Week3 Reading Response Pierre Bourdieu- 'Distinction & The Aristocracy of Culture'

Pierre Bourdieu suggests that there is no economy of cultural goods but there is a specific logic to them. According to the reading no one can fully understand cultural practices unless 'culture' is brought back into anthropological sense.

According to scientific observations 'cultural needs are the product of upbringing and education'. Cultural visits and sharing tastes in music, art and literature refer to a certain educational level and social origin. The family background has a huge impact on our cultural development.

Consuming any work of art is a process of communication, and an act of deciphering and decoding. Nevertheless, in order to understand the meaning of a work of art, the consumer needs to possess cultural competence. This links with Leavis' theory for preserving culture withing the minority and that culture is for the ones that consider themselves educated.

There are different ways of relating to realities through economic and social conditions. Taste classifies the classifier, and the antithesis between quantity and quality corresponds to the oppositions between the taste of necessity and the taste of luxury. Studying cultural consumption is done in order to discover the preferences in art, music, literature etc. It is predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfil a social function of legitimating social differences.

As Bourdieu says "But the apprehension and appreciation of the work also depend on the beholder's intention, which is itself a function of the conventional norms governing the relation to the work of art in a certain historical and social situation and also of the beholder's capacity to conform these norms, i.e. his artistic training". This refers to me as that then again he suggests that culture is for the ones that have the capacity to interpret the forms of art, and that art should be preserved within the upper class society. Forms of art could carry different cultural significance that could be interpreted by their historical and social conventions.

I believe that if culture wasn't made accessible to the mass, there also would not had been any development of knowledge. At a contemporary society getting education and seeking self improvement are opened to the public. In my opinion this leads to a more civilised society in the long run. Although there is a majority of nowadays "art products" which are offered to the mass that don't have any cultural value, there is still plenty to be learnt from what is accepted to carry knowledge. Example of that is what we recognise as "quality" television.