Bourdieu and Taste

In the very beginning of his essay, Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu raises a point of how culture and education work together to determine taste. He claims based upon surveys that “scientific observation shows that cultural needs are the product of upbringing and education” (NA 1809). Whatever people decide that that they need, or whatever their culture determines what they need is based specifically on class distinctions, as upbringing and education are two major factors affected by class distinction.

Bourdieu then goes on to say that specific tastes of art rely on class distinctions or are a result of class distinctions, and that with the “socially recognized hierarchy of the arts…corresponds a social hierarchy of the consumers” (NA 1809). Certain consumers, depending on their social status, are taught which types of art to like, and know how to appreciate such kinds of art simply because that was exactly how they were raised.

This idea is somewhat frightening to me. It makes sense, but I don’t necessarily want to believe it. Do we like things not because we truly, genuinely like them, but because we have been told to like them and taught to like them? Before I was an English major at Messiah College, I really did enjoy books like The Catcher in the Rye and Crime and Punishment, but was it only because the public schooling aspect of our culture chose to teach them to me and therefore I liked them? When I began to study English at Messiah, there were poets and authors that I had not liked before I studied them, but then I learned to like them because I learned how to appreciate them, so do I like them just because I know how to appreciate them, or because I genuinely enjoy their work? I’m not even sure that these things can be separated…comments?