Segment - The Critique Of Bourdieu On The Sociology Of The "fun"

Focusing on Distinction : A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste as a research object, written by Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, this thesis aims to expound and analyse his unique sociological critiques on "taste ". In order to reveal the social and political role of cultural consumption, Bourdieu reintegrated the aesthetic consumption into the world of ordinary consumption and challenged Kantian aesthetics by disenchanting the universality and legitimacy of it from a sociological perspective. Unmasking the "purity" of high culture, he presented how the classification of taste and patterns of cultural consumption (from high art to food on the table) marked , maintained the class difference and distinction. He interrogated the processes by which the making and maintaining of these distinctions secured and legitimated the forms of power and domination which were ultimately rooted in economic inequality. And furthermore he exposed how these differences were used by dominant classes as a means of social reproduction. He pointed out that art and cultural consumption are predisposed to fulfil a social function of legitimating social differences.Bourdieu's theory provides us with a new perspective to consider "taste". The thesis explores his critique on the Kantian aesthetics of the "subjective universal" and intends to give a brief survey of the research of Cultural Sociology advocated by Bourdieu . At the same time , thecore concepts——"capital"," social space" and "habitus"are mainly expounded .Tracing hissocial trajectory and academic habitus, the ending of the thesis discusses the limitation and contradiction of his thinking.