Abstract

The Concepts of Bourdieu's Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste The way Bourdieu introduces foreign concepts (habitus, doxa, logic of practice) is through jumping straight and enthusiastically into his deep thoughts, instead of clearly and logically defining them first. Accepting these dominant characteristics of taste is, according to Bourdieu, a form of \" symbolic violence .\" That is, the fact of considering these distinctions between tastes as natural, and believing that they are necessary, denies the dominated classes the possibility of defining their own world, which puts those with less general capital at a disadvantage. Moreover, even when the dominated social classes come to have their own ideas about what it is \"good taste \"and what is not,\" the aesthetics of the working class is dominated aesthetic, which it is obliged to always defined in terms of the aesthetics of the ruling class .