A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste by Pierre Bourdieu - Literature review Example

Bourdieu observes the classification system of the practices which he refers to as the principal division. Bourdieu defines a common way of life, lifestyle, as shown in their mutual relationships depicted through their schemes of the habitus. These relations gradually become sign systems that are socially qualified this includes things like vulgar and distinguished. 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. Through the habitus system, Bourdieu shows the evaluation and breakdown of the different acts, practices, and traditions by different economic and social classes. People in different social and economic classes have different habits and practices (Bourdieu 2013, p.172). People’s practices in society are characterized and influenced by the social and economic class in which they are. People in the same social and economic class seem to have the same taste and lifestyle.

 According to Bourdieu’s habitus is a mindset that enables people to deal and interact with the social world. It is the mental structure and internalized schemes by which man perceives the world. 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. People have different habitus as it is determined by their position in the social structure of the society.  Habitus exists as a framework but people don’t just respond to it mechanically (Bourdieu 2013, p.186). Bourdieu suggests that habitus produces and it is at the same time produced by the social world of man. External structures are internalized by people then externalized again through practices. In the chapter Bourdieu strives to merge subjectivism and objectivism. He also examines constructivism which involves the social beginning of schemes of thought-action and perception. 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.

Space of lifestyles refers to the competitive marketplace where cultural economic symbolic and social power is used. Bourdieu analyses the various aesthetic preferences and expectations of the various economic and social groups. The cultural preferences of these groups in the society involve the coherent structure and systems that strive to cluster people with the same tastes and at the same time differentiate those the people with divergent preferences and tastes. In the practical application of people’s preferences, objects are classified and at the same time, people classify themselves (Bourdieu 2013, p.212).