2 for a discussion on postmodernism).

These alternative paradigms imply contradictory conceptions of the amount of choice actually available within which we express our tastes. We turn first to a consideration of the argument...