SOCIAL IDENTITY AND AESTHETIC TASTE

Bourdieu's theory of aesthetic taste shares with social identity theor y the concepts of reciprocal comparison and differentiation among soci al groups. This study used discourse analysis of interviews with furth er-education students on the topic of aesthetic taste to test the hypo thesis, derived from these theories, that individuals always present t heir tastes in line with social differentiations. Since these students were moving from working-class to middle-class identities via educati on, it was expected that their discourse would be rich in the inconsis tencies which need discourse analysis. Most respondents denied links b etween social class and aesthetic taste, but produced inconsistent ''i ndividualist'' and ''socialisation'' repertoires. The individualist re pertoire gave priority to individual choice in looking forward to a mi ddle-class identity, while the socialisation repertoire favoured egali tarianism in looking backward to working-class origins and tastes. Thi s inconsistency was resolved in one of two ways, ''reconstrue society' ', or ''reconstrue self''. The ''reconstrue society'' resolution had t hree versions: progressivism (assertion of rapid disappearance of clas ses); reduction of class to resistible peer pressure; and subdivision of the working class into non-cultured and cultured segments, identify ing the self with the latter. ''Reconstrue self'' presented the self a s overriding socialisation forces, but split identity between a social outer appearance and a private inner self.