a social critique of the judgment of taste

He depicts the construction and development of objective sets with regard to how people construct and perceive their individual social world without ignoring how construction and perception get constrained. He also examines constructivism which involves the social beginning of schemes of thought-action and perception. In the chapter Bourdieu strives to merge subjectivism and objectivism. External structures are internalized by people then externalized again through practices. Bourdieu suggests that habitus produces and it is at the same time produced by the social world of man. Habitus exists as a framework but people don’t just respond to it mechanically (Bourdieu 2013, p.186). People have different habitus as it is determined by their position in the social structure of the society. It is acquired and established in a person as a result of long-term experience and exposure to a certain position in a social world. It is the mental structure and internalized schemes by which man perceives the world. People in the same social and economic class seem to have the same taste and lifestyle.Īccording to Bourdieu’s habitus is a mindset that enables people to deal and interact with the social world. People’s practices in society are characterized and influenced by the social and economic class in which they are. People in different social and economic classes have different habits and practices (Bourdieu 2013, p.172).

Through the habitus system, Bourdieu shows the evaluation and breakdown of the different acts, practices, and traditions by different economic and social classes. From the association of the two ideas taste emerges which is a unitary collection of distinctive and specific preferences that express the same expressive aim in particular logic of the individual symbolic furniture, subspaces, language, body axis, and clothing. These relations gradually become sign systems that are socially qualified this includes things like vulgar and distinguished. Bourdieu defines a common way of life, lifestyle, as shown in their mutual relationships depicted through their schemes of the habitus.

Bourdieu observes the classification system of the practices which he refers to as the principal division.

A social critique of the judgment of taste