2024-07-22 23:15:47
What kind of music a person listens to and what they wear is not just a matter of personal preference. Gusto is influenced by social status, educational institutions or perhaps influencers. In a new book called The Rules of Taste, four researchers set out to show what plays a role in what we consider aesthetic today – and that it’s far from just an individual question.
Even the family background can have an impact on preferences, way of speaking, gestures, values or favorite literature and music. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu came up with the thesis that taste is not so subjective in the 1970s when he described the concept of so-called cultural capital.
That opera used to be widely perceived as more valuable than pop music is largely coincidental from Bourdieu’s point of view. The higher social classes, with their understanding and appreciation of “high culture”, isolate themselves from the poorer population, for whom it is much more difficult to navigate in such an environment, he argued.
Cover of the book The Rules of Taste. | Photo: Host publishing house
In Bourdieu’s view, cultural capital has thus become another source of inequality alongside economic and social capital. Knowledge of classical literature is not equal to money, but a person from a rich family has a better chance of having it. Thanks to this, he can celebrate extra achievements in school, which gives him better prospects to continue his studies. And in the end, perhaps he will have a better understanding with his boss when he is looking for a well-paid job, one could roughly illustrate the sociologist’s reasoning.
Several decades have passed since then. Today, it is no longer the case that only opera and pop music are socially acceptable. But this does not mean that cultural hierarchies have disappeared, they are just more difficult to recognize, the book Rules of Taste shows. A team consisting of sociologists Ondřej Špaček and Ludmila Wladyniak and anthropologists Mariá Heřmanová and Michal Lehečka took part in it. It was published by the publishing house Host.
Omnivorous elites
A person with high cultural credit can easily read comics, watch reality shows and listen to Taylor Swift, all these genres are also found in the cultural sections of established media today. It is all the more difficult to find out what is culturally valuable. The line between tasteful and tasteless is less clear than before, according to the book.
“As a member of the cultural elite, you can easily afford to listen to Beyoncé and watch series on Nova, but you have to be able to justify these things,” the publication says. This is the so-called cultural omnivory, a theory that began to be applied at the end of the last century. It refers to the fact that even culturally educated people now also “consume” what we would previously call low culture.
But it depends in what way. There is, for example, the so-called ironic consumption, when we satirically watch a work that was seriously intended for the masses or look for other layers of meaning in it. For example, when we watch the comedy Sun, Hay, Strawberries to discuss the Czech humor and culture of the 90s.
That’s a general overview after all
The publication outlines that while it may be harder to discern what has cultural value today, taste is still largely determined by social background and education. The ambition of the Czech education system is to balance the differences in the cultural overview. According to the main author of the book, sociologist Ondřej Špaček, the opposite is happening. “School gives the promise of social mobility. However, when empirically examining the education system, we find that the differences are even greater there, even if there are individual exceptions,” he says.
One of the authors of the book, Ondřej Špaček, works at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague. | Photo: Honza Mudra
Cultural capital, which belongs to higher social classes, is called in the educational system by vague terms such as “general overview” or “study prerequisites”, the authors explain. “We are not saying that this person had the opportunity to attend good schools or that he grew up in an educated family, but simply that he has a ‘general overview,'” they mention.
People with similar knowledge also like to confirm this in adulthood. “Therefore, every year there is a discussion about, for example, what was in the matriculation questions and whether it was adequate,” Špaček gives the example. “We can also look at capitals as a certain type of game; what you can walk in. That’s also why many parents resist different education – they want their children to have the same rules that they themselves understand,” he adds.
The connection between taste and education goes even deeper. The rules of taste, for example, note that Czech education puts a disproportionately greater emphasis on literature compared to other art forms. It is a relic of the national revival, which derived Czech identity primarily from language. While literature is still the only subject common to all high school graduates in the Czech Republic, interest in visual arts and music is often cultivated only in non-serious “education”.
For this purpose, the authors conducted research among Prague university students. It concluded that when someone reads less than is considered appropriate, they feel ashamed. But if he is not involved in visual arts, he doesn’t really care.
Beautiful city, better people?
The book is not only about the education system. It shows that social origin also affects the way cities look today, advertising signs, information systems or the process of gentrification, that is, the movement of wealthier residents to renovated, until recently less prosperous parts of the city.
According to the authors of the publication, today, for example, urban planners tend to make “cities for people”, which primarily take into account the inhabitants. Even in them, however, the aesthetic of the period is naturally projected, close to someone with a certain socio-economic background, cultural outlook, and therefore also taste – including the urban planners and architects who design them.
Ondřej Špaček admits that he and his colleagues set up a critical mirror for themselves here – as Prague academics, they also have aesthetic preferences close to the middle intellectual class living in larger cities.
“However, it is beneficial to realize that, even at first glance, the pious effort to improve public space is actually the promotion of a certain type of taste,” says the sociologist, according to whom a design-tuned metropolis full of exclusive cafes can create a lot of places where people will feel out of place, and not only because of its financial possibilities. “When dealing with aesthetic aspects, let’s not forget that there are also social issues that can have unintended consequences. The idea that more beautiful is automatically better and that we can perhaps ‘improve’ those who use the space is problematic,” he points out.
According to Špaček, the recent placement of David Černý’s sculptures at the Máj department store in Prague or the closing of the Kasárna Karlín community center can also be seen as a dispute between cultural and aesthetic values. Although it was visited, some locals criticized its existence, pointing out the noise, and the building authority finally criticized it for not being approved.
The Karlín Barracks are a typical example of what the authors in the book call cultural factories – places in which investors do not see potential or, as in this case, are protected as a cultural monument. Therefore, they are temporarily managed by “creatives”, who, however, lose them after great success and eventually have to relocate elsewhere.
“There is a conflict here between the cultural and economic faction of the middle class. Where some see a unique and authentic cultural life, others perceive only noise and disorder,” Špaček interprets the ongoing dispute over the use of urban space. According to him, while supporters of the Karlín Barracks appreciate the authenticity of the recently closed space, opponents may find the cultural center in the former military building tacky and would rather welcome a “polished multi-cinema”, he gives an example.
“It shows the different values that people project into city spaces, things and ideas about what it means to have a good time. It’s normal, society is constantly negotiating what has what cultural value,” he explains. According to him, both the case of the Máj department store and the Karlín Barracks show that these places are important to citizens, which is why they discuss them.
Do we even have our own taste?
What appears to be a matter of taste sometimes reveals who has more power to determine cultural values in society. “At first glance, the aesthetic dispute seeps up to the level of political discussions, and all existing social inequalities are manifested in it,” summarizes the sociologist.
According to the authors of the book, cultural capital also makes it possible to understand how a person’s social status is transmitted from generation to generation, without necessarily being related to property.
So is there such a thing as individual taste, or are we condemned to what we like by our origins and the environment in which we grew up? The book does not mention the individual side of things at all. Sociologists mainly wanted to shed light on what is hidden at first glance, Špaček explains. “Taste can be viewed in different ways, and we offer one of them. In today’s society, we often attribute everything to personal decision-making. However, the task and possibility of the social sciences is to draw attention to the fact that these questions are far from just individual,” he says.
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“Life is great in Prague, but it’s a bit of an open-air museum,” Ondřej Boháč, head of the Prague Institute of Planning and Development, said in the Spotlight program. | Video: The Spotlight Team