SOCI 109. Distinction: On Class and the Judgment of Tastes

This honors seminar is centered on reading Bourdieu’s Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. This book lays out and applies a set of principles for understanding social inequality, with a particular focus on how people’s cultural tastes or practices are often used to justify their dominated social position. We will read the entire book carefully, in conversation with a number of strains of sociology that engage with it, foreshadow it, or complicate it. Readings include work by WEB Du Bois (Black Reconstruction, Souls of Black Folk) and Thorstein Veblen (The Theory of the Leisure Class), and contemporary American scholars Prudence Carter (Keepin’ It Real: School Success Beyond Black and White), Betsy Leondar-Wright (Missing Class: Strengthening Social Movement Groups by Seeing Class Cultures), Lauren Rivera (Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs) and Anthony Jack. 2019 (The Privileged Poor: How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students).  We will tackle topics such as: how people make judgments about one another; the role of judgments of taste, style, and embodiment in reproducing class and race advantages & disadvantages; the role of class, class cultures, race and racism in American (and European) politics.
Social sciences.
2 credits.
Spring 2026. Laurison.
Catalog chapter: Sociology and Anthropology
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/sociology-anthropology

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