The Measurement and Coherence of Taste: Analysing the Music, Art, and Literary Tastes of French Academics
By analyzing the responses given by a population of French academics to three open questions about their favourite musicians, writers, and painters, this article examines the frequent use in the sociology of cultural practices of genre classifications as indicators of taste. Do the theories of eclec...
Tallennettuna:
| Julkaisussa: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/bssg, |
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| Päätekijä: | |
| Aineistotyyppi: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Kieli: | Anglais |
| Julkaistu: |
Biens Symboliques / Symbolic Goods
2024
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| Aiheet: | |
| Linkit: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Yhteenveto: | By analyzing the responses given by a population of French academics to three open questions about their favourite musicians, writers, and painters, this article examines the frequent use in the sociology of cultural practices of genre classifications as indicators of taste. Do the theories of eclecticism and dissonance stand up to analysis when we move away from genre classifications that are widely assigned between legitimate, average, and popular in favour of questions that relate to a preference for certain artists? How should we differentiate between artists within the space of taste and thus determine the existence or not of relative unity? Using network analysis, the article shows that each sphere of taste has its own organization according to differing supply structures and their respective fields of production. Meanwhile, it is possible for tastes in music, literature, and art to intersect, and to obtain categories of taste that are relatively coherent from the point of view of the position of the different artists in the space of the tastes expressed. These categories of taste are also related to the social characteristics of respondents. Finally, we observe that “cultural transgressions”—citing preferences for artists from spheres that are distant from one another in terms of legitimacy—occur in music. These transgressions consist in the expression of a taste for musicians who have little legitimacy in combination with very legitimate tastes in literature and art. |
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