Class Identity and Cultural Tastes

Question: What do your cultural 'tastes' say about your class identity? connect sociological ideas and concepts. Answer: Class identity from traditional class theories help in maintaining the relationship which exists between the culture and the economic causes might lead to other social effects. Bourdieu helped in focusing on class relation aspects especially how the cultural tastes are relative to class position in society. Class Identity and Cultural Tastes Bourdieu states that culture is not basically an effect of class where the class position will determine the cultural practices that are carried out but rather culture is a mechanism through which class is constituted. The cultural tastes could become a huge resource and with value deployed by stratified groups in the system in order to establish and enhance the social order position. Cultural tastes are directly related to class position where various groups are placed closer if they have similar states and are kept away if they have different tastes. This might relate to their economic position but at the same time the horizontal distinctions are also applicable in cases where people with higher cultural tastes but lower economic condition. Bourdieu came out multi-dimensional distinction for such cases and hence has prescribed class position based on four distinct capitals. They are cultural, social economic and symbolic. Difference in both the amount and type of capital gives rise to class position difference and people in these positions exhibit systematic differences of lifestyle and taste which help in marking class and resource differences. Social structure and cultural tastes The relationship between social structure and cultural tastes is well recognized in several forms of academic critical theory. The typical argument put up by scholars is to analyse the fact that culture should not be taken at par with analytical concept. Most of the time the social prestige and income are interrelated and the cultural tastes also varies accordingly. With exceptions in some cases where income doesnt come in the way of cultural tastes and geniuses are created in their respective fields. Culture is structured in various ways indeed depending upon the differences we get to see in social classes but at the same time we need to understand that cultural tastes is definitely decided by material relations or social class (Stanley, 1993). Culture is not derived from class (Rowe and Schelling 1991) and the cultural difference that exists is not exactly same as class difference. Structural homology and habitus Structural homology and habitus basically are the integral parts of cultural legitimacy theory in distinction. The theory explains that in all every cultural and artistic domain the dominant tastes and practices are always those of the dominant classes. The symbolic power attached to dominant culture contributes to the process of reproduction of the class structure because as per our data we can address the notion of habitus in an indirect manner. Paul DiMaggio and Richard Peterson The implication of Paul DiMaggio shows that in some countries like USA high class groups have much wider tastes in cultural field than low status groups. Similarly Richard Peterson in 1993 referred to broader receptivity as the omnivore cultural orientation. This also emphasised that those in top bracket of taste pyramid have wide variety of tastes whereas the base had narrow variety of tastes to which Richard termed as univore cultural orientation. Reference: 1. Stanley, L. (1993). On auto/biography in sociology. Sociology, 27(1), 41-52.2. Giddens, A. (1993). New rules of sociological method: A positive critique of interpretative sociologies. Stanford University Press.3. Miettinen, R. (2000). The concept of experiential learning and John Dewey's theory of reflective thought and action. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 19(1), 54-72.