Revisiting Distinction

An important challenge to Bourdieu's theory of taste over the past decades has been how to theorize class distinction in contexts where class identities are not particularly salient and where boundaries between high and low culture seem increasingly permeable. Class distinction is sometimes presented as individualized rather than collective, but what is meant by this is not always very clear. Empirical studies of taste often function with a fuzzy concept of class and pay little attention to dimensions of inequality other than class. This paper seeks to remedy these difficulties in two main ways. First, I propose to reframe class analysis to take into account recent developments in theories of social differentiation, social division and symbolic boundaries. Second, I argue that class distinction is embedded in more general conceptions of excellence and the good life. Cultural eclecticism builds on a vision of excellence as simultaneously individual and collective and as innate and achieved. I illustrate the usefulness of this framework by discussing Richard Florida's work on the rise of the creative class.