An essay on the explanation of personal taste. Can taste be considered to be truly personal?

1. FCTX2010 - The Uses of Things: Design,
Consumption and Identity
Habitus: The Social Construction of Taste
Discuss Bourdieu’s concept of ‘Habitus’. How does this
concept explain the formation of personal taste? Can
taste be considered to be truly personal?
Student: Antonio Amendolagine - 1017031
Wordcount: 1953 words
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2. In this essay I will discuss Bourdieu’s concept of “Habitus” and how this explains
the formation of what we call personal taste. I will continue examining the problem
of the free will linked to the Habitus and the power to take personal decisions in
society. I will conclude by talking about fashion, one of the most immediate index
of the personal taste and how it works for “chavs”.
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Everything starts from the idea that the human being is a problem solver, he gives
more meaning to things than is really required.
Recognising new objects, making up a story for them and giving them a
personality.
Always having in mind what he already knows, through affinities and differences,
being suspicious with what is unusual and new.
This redundant sense of meaning, in a continue negotiation is what give us the
free will, or just its illusion.
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3. “The conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence
produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured
structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles
which generate and organise practices and representations that can be
objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at
ends or express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them.
Objectively ‘regulated’ and ‘regular’ without being in any way the product of
obedience to rules, they can be collectively orchestrated without being the product
of the organising action of a conductor.” (Bourdieu, 1990: 53).
Bourdieu tried to link and solve the opposition between the decisions taken by the
individual and those taken by the society over everyone.
Thus, he developed the “Habitus”, essentially an “acquired system of generative
dispositions.” (Bourdieu, 1977: 95).
To acquire information the Habitus starts from the society and when it begins to
generate the subject of this action is the individual.
Despite this, the contradiction that comes up is: “...without presupposing a
conscious aiming at ends or express mastery of the operations necessary in order
to attain them.”
Jenkins was the first to point this out, imagining that “Behaviour has its causes, but
actors are not allowed their reasons”. (Bourdieu, 1992: 97).
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4. Without a conscious aiming at ends we just have a “narrow” free will and using
Jenkins’ language there should be a Director that knows the reasons of our
behaviour.
As I said before, it can also be the fact that we give more meaning to our action:
there is not a meaning in our actions unless the actions in themselves, which
linked with each others are just pointing out a certain behaviour, nothing more than
that.
I think it is appropriate to link this idea to Kierkegaard’s thought in Either/Or: he is
not really concerned about the quality of the choice made by a man (it has a minor
role), to him it is important the choice in itself.
After the decision everything will become more clear even if the choice we have
picked is the wrong one. Choosing is important since everyone can and everyone
will, if we miss our choice, someone else will take it. Even in the movie “Matrix”,
there is the principal question of the choice: as a human being the main character
chooses but he can discover why and how only because of the oracle’s help that
recognises him as the One (no more just a human being). (The Matrix Reloaded,
2003)
The same concept within the society leads Bourdieu to talk about a distinction
between classes throughout the “Taste, the propensity and capacity to appropriate
(materially and symbolically) a given class of classified, classifying objects or
practices, is the generative formula of lifestyle, a unitary set of distinctive
preferences which express the same expressive intention in the specific logic of
each of the symbolic sub-spaces, furniture, clothing, language or bodily hexis.
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5. Each dimension of life-style 'symbolises with' the others... and symbolises
them.” (Bourdieu, 1984: 173).
I agree on the fact that consuming is good for thinking, when we follow our taste
we don’t need to buy things to possess them, we are already consuming their
idea.
There is a continuous struggling on meanings to define limits, to make clear what
belongs to one class and what belongs to the other one.
“It (the taste) continuously transforms necessities into strategies, constraints into
preferences, and without any mechanical determination, it generates the set of
’choices’ constituiting life-styles.” (Bourdieu, 1984: 175).
Naturally we develop a taste and a preference for what is available to us and to
our class (Williams, 1995).
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This strongly involves the process of consumption, more and more responsible for
our taste, our lifestyle and the way we distinguish ourselves.
“The point being made here is that if goods function primarily as symbols, and all
groups of individuals use them to establish distinctions between themselves and
other groups of individuals, then there are, in principle, no limits to consumer
demand.” (Lury, 1996).
Brands know this and they change their strategies to be more or less “class
distinctive”.
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6. For example Coca-Cola understood that being the drink that is “open to
happiness” is the key to reach people with very different tastes because
happiness, like every emotions, belongs to everyone without class distinction
scheme. Differently from the past when, for a long period, it was linked to the
family and the tradition, giving Pepsi the incredible possibility to grow using the
strongest distinction “the choice of a new generation”.
There is a mystic promise in the process of consuming. Consuming is a safe and
genuine “religion” because there is a reliable concept of cause and effect: people
do not know what freedom really is, the brand suggests its solution, people believe
it and buy the product, suddenly feeling free.
Consumption process is unfailing and more and more mature: people need to get
possession of objects to deeply express themselves.
It is not enough defining their own lifestyle by an opposition, going further from
“bad tastes”, from what is mainstream and from what is unique. There is no bad
taste: if this “bad taste” is “unlocked” by a person with an high cultural capital or an
high economic capital, it becomes good.
There is just a small visible part of our entire taste, for example what we wear.
Analysing it we can try to go back to the complete taste of an individual.
When we understand that there is an antinomy between one expression and other
manifestations we accept that there is not bad taste but extravagance.
Every classification on other people’s taste needs a context in which it can become
consistent.
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7. I also think that unique objects, in our society, are not the correct match to build a
personal taste because no one can recognise them in order to understand
something about our taste and then about our lifestyle.
On the contrary they are the best to escape from this mechanism. Starting using
just unique objects, handmade, is very misleading in this point of view:
theoretically we are quitting the idea of being seen, the idea of being judged, we
are quitting the modern society, based on the principle of seeing and being seen to
understand how good is our leisure time.
“The new logic of the economy rejects the ascetic ethic of production and
accumulation, based upon abstinence, sobriety, saving and calculation, in favour
of a hedonistic morality of consumption, based on credit, spending and enjoyment.
This economy demands a social world which judges people by their capacity for
consumption, their ‘standard of living’, their lifestyle, as much as by their capacity
for production.” - (Bourdieu, 1984: 310)
However quitting is impossible for two reasons: at the present time doing without
mass market products it is not even thinkable, in our society they are too rooted
and mainly we are wasting the possibility to express our cultural or economic
capital, structured on the middle class model.
The pursuit of freedom and the free will comes after the achievement of the
highest capital possible, nonessential if it is cultural or economic, that guarantees
to the individual to become society-proof.
But this point is also arguable since the capital we have got is the result of the
comparison among other people’s capitals: it is clearly a relative concept.
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8. “As Ibsen’s Peer Gynt observed, we are all onions. If you keep peeling off our
layers you find - absolutely nothing left. There is no true inner self. We are not
Emperors represented by clothes, because if we remove the clothes there in not
an inner core. The clothes were not superficial, they actually were what made us
what we think we are”. (Miller, 2009: 1).
Fashion is a strange system and, as Georg Simmel says in his absolutely inspiring
essay (Simmel, 1996), it is impossible to stay away from it.
It is a mix of the individual and the society: individual details within society rules or
their negation, as well.
This is true because we are costantly having the fashion system in our mind, even
if we deny it.
It is fundamentally based on an high economic capital and a decent cultural capital
(since new fashion is randomly determined) useful to say “I absolutely know what I
am doing, I enjoy it and I enjoy being in a society which support this fashion”.
But fashion is also business, that is the only way to explain why a previous trend
becomes affordable to the mass, the cultural capital in it is never the same.
Involving the mass in this process of consumption is due to create new fashion
every time.
Fashion, according to Simmel, ends when everyone follows it. The moment in
which it happens is the moment to change fashion because the distinctive purpose
is failing.
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9. About “chavs” the question is fascinating.
In my opinion these people are trying to break the system, unconsciously, using
shortcuts in a faulty inductive reasoning.
They look at the people who can afford latest fashion (as everyone they can just
look at the people they can mentally afford, I mean they automatically choose
people similar to them because to be inspired everyone must understand what he
is looking at), therefore they try to recognise precious and visible elements of their
status: in this operation, the brand power steps and it blinds “chavs”: the
monogram and the brand pattern become reproduced perpetually the most visible
elements.
This process is inductive because “chavs” are trying to build their capital starting
from an aesthetic manifestation, they are clearly missing stylistic personal
undertones but the imitation of themselves (Simmel, 1996), repeated in every
aspect of their fashion.
The society condemns them because what they do is unusual.
In my opinion they have found their own way trying to “dope” their capital,
exceeding it, using empirical formulas.
The fact that the society can talk about them is not a minor detail: it expresses its
judgment, creating a balance, defining “chavs” and itself, making the distinction.
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In conclusion, I think that there is no personal taste, mainly because the human
being does not want it: we always look for approval, we need it to keep ourselves
in the society as we need refusal to make a distinction within the society.
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10. The Habitus, as a system that acquires information from the society, is sure
enough acting in it.
This acquirement of data in some fields combined with each others seems to be
personal taste: the raw material is absolutely a common good, the only
fundamental difference is the way every individual combine these data.
Distinction from the top-class and imitation from the bottom-class are cyclic: when
the imitation is completed then the distinction can start, struggling for the
appropriation of new meanings that signify surviving.
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11. Bibliography
Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction. Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1990) The Logic of Practice. Stanford University Press.
Jenkins, R. (1992) Pierre Bourdieu. Routledge.
Lury, C. (1996) Consumer Culture. Rutgers University Press
The Matrix Reloaded. (2003) Directed by: Laurence and Andrew Wachowski.
U.S.A. Warner Bros.
Miller, D. (2009) Stuff. Polity.
Pepsi (1984) The choice of a new generation [advertisement] http://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=po0jY4WvCIc (Accessed on: 12.05.11).
Simmel, G. (1996) La moda. Mondadori.
Williams, S. J. (1995) Theorising class, health and lifestyles: Can Bourdieu help
us? In: Sociology of Health & Illness. 17 (5) pp. 577-604.
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