Reddit reviews Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

Soul food has made me not fat. When I get cravings, I tend to snack or get fast food and get instant gratification. With soul food, you got to cook and it's very hearty, so by the time you are done cooking, your cravings are gone and you only eat it if you're hungry. People are obese because of fast, processed, and pre-packaged food, not soul food. Enjoy your soul food. Just make sure you eat some collard greens once in a while.

This is just another way white people try to distinguish themselves from blacks and use a culture's food as a way of casting judgment on the culture and its people. "The social world, argues, functions simultaneously as a system of power relations and as a symbolic system in which minute distinctions of taste become the basis for social judgement."

My friend, you have just stepped into a minefield. Get a helmet, and start reading some books. There is much for you to learn.

You aren't wrong, you're right about most is the things you say. It's why I ended up studying education policy in graduate school. Unfortunately, the more we know the more helpless we become.

Here's some required reading to get your feet wet:

http://www.amazon.com/Spinning-Wheels-Politics-School-Reform/dp/0815736355/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458110858&sr=1-1&keywords=Spinning+wheels

http://www.amazon.com/Tinkering-toward-Utopia-Century-Public/dp/0674892836/ref=pd_sim_14_28?ie=UTF8&dpID=51DQYN2V19L&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR105%2C160_&refRID=0C983NQYAYFNVQ68XQT5

http://www.amazon.com/Distinction-Social-Critique-Judgement-Taste/dp/0674212770/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458110942&sr=1-1&keywords=Bourdieu%27s

http://www.amazon.com/Reign-Error-Privatization-Movement-Americas/dp/0345806352/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1458111017&sr=1-14&keywords=Education+policy

Essentially that taste, judgement, etc. are conditioned, rather than a marker of whatever you want it to be (cultural sensibilities etc.) and that our buying into them is one of the ways in which the class structure reinforces itself. The article uses the lens of the "hipster", the person desperately striving to be the tastemaker while never being seen to be striving.

It also points to this book, which I'm totally going to read now.

Not sure I agree, but definitely Food for Thought.

It really depends on what she is interested in, it is a very broad subject. Here are some of the better things I've read in the past few years, trying to make up for a lack of art education in school:

History of Modern Art

Art in Theory 1900 - 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas

Color in Contemporary Painting: Integrating Practice and Theory

After Modern Art 1945-2000

Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction

Modern Sculpture: A Concise History

Sculpture since 1945

The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers

Aesthetics

The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

I don't think Pirsig's quality is tangible -- its a relation between what is generally considered a subject (e.g. a mechanic) and an object (e.g. a bicycle.)

The issue of distinguishing good and bad quality is interesting to read alongside critiques of the taste. We often think of "good taste" but people like Bourdieu have gone along way to dispelling any objective basis for it.

Not victims, but products. We all are, of our own social situations. If it were so easy to just wake up one day and step outside of our own habitus (see also Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction), why are so many people "choosing" to live in poverty? You're saying that people just need to stop being stupid and then everything will be fine, as if there weren't problems inherent to our economic and political systems (as they are set up by our governments) that provide worse outcomes for certain types of people and lavish benefits to others. Not by accident, but by design. You are attempting to ascribe your value system on an entire group of people you don't really understand and with whom you do not empathize. You are assuming that there is a single rational response to poverty when, in fact, it is an incredibly complex issue that has more to do with social structure and power relations than personal choice or "bootstrapping."

Social science has actually done quite a lot of research on poverty, and it turns out that getting out of it is pretty freaking difficult, especially if that's where you started.

This is kind of complex. There is probably some merit in saying that classical musicians put more thought into the craft personally, but this doesn't really explain it properly.

The basic premise is that your aesthetic tastes are largely a result of how you are raised. Higher class people were raised with things like classical music, ballroom dancing, art. Lower class people were raised on the popular music of the time (basically be definition-- popular music what's preferred by the populous). Because of this, people who liked classical music were probably higher class than people who liked pop music. Since we all want to be seen as being higher in the social pecking order, we (mostly) all say classical music is better even if we personally can't tell the difference in quality.

Further reading in case you really want to see more: http://www.amazon.com/Distinction-Social-Critique-Judgement-Taste/dp/0674212770