What Is Taste!?

What is taste?
What is taste? What does it ruled by? For decades, there have been quite a number of arguments on the judgment and definition of “taste”. Some says it is regulated by power while some thinks it is an individual practice. “According to Bourdieu, what seems like an individual practice – taste – is regulated by the logic of practice and is always a variant of class practice.”Lury(1996:86) As quoted, Bourdieu thinks class practice and taste cannot be separated, furthermore, he developed key arguments to support his theory. For his judgment, taste is reproduced by societies, which can be explained in a few aspects, habitus, field and cultural capital. In this essay, I would explain his key arguments with regards to taste, including habitus, field and cultural capital withexamples from the past and the present.
Habitus and taste
“Habitus is a system of lasting, transposable dispositions, which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations and actions and makes possible the achievement of infinitely diversified tasks, thanks to analogical transformations of schemes permitting the solution of similarly shapedproblems” Bourdieu(1977:83)
According to Bourdieu, habitus is the system regulates and explains an individual’s taste and practices, from taste in art, food, hobbies to the way of walking and the accent of speaking to even the judgment of what is good and bad taste. It is shaped in childhood within family, schooling and one of Bourdieu’s most important focuses, social class position. In terms ofsocial class, taste is essential for social reproduction. He suggests that individuals struggle to improve their social position by adapting taste of a higher social position, for instance, one from middle class would shop at Selfridge’s Food Hall because it is where the upper class does food shopping daily. However, the taste (shop at Selfridge’s Food Hall) is “created” by the upper class, which forBourdieu is the habitus of upper social class. In other words, “according to Bourdieu, as part of the process of social reproduction, classes in competition with each other attempt to impose their own habitus or system of classification on other classes, as part of their more general struggle to become dominant.” Lury (1996:88) Moreover, one from other classes cannot adapt all the practice of oneparticular class to improve their social status as it is shaped subconsciously by numbers of factors in childhood.
“The habitus, which operates below the level of individual consciousness, is what will shape an individual’s apparently personal taste through the way in which the individual applies the system of classification.” Lury (1996:85-86)
Cultural field
Cultural field is the term adaptedby Bourdieu, which is an art-culture system, conceptualized as if it were an economy that is characterized by cultural markets, competition and inflation. It is the fields where classes in competition to gain power using cultural goods such as paintings, music and literatures. There are many fields of preferences and stylistic possibilities, music, movies, drinks, interiors, holidays, etc., and ineach field, “The newcomer who tries to break through the entry barrier and the dominant agent who will try to defend the monopoly and keep out competition.” Lury (1996:72) Dominant classes’ tastes are being challenged where the new comers or the minorities attempt to gain a higher position.
“It follows from this, among other things, that the distinction recognized in all dominant classes and inall their properties takes different forms depending on the state of the distinctive sign of ‘class’ that are effectively available.” Bourdieu (1984:228)
Different things in different classes have different definitions. Furthermore, the dominant classes define the good and the bad. For instance, subcultures such as punk were classified as inferior taste, or in other words, low culture, which...