Taste Formation in Pluralistic Societies The Role of Rhetorics and Institutions

Standard sociological theories of ‘taste-as-refinement’, which view taste as a means to maintain social distance among different social classes, conflict with tastemaking practice in pluralistic societies where taste standards are no longer exclusively defined by a society’s elite strata. To better account for the heterogeneity of tastemaking in modern societies, this article suggests a framework for analysis in which taste is considered as a collective interpretive activity that unfolds in distinct institutional contexts and is shaped by culturally available rhetorics of aesthetic judgment. Two conflicting but complementary rhetorics are identified: the rhetoric of refinement and the rhetoric of authenticity. Drawing on historical studies of taste, the role of institutional context for tastemaking is demonstrated. Taste in pluralistic society emerges in socially, politically and rhetorically contested institutional spaces where it is negotiated among a plurality of actors who have recourse to alternative rhetorics and classifications. keywords: authenticity ✦ institutional effects ✦ refinement ✦ rhetorics of taste ✦ sociology of culture