Taste is an acquired disposition to differentiate and appreciate. It marks differences by a process of distinction which is not a distinct knowledge. It functions as a sort of social orientation, implying a practical anticipation of what the social meaning or values of the chose practice or thing will probably be.

All knowledge of the social world is an act of construction implementing schemes of thought and expression. Between the conditions of existence, there intervenes the structuring activity of the agents who respond to the invitations or threats of a world whose meaning they have helped to produce (habitus). The principle of this structuring activity is not a system of universal categories but a system of internalized schemes which having been constituted collectively and historically are acquired in the course of individuals' practical lives.

Embodied Social Structures;

Social science in constructing the social world takes note of the fact that agents are the subject of acts of construction of the social world. But social science also aims to describe the social genesis of the principles of construction. All agents in a given social formation share a set of basic perceptual schemes which receive the beginnings of objectification in pairs of antagonistic adjectives. The ultimate source of this network is the opposition between the dominating elite and the dominated mass. The same classificatory schemes can function in whole fields organized in polar oppositions. These schemes are particularly applicable to one field, but are transferable to others because of all the homologies between fields.

Knowledge without Concepts:

Social divisions become principles of division organizing the image of the social world. Objective limits become a sense of limits. The sense of limits implies forgetting the limits. The primary experience of the social world is the doxa: an adherence to relations of order which because they structure inseparably both the real work and the thought world are accepted as self-evident. The dominated adjust their expectations to their chances (Durkheim's logical conformity).

The sense of the social structure (taste) is far removed from an act of cognition. Everything takes place as if the social conditionings linked to a social condition tended to inscribe the relation to the social world in relation to the bodily hexus. The ultimate values are never anything other than the primary dispositions of the body, visceral tastes in which the groups' most vital interests are embedded. The sense of distinction which demands that certain things be brought together and others kept apart responds with horror to everything which passes understanding and flouts common sense.

Advantageous Attributions:

The classificatory scheme which fixes limits is not so much a means of knowledge as a means of power. It is harnessed to social functions and aimed at satisfying the interests of a group. The interest which individuals and groups invest in classificatory systems encompasses their whole social being and defines ''us'' as opposed to ''them.'' This scheme is the basis of the exclusion and inclusion individuals perform among the characteristics produced by the common classificatory system.

Social identity lies in difference.

The Classification Struggle:

What is at stake in the struggles about the meaning of the social world is power over the classificatory schemes and systems which are the basis of the representations of groups and therefore of their mobilization. Only in struggle do the internalized limits become boundaries and barriers that have to be moved. And the system of classification is only institutionalized when it has ceased to function as a sense of limits so the guardians of order must constitute the doxa as orthodoxy.

The fate of groups is bound up with the words that designate them. The power to impose recognition depends on the capacity to mobilize around a name (''proletariat'').

The Reality of Representation and the Representation of Reality:

Symbolic property is a property perceived in relation to other properties of the same class by agents equipped with socially constituted schemes of perception.

We have to move beyond the opposition between objectivist theories, which identify social classes as discrete groups, and subjectivist theories, which reduce the social order to a sort of collective classification obtained by aggregating the individual strategies (classified and classifying) through which agents categorize themselves and others. A class is defined as much by its being-perceived as by its being, by its consumption as much as by its position in the relations of production. Lastly, individuals' positions in the classification struggles depend on their positions in the class structure.
 

Conclusion: Classes and Classifications

Taste is an acquired disposition to differentiate and appreciate. It marks differences by a process of distinction which is not a distinct knowledge. It functions as a sort of social orientation, implying a practical anticipation of what the social meaning or values of the chose practice or thing will probably be.

All knowledge of the social world is an act of construction implementing schemes of thought and expression. Between the conditions of existence, there intervenes the structuring activity of the agents who respond to the invitations or threats of a world whose meaning they have helped to produce (habitus). The principle of this structuring activity is not a system of universal categories but a system of internalized schemes which having been constituted collectively and historically are acquired in the course of individuals' practical lives.

Embodied Social Structures;

Social science in constructing the social world takes note of the fact that agents are the subject of acts of construction of the social world. But social science also aims to describe the social genesis of the principles of construction. All agents in a given social formation share a set of basic perceptual schemes which receive the beginnings of objectification in pairs of antagonistic adjectives. The ultimate source of this network is the opposition between the dominating elite and the dominated mass. The same classificatory schemes can function in whole fields organized in polar oppositions. These schemes are particularly applicable to one field, but are transferable to others because of all the homologies between fields.

Knowledge without Concepts:

Social divisions become principles of division organizing the image of the social world. Objective limits become a sense of limits. The sense of limits implies forgetting the limits. The primary experience of the social world is the doxa: an adherence to relations of order which because they structure inseparably both the real work and the thought world are accepted as self-evident. The dominated adjust their expectations to their chances (Durkheim's logical conformity).

The sense of the social structure (taste) is far removed from an act of cognition. Everything takes place as if the social conditionings linked to a social condition tended to inscribe the relation to the social world in relation to the bodily hexus. The ultimate values are never anything other than the primary dispositions of the body, visceral tastes in which the groups' most vital interests are embedded. The sense of distinction which demands that certain things be brought together and others kept apart responds with horror to everything which passes understanding and flouts common sense.

Advantageous Attributions:

The classificatory scheme which fixes limits is not so much a means of knowledge as a means of power. It is harnessed to social functions and aimed at satisfying the interests of a group. The interest which individuals and groups invest in classificatory systems encompasses their whole social being and defines ''us'' as opposed to ''them.'' This scheme is the basis of the exclusion and inclusion individuals perform among the characteristics produced by the common classificatory system.

Social identity lies in difference.

The Classification Struggle:

What is at stake in the struggles about the meaning of the social world is power over the classificatory schemes and systems which are the basis of the representations of groups and therefore of their mobilization. Only in struggle do the internalized limits become boundaries and barriers that have to be moved. And the system of classification is only institutionalized when it has ceased to function as a sense of limits so the guardians of order must constitute the doxa as orthodoxy.

The fate of groups is bound up with the words that designate them. The power to impose recognition depends on the capacity to mobilize around a name (''proletariat'').

The Reality of Representation and the Representation of Reality:

Symbolic property is a property perceived in relation to other properties of the same class by agents equipped with socially constituted schemes of perception.

We have to move beyond the opposition between objectivist theories, which identify social classes as discrete groups, and subjectivist theories, which reduce the social order to a sort of collective classification obtained by aggregating the individual strategies (classified and classifying) through which agents categorize themselves and others. A class is defined as much by its being-perceived as by its being, by its consumption as much as by its position in the relations of production. Lastly, individuals' positions in the classification struggles depend on their positions in the class structure.
 

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