Understanding Cultural Taste

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

   PDF

2. Introducing Taste

   • David Wright

   Pages 1-8

3. Theorizing Taste

   • David Wright

   Pages 9-41

4. Measuring Taste

   • David Wright

   Pages 42-71

5. Governing Tastes

   • David Wright

   Pages 72-95

6. Globalizing Tastes

   • David Wright

   Pages 96-117

7. Producing Tastes

   • David Wright

   Pages 118-143

8. Digitalizing Tastes

   • David Wright

   Pages 144-164

9. Conclusion: Dimensions of Taste

   • David Wright

   Pages 165-171

10. Back Matter

    Pages 172-188

    PDF

This book will help students and researchers to clarify a complex concept that is often over simplified in media and cultural studies, the sociology of culture and cultural policy. It updates established theoretical and methodological debates in the study of taste and provides an original perspective on a distinct and rich research field.

• Taste
• sociology of culture
• Bourdieu
• Distinction
• Cultural Policy Studies
• consumption
• consumerism
• the cultural industries
• the cultural omnivore
• omnivorousness
• Cultural Studies
• media
• Pierre Bourdieu
• sociology

"This is a great book. David Wright explores and questions the assumptions which shape much social scientific discussion of taste, and then transcends them. He reflects upon the context of social scientific engagement with taste, and then both considers how that context is changing and what we need to do to keep up. The result is a fascinating book which should be essential reading for anybody thinking about or researching taste." - Nick Crossley, University of Manchester, UK

"In this highly engaging book, David Wright offers a wealth of informed and decidedly contemporary insights into the state of play in debates about cultural taste and its social significance. While the book's merits are numerous, especially impressive is the way it manages to tease out the contingencies and complexities of attempts to understand and interpret taste in the twenty-first century, while at the same time providing a compelling account of why and how taste remains a matter of enduring concern for questions about struggle, power and inequality." - Mark Rimmer, University of East Anglia, UK

"This book is a compelling invitation to think critically about taste, from the implications of linking literacy to citizenship, to the repercussions of Amazon's predictive algorithms. Wright provides an utterly absorbing account of the infrastructure behind the making, measuring and mobilizing of tastes. His masterful overview spans early modernity to the age of Big Data, and places the reader at the cutting edge of debates about taste and why it matters, perhaps more than ever, in a culture of abundance." - Jennifer Smith Maguire, University of Leicester, UK

• University of Warwick, UK

  David Wright

David Wright teaches in the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies at the University of Warwick, UK and has interests in popular culture, cultural work and the politics of cultural participation. He was a Research Fellow at CRESC, based at the Open University, and a co-author of Culture, Class, Distinction (2009).

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