Distinction in America? Recovering Bourdieu's theory of tastes from its critics

This essay critically examines the North American sociological literature that has developed in response to Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction, his tour-de-force study of consumer taste and social reproduction. I argue that theoretical and empirical challenges often misread Bourdieu, recasting the theory as a variant of Lloyd Warner's social class theory. I use this evaluation to reformulate the theory to reflect socio-historical circumstances particular to the contemporary United States. In an interpretive study of cultural capital and patterns of taste motivated by this reformulation, briefly summarized here, I find six dimensions of taste that vary across cultural capital resources. Finally, I consider the implications of this interpretation of Bourdieu's theory for survey research concerned with patterns of taste and social reproduction. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.