On taste, class, and hipsters

Taste is not stable and peaceful, but a means of strategy and competition. Those superior in wealth use it to pretend they are superior in spirit. Groups closer in social class who yet draw their status from different sources use taste and its attainments to disdain one another and get a leg up. These conflicts for social dominance through culture are exactly what drive the dynamics within communities whose members are regarded as hipsters.

From The Hipster in the Mirror by Mark Greif in the New York Times. It’s a pretty interesting piece that references French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s work Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.