User:Jokinen/Taste (Project)

This is a project page for coordinating the rewrite of the article Taste (sociology). Related casual discussion about practical issues User_talk:Jokinen/Taste (Project)

Article: Taste_(sociology) Draft: User:Jokinen/Taste_(sociology) User:Jokinen/Taste_(final)

General themes to be investigated on

 * What is the article about? Taste as a sociological concept? Or rather taste as a social concept? Should the article be in fact Social taste?
 * In reference to the question above, should the article be segmented in sociological approaches to taste or rather a general overview in social taste with added insights from selected sociologist?

Perspectives and responsibilities
Possible approaches:

  Taste and aesthetics  Fashion (Mikko)  Consumption (Jussi)   Class (Ville)  Theories of social taste (Teppo) 
 * Taste and different societal themes with incorporated theories

  Older theories of taste   Taste and modernity </li> <li> Bourdieu and criticism of taste </li> </ol>
 * Taste as a sociological concept

Possible segments.
 * Taste and fashion
 * Taste and consumption (and economics, of course)
 * Thorsten Veblen and institutionalism?
 * Taste and class
 * Bourdieu and critique of taste

Questions the article should answer

 * What does social taste mean?
 * How is social taste relevant topic for those not interested in social sciences? (Implied as this is a Wikipedia article.)

Taste and Fashion
There's a link between fashion and taste. Fashion can be seen as a mechanism which defines what good taste is. Things which are in fashion are usually considered as beautiful or good, but being in fashion can also have a negative meaning. It can mean something that fades away and changes constantly without actually ever being able to define what's beautiful or stylish because every new fashion is different from its predecessor.

Fashion's origins are in the birth of a new kind of consumer, the hedonistic consumer, whose demands were no longer regulated by an economy of needs. This new type of consumer wanted to satisfy his thirst of novelty. Behind this desire for novelty there's a transition that occurred during modernization and industrialization. (Campbell)

Goods have been representations of status and for example in the 15th century england attitude towards goods was that the older goods families had, the higher social status the family had. Only old and respected families possessed items that were inherited through generations. During the cultural change that occurred, the social value of an item was begin to be defined by items novelty instead of patina (the age of the item). Only rich families had money to buy new goods. Novelty was no longer seen as a mark of commonness. (Campbell)

This want for novelty is something that is essential in fashion. Fashion is always something new, something that's never been seen before. If it stays still, it becomes a tradition and tradition is always seen as vulgar. Fashion satisfies the consumers demand for novelty over and over again. Even though, in reality, it often just repeats and varies old styles and models. Fashion regulates things that could just as well be otherwise. (Gronow 84)

Link between taste and fashion
Immanuel Kant wrote about fashion in his anthropology and according to him, fashion hasn't got much to do with judgments of taste, since fashion is just a blind imitation of others and it's always opposed to good taste (gronow 83). Colin Campbell has suggested that there's an important affinity between fashion and taste. Fashion offers a socially valid standard of taste. It doesn't share the ideal character of good taste as a universal truth, but it offers a universal standard of taste which still allows individuals to have their subjective tastes.

Taste refers to the preferences and choices of an individual and therefor is totally private matter, but at the same time ideal of good taste is beyond individual and is socially binding. Fashion provides a standard of taste which effectively influence and directs individual consumers choices.

Fashion as social phenomenon
For George Simmel fashion was a socially acceptable and secure way to distinguish oneself from others and at the same time it satisfies the individual's need for social adaptation. (Gronow) It is a imitation of given example and satisfies the need for adaptation but at the same time it offers a way to express individuality. Simmel wrote :'Two social tendencies are essential to the establishment of fashion, namely, the need of union on the one hand and the need of isolation on the other'.

Usual concept of fashion in sociology is that fashions are always class fashions. The usual model of fashion is that it has origin in the upper level of society from which they descend the social ladder. What was new in the hands of upper classes loses it's high status and descends to the hands of lower classes. (94) Therefor fashion also unites members of social class and at the same time distinguish them from others. It can be seen as a product of class distinction.

Taste and Consumption
Taste and consumption are closely linked together; taste as a preference of certain types of clothing, food and other commodities directly affects the consumer choices at the market. The causal link between taste and consumption is however more complicated than a direct chain of events in which taste creates demand which in turn creates supply. There are many perspectives to the scientific approach to taste; economists, psychologist and sociologist all have their own account on how taste and consumption are interconnected.

Mechanics between taste and consumption
Definition of consumption in its classical economical context can be summed up in the saying "supply creates its own demand". In other words consumption is created by and equities itself to production of market goods. This definition, however, is not adequate to accommodate any theory, that tries to describe the link between taste and consumption.

A more complex economic model for taste and consumption was proposed by economist Thorstein Veblen. He challenged the simple conception of man as plain consumer of his utmost necessities, and suggested that the study of the formation of tastes and consumption patterns was essential for economics. Veblen did not disregard the importance of the demand for economical system, but rather insisted on rejection of the principle of utility-maximization.

Veblen understood man as a creature, who has a strong instinct to emulate others in order to survive. As social status is in many cases at least partially based on or represented by one's property, men tend to try and match their acquisitions with those who are higher in social hierarchy. In terms of taste and modern consumption this means that taste is formed in a process in of emulation: people emulate each other, which creates certain habits and preferences, which in turn contributes to consumption of certain preferred goods. Veblen's main argument concerned what he called leisure class, and it explicates the mechanism between taste, acquisiton and consumption. He took his thesis of taste as an economical factor and merged it with the neoclassical hypothesis of nonsatiety, which states that no man can ever be satisfied with his fortune. Hence, those who can afford luxuries are bound to be in a better social situation than others, because acquisition of luxuries by definition grants a good social status. This creates a demand for certain leisure goods, that in essence are not necessities, but which by current taste of the most well off become wanted commodities.

In different periods of time consumption and its societal functions have varied. In 14th century England consumption had significant political element. By creating an expensive luxurious aristocratic taste the Monarchy could legitimize itself in high status, and, according to the mechanism of taste and consumption, by mimicking the taste of the Royal the nobility competed for high social position. The aristocratic scheme of consumption came to an end, when industrialization made the rotation of commodities faster and prices lower, and the luxuries of the previous times became less and less indicator of social status. As production and consumption of commodities became a scale bigger, people could afford to choose from different commodities. This provided for fashion to be created in market.

The era of mass consumption marks yet another new kind of consumption and taste pattern. Beginning from the 18th century, this period can be characterized by increase in consumption and birth of fashion, that cannot be accurately explained only by social status. More than establishing their class, people acquired goods just to consume hedonistically. This means, that the consumer is never satisfied, but constantly seeks out novelties and tries to satisfy insatiable urge to consume.

In above taste has been seen as something that presupposes consumption, as something that exists before consumer choices. In other words taste is seen as an attribute or property of a consumer or a social group. Alternative view critical to the attributative taste suggests that taste doesn't exist in itself as an attribute or a property, but instead is an activity in itself. This kind of pragmatic conception of taste drives its critical momentum from the fact that individual tastes can not be observed in themselves, but rather that only physical acts can.

Critical perspectives on consumption and taste
Consumption, especially mass consumerism has been criticized from various philosophical, cultural and political directions. Consumption can be deemed as |overly conspicuous or environmentally untenable, and it can also be a mark of bad taste.

Many critics have voiced their opinion against the growing influence of mass culture, in the fears of the fall of the global divergence of cultures. For example, McDonald's can be seen as a monument to the cultural imperialism of the West. McDonaldization is a term to describe the process, where the fast food company broadens its supply of into every quarter of the world. On account of this smaller ethnic enterprises and food cultures disappear. The efficiency and convenience of getting the same hamburger all over the world can easily surpass the interest for ethnic experiences.

The Western culture of consumerism has been criticized for its uniformity. While the culture industry promises consumerists new experiences and adventures, people in fact are fed the same repeating pattern of swift but temporary fulfillment of needs. Here taste can be seen as a means of repression that, given from above, from the industry of mass culture, makes people void of contentual and extensive ideologies and of will.

Taste and Social Classes
Some judgements concerning good taste may appear more legitimate than others, but most often there is not a single conception which would be shared by all members of society. While there hardly is a consensus on what constitutes good taste, people with their individual sensibilities are not very unique either. While trying to comprehend taste as a social phenomenon, the general understanding among social scientists is to assume that taste is more or less socially determined (Gronow 1997, p. x). Owing to numerous observations that different socio-ecomomic groups or social classes have different tastes, it is seen that taste can not be comprehended as separate from the dynamics of social relations and the properties of the social stratification.

According to Norbert Elias, those practices and attitudes, which would constitute the European standard for taste, appeared first in royal courts. What was originally seen as the taste of ruling classes descended from the nobility to the middle and working classes. The practices and attitudes often concerned the physical functions of the human body, such as eating, sleeping and sex, for which many new constraints and prohibitions were introduced. As Elias called it, this was the process of civilization. (Wacquant 1996, p. 662.)

In Elias' historical studies, as well as in the works of scholars such as Georg Simmel and Thorsten Veblen, the changing tastes is seen as an outcome of social emulation (see also Trickle-down effect) (Gronow 1997, p. 18–20). In his article concerning fashion, Simmel illustrated that patterns of changing tastes unite members of a social class and, also, segregates them from others. On the one hand, people are assumed to have a strong urge to distinguish themselves from those with lower status in the social hierarchy. On the other hand, people are seen as trying to imitate their superiors. It follows that yet another new trends have to be initiated by the elite in order for them to remain distinct from the rest. Being a characteristic of modern societies, Simmel claims that fashion does not exist in societies which are not divided in social classes. (Simmel 1957, p. 541.)

Pierre Bourdieu's attempt was to show how individual tastes, and lifestyles in general, are connected to different positions in the social structure. In addition to social hierarchy of consumers, there exists also a hierarchy for cultural practices and goods. And what Bourdieu claims is that between these two hierarchies, there is a structural association (see homology).

According to Bourdieu, an individual taste is a product of upbringing and education, and, therefore, associated with class background. By assessing relationships between forms of capital (cultural and economical) and social practices, he identified different class fractions in 1960's and 1970's France, each distinct in their tastes.


 * Working class ("taste of necessity")
 * Cultural elite (high total volume of capital, higher cultural than economic capital)
 * Economic elite (high total volume of capital, higher economic capital than cultural capital
 * Middle classes: ("taste of cultural goodwill")

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Becker: Irrelevance of taste to social analysis. Instead, variations in prices and incomes.

Weber: Status groups, segregation within societies which is not expressed and reproduced only through economic resources...

Thorsten Veblen: Leisure class

Postmodern consumer societies: has taste become separated from its class basis?

Taste and Aesthetics
In his aesthetic philosophy, Immanuel Kant denies any standard of a good taste, which would be the taste of the majority or any social group. He claimed that a genuine good taste does exist, though it could not be empirically identified. Thus, disputing over matters of taste would not defend or criticize any general standards of the society. Kant stresses that our preferences even on generally liked things do not justify our judgements. (Gronow 1997, p. 10, 87)

Every judgement of taste, according to Kant, presumes the existence of a sencus communis, a consensus of taste. This non-existent consensus is an idea that both enables judgements of taste and is constituted by a somewhat conceptual common spiritual humanity, or, as Lyotard sees it, a promise of expected consensus. A judgement does not take for granted that everyone agrees with it, but it proposes the community to share the experience. Kant's idea of good taste excludes fashion, which can be understood only in its empirical form, and has no connection with the harmony of ideal consensus. (Gronow 1997, p. 13, 90)

Bourdieu argued against Kantian view of pure aesthetics, stating that the legitimate taste of the society is the taste of the ruling class. This position also rejects the idea of genuine good taste, as the legitimate taste is merely a class taste. This idea was also proposed by Simmel, who noted that the upper classes abandon fashions as they are adopted by lower ones.

Kantian fashion is an aesthetic phenomenon and source of pleasure. Its arbitrary nature forms its contents without any objective criteria. Simmel recognises the usefulness of fashionable objects in its social context. For him, the function lies in the whole fashion pattern, and cannot be attributed to any single object. Fashion, for Simmel, is a tool of individuation, social distinction, and even class distinction, which are neither utilitarian or aesthetical criteria.