The Sociology Of Taste

Jukka Gronow

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134786558
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The modern society of consumption is a society of fashion. Fashion has extended its influence over various fields of social life and, together with taste, become central to our understanding of the inner dynamics of any modern society.
The Sociology of Taste looks at the role of taste - or the aesthetic reflection - in society at large and in modern society in particular. Taking case studies from social life, for example eating and food culture, it illustrates the role of fashion in the formation of collective taste.

1
INTRODUCTION

Need, taste and pleasure – or understanding modern consumption

The parallel between philosophy and gastronomy

In the following discussion, three aspects of our relationship to consumption are going to be analysed. They can be compressed into three concepts: need, taste and pleasure. Different ways of talking about consumption are centred around these concepts. They are unavoidably present in the different attempts to analyse and explain the development of the modern food culture and its various features. As will be shown in more detail later on, there are major conceptual problems involved with each of these approaches which are particularly evident in the ways we understand food and eating. There is a strong parallel between the development of the discourses of need and taste, on the one hand, and gastronomy and nutrition science, on the other.

The two concepts, need and taste, in their pure and classical form can be identified in the philosophical discussion during the latter part of the eighteenth century. The two discourses on food were also differentiated in seventeenth-century Europe. Before then, all aspects of food, its effects on health, its taste and the pleasures connected with it, were still discussed inseparably in various cookbooks and dietary recommendations (see Falk 1990). Whereas need and taste constitute two distinct and antithetical discourses on food, pleasure cannot be separated from taste (taste is a source of pleasure) nor taste from pleasure (tastes are either pleasant or unpleasant). However, the more reflexive the concept of taste and the more refined the sense of taste, the more it was separated from immediate sensual pleasure. On the other hand, in modern discussions the concept of pleasure has also become more diffuse and less sensual.

The discourse of need can first be identified in discussions about necessary needs versus luxury in moral philosophy preceding classical political economy (see Springborg 1981). The discourse on taste can be identified in the tradition of the aesthetics of taste, or the so-called moral sense theories (see Caygill 1989). Hedonism is naturally also an old theme in problematizing what constitutes a virtuous and decent life, but in modern discussions it has gained new, broader meanings. Modern consumption is often thought to be caused by the desire for pleasure. The modern consumer is essentially a hedonist; and hedonism is also functional in a modern economic system. An action oriented to the principle of hedonistic pleasure is often thought to emerge as a result of a drastic transformation of cultural values (cf. Bell 1976), or with the birth of a new personality type (the narcissistic personality; cf. Lasch 1978). It is accompanied by historical changes that often are thought to be caused by the emergence of some new social group or class (e.g. the new middle class; cf. Bourdieu 1984).

The new ethics of pleasure or ‘fun ethics’ is often contrasted with the earlier dominant ethic of work; hedonism is contrasted with asceticism. The older culture of character, which stressed moral qualities, has been replaced by a culture of personality which emphasizes being liked and admired (see Sussman 1984: xxii). The older culture of work and rationality is also often understood to be threatened by this new ethic of consumption which, on the other hand, is thought to be essential in creating predictable and expanding consumer demand. Such a demand ‘required the nurture of qualities like wastefulness, self-indulgence, and artificial obsolescence, which directly negated or undermined the values of efficiency and the work ethic on which the system was based’ (Marchand 1985: 158). This ‘paradox’ of modernity, the contrast between efficiency and pleasure, can also be interpreted as not being real. As stated by Rosalind Williams (1982: 66), these different aspects of modern culture in fact complement each other:’ The seemingly contrary activities of hard-headed accounting and dreamy eyed fantasizing merged as business appealed to consumers by inviting them into a fabulous world of pleasure, comfort, and amusement.’

As has already been claimed, there is a close parallel between the aesthetic of taste and gastronomy, on the one hand, and between the need discourse and modern nutrition science, on the other hand. The question of consumer hedonism is, however, more problematic. It can mostly be identified in various critiques of modern culture. The former parallels are not only historical and contingent. There is a stronger conceptual relation between them. Consequently, by analysing the argumentative logic of gastronomy and nutrition science, respectively, it is possible to shed light on the parallel logic of argumentation in social sciences, and vice versa. The taste of food offered the paradigmatic example of the aesthetics of taste in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (see e.g. Schümmer 1955). The ideas about the physiological sense of taste were crucial to the development of ideas about the sense of taste as the power of judgment (Urteilskraft) until Immanuel Kant. The antinomy concerning the simultaneous self-evident and private nature of taste was shared both by the concept of taste in the ‘narrow’ sense and by the concept of taste as Urteilskraft (see Kant 1980 [1798]: 349–78). In a similar way, the seemingly natural and self-evidential nature of the need for food made it an exemplary model for any argumentation following the logic of needs.

One can still today clearly recognize a discourse of needs, emphasizing the beneficial or detrimental effects of eating on health, in food guides and dietary recommendations based on the standards of modern nutrition science. Among the specialists, at least, there similarly still exists a gastronomic discourse which classifies and evaluates food and foodstuffs according to their taste and tastefulness (cookery books, books on etiquette, gastronomic guide books and magazines). Taste is also scientifically analysed in sensory evaluation studies. These two discourses are not only separate but antithetical to each other as evidenced by the difficulty in taking any considerations of the taste of food into account in present-day nutritional recommendations and health food guides. In earlier recommendations, ‘elaborate methods of food preparation and dazzling combinations of ingredients were anathema to those who wanted to develop easy recipes whose nutritional content could be calculated’ (Levenstein 1988: 83). The difficulty did not, however, result only from inadequate methods of measurement. In the latest edition of the official Recommended Dietary Allowances (1989: 13) the authors, after a lengthy discussion of all the necessary nutrients, vitamins and minerals, suddenly seem to remember that humans do not simply ingest dietary allowances but that they eat food: ‘However, RDAs should be provided from a selection of foods that are acceptable and palatable to ensure competition.’

In both the gastronomic and sociological discourses on need and taste a problem emerges: they produce a certain surplus – or luxury – an action orientation that cannot be reduced either to the principle of good taste or the principle of need satisfaction. Such an argument also leads to postulating a norm or standard of right or decent conduct, from which any deviation is either pathologized or labelled indecent. This deviation from the norm – or surplus – is often thought to be in need of an explanation in terms of cultural factors or social interaction. Any consumer or eater who exceeds the standards of nutrition determined by the ‘natural need’ of food is thought to be indecently seduced by the world of goods or to be stimulated by social competition. This superfluous part or ‘luxury’ consumption (or eating) is then thought to be somehow artificial and even unnatural.

In the discussions concerning the modern hedonistic consumer the whole setup is turned upside down. The concept of hedonism is to explain the formation of this surplus part of consumption, which is not an exception any more but the main object of concern. Insofar as the analyses have been more ambitious and are not simply satisfied by naming or recognizing some new cultural features, some such social mechanisms are often postulated which are supposed to nurture a hedonistic orientation of action. Hedonism – according to this logic – is something which is in need of explanation contrary to any ‘natural’ or need-oriented behaviour. Hedonism can also be considered a social problem as a pathology. The different characterizations of this new hedonism, however, are often rather vague: either the desire for pleasure is meant to explain any irrational form of action or its explanatory power is lost in tautology: modern hedonism becomes identical to anything that is demanded by modern consumption.

The need for food and nutrition science

In a recent article, Mike Featherstone (1990, see also Featherstone 1991) identified three different approaches to the study of consumer culture. First, consumption can be understood in terms of an expanding capitalist commodity production: consumption is functional to the demands of economy. The second approach is mainly interested in the different ways in which people use goods in order to create social bonds or distinctions. The third perspective is concerned with the emotional pleasures of consumption, with the dreams and desires associated with the world of goods. Alan Warde (1991), in his turn, divided the different approaches to the sociology of consumption into three classes according to the functions or meanings attached to consumption which, in their turn are determined by values guiding them. Warde’s first two alternatives, use-value and exchange-value, are familiar from political economy, but the third class of identity-value is more original and interesting. It is reminiscent of the second perspective mentioned by Featherstone. The question of the identity-value or socio-symbolic value of goods is actualized whenever people engage in consumption with a view to expressing their social identity (cf. also Miller’s (1987: 114) emphasis on the recontextualization, as well as the appropriation, of goods taking place during any act of consumption).

Discussing the social theories of Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck and Zygmunt Bauman, Alan Warde identified a common theme in these, in many other respects disparate, conceptions:

One feature common to the social theories of Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Zygmunt Bauman is the notion that, today, people define themselves through the messages they transmit to others through the goods and practices that they process and display. They manipulate or manage appearances and thereby create and sustain ‘self-identity’. In a world where there is an increasing number of commodities available to act as props in this process, identity becomes more than ever a matter of the personal selection of self-image. Increasingly, individuals are forced to choose their identities.

(Warde 1994: 878)

It is the use of goods to express one’s social identity and to distinguish oneself from others, in a world in which traditional social bonds and class boundaries are weakening, which has been the proper field of sociological consumption studies. Consequently, it has been the role of sociology to complement the often one-sided picture of consumption presented by economics. ‘Status seekers’ – to use an expression made popular by Vance Packard (1960) – brought an element of irrationality – or another type of rationality – into the economists’ view of homo economicus.

In his tract on social inequality, Jean-Jacques Rousseau separated two forms of self-love: genuine self-love and selfishness. It is the second form of self-love that leads to the emergence and development of artificial needs (see Springborg 1981: 35–41). A person is able to measure and control those needs which stem from genuine self-love; selfishness is caused by social interaction. Social emulation leads to a state of endless insatiability. (I compare myself with you; you with me; and so on ad infinitum.) The development and maintenance of artificial needs is thus for Rousseau intimately tied up with social interaction, in general, and with the increase in the division of labour and commerce, in particular; it is inseparable from private property as well. Rousseau, contrary to most other Enlightenment philosophers, was a critic of civilization (see Carlsen et al. 1980 and Schmidt 1987).

Making a difference between natural and artificial needs is typical of sociological discussions operating with the concept of need and analysing modern consumption. Often a similar conception of social comparison and emulation, which was first recognized by Rousseau, figures in the background of such analyses. Certain items of consumption (or foodstuffs) have a high social status or value because their consumption is restricted to the higher echelons of society. The lower classes are tempted to buy and eat these foodstuffs or prepare meals from them – even though they actually cannot afford to, or even if they are detrimental to their health – because of this higher social value or status associated with them. They represent a lifestyle which is seen as worth imitating. Such explanations of the irrational elements of consumption seem to have been extremely common in the United States at the turn of the century, equally among advertising men and cultural critics, but they certainly gained currency in Europe, too. Thorsten Veblen’s (1961) study of conspicuous consumption is often mentioned as the classical example. Both Featherstone and Warde mention Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction (1984) as a recent and sophisticated version of such an approach.¹

In England, during the eighteenth century, the discussion about luxury, about superfluous consumption which exceeded necessities, was the most common theme in analysing the causes of new social problems. The detrimental effects of luxury were not being recognized for the first time, but were then thought especially likely to corrupt the common people. Previously, luxury had posed a threat to gentlefolk, whose peace of mind was disturbed by insatiable needs. Even then, no one seriously claimed that the lower estates were actually indulging in pleasures. The problem with artificial needs was rather that once stimulated they could never be satisfied. Once liberated from the constraints of tradition, it was thought, there would be no limits to man’s needs.

There is a more specific parallel to this general discussion concerning luxury. In the middle of the eighteenth century a new interest in the relation between food, eating and health emerged in England. A new dietetic regimen was born (see Turner 1982; Aronson 1984; see also Falk and Gronow 1985). It still followed the principles of classical humoral medicine, but at the same time it invented a new disease, the English Malady, which was caused by gluttony and luxury. This new malady threatened all the members of the middle class, and the professional man in particular. The best-known representative and promoter of these new dietetics was a physician named George Cheyne (1991 [1733]). Many diseases of both the body and the soul (from gout to melancholy), and the accompanying social problems, were thought to be caused by overeating and obesity.

According to Cheyne, major social changes had been taking place in Britain which stimulated gluttony. Increasing foreign trade and the import of colonial goods were among the most important ones. New strange and exotic foodstuffs and seasoned food – hot spices – were seducing Englishmen towards overeating. In Cheyne’s dietary recommendations, the emergence of new – and artificial – needs was, thus, rather concretely identified with increasing international and colonial trade and commerce, which was thought to seduce Englishmen to loosen the constraints of their behaviour and promote a lack of self-discipline. More generally, Dr Cheyne evidently shared Rousseau’s ideas about the corrupting influence of social interaction, exchange and commerce, warning that once the traditional and limited structure of needs had been overstepped there was no return to it – at least not without a new kind of a discipline of the body.²

Contrary to older dietetics, the New Nutrition, born at the turn of the present century, was based on the ideas of scientific chemistry. Its practical recommendations were, however, inspired by the Arbeiterfrage or by the hope of conclusively solving the problem posed by the iron law of wages: if real wages could not permanently rise, a belief shared by many experts, the only way to improve the lot of the wage worker was to teach him to spend his money more economically. As a solution to this problem W. O. Atwater, the director of Human Nutrition Studies of the Office of Experiment Stations in the US, introduced the concepts of the physiological economy and the money economy of food. Physiological economy aimed at determining the minimum needs of nutrition and energy for different social groups, divided according to the amount of energy expended in different foodstuffs, taking into account the economic resources of different groups of people. If only workers could be persuaded to substitute cheaper food, with equal nutritional value to that of more expensive food, they could save money and still keep their ‘labour machines’ running. The money saved could then be used for better housing and clothing, and the standards of living improved without any need for higher wages (see Aronson 1982: 52–3).

The major issue in Atwater’s, and many contemporary nutritionists’, recommendations was the consumption of meat (see also Hirdman 1983). Natural science had learned to analyse and separate proteins, fats and carbohydrates from each other. The need for protein was estimated relatively highly compared to modern standards. Meat was seen to be the main source of protein in workers’ diets and it was rather expensive. If only workers would learn to buy and eat cheaper cuts of meat (say meat soup cooked with bones and offal), which included as much or more protein than finer cuts (steaks etc.), they could radically cut down on their food expenses. In their hopes for dietary reforms the nutritionists were disappointed time and time again; the American worker was not particularly receptive to the arguments of the new science – because of the bad example set by ‘the overfed middle-class and the beautiful people’, as Edward Atkinson, among others, had to admit (see Levenstein 1988: 201–2).

Although the New Nutrition understood the need for nutrients to be natural, and in this respect unproblematic and universal, a new problem emerged. Individual people could no longer know or recognize their ‘natural needs’. These could only be recognized with the help of experimental science, and with the help of new kinds of specialists, the nutritionists. The classification of different foodstuffs, and the analysis of their usefulness or uselessness to the human body, no longer followed the properties which could be recognized by taste or sight (e.g. red or white meat, raw or cooked, fresh or spoilt food, etc.). This marked a decisive rupture with the older tradition of dietetics. False or wrong needs could now be explained as resulting from ignorance. They could be ‘cured’ only with the help of the right kind of instruction. The question of false or genuine needs, thus, could only be solved by scientific expertise. But who, really, was in possession of the right kind of knowledge? Experts’ opinions varied and changed from time to time, and new false or superfluous needs were continuously discovered. (The dispute over the right amount of protein is a good, early example of the problem.)

Good taste, gastronomy and social distinctions

Nutrition science has been active in creating a modern food consumer, who is able to recognize his or her needs, and to satisfy them rationally within the limits of his economic resources. Ideal rational consumers are also able to recognize their false or artificial needs, and to interpret unerringly the needs of their bodies. They are equally able to avoid the temptation of gluttony. Modern gastronomy has been equally active in disciplining and controlling the bodily needs of the modern individual. It can be claimed that gastronomy has civilized the modern consumer’s taste by introducing new distinctions and classifications of food and drink which, gradually, have been conducive to restraining the human passion for food and eating. Instead of classifying different foodstuffs or meals according to their nutritional components, gastronomy introduced another and even more finely divided system of classifications based on the taste of food. This process of the refinement of taste is often thought to have achieved its peak in the French cuisine of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (See Revel 1979 and Mennell 1985; for the French struggle over European culinary hegemony with the Mediterranean-Arabic cuisine during the Renaissance, see Peterson 1994.)

The old saying that one cannot dispute over matters of taste (De gustibus disputandum non est!) did not originally refer to the fact that taste is a private matter for every individual. Instead, it was taken to mean that taste – or good taste – was somehow self-evident and beyond dispute. One ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• 1: INTRODUCTION
• 2: PHILOSOPHICAL AESTHETICS AND THE REFINEMENT OF TASTE
• 3: LUXURY, KITSCH AND FASHION
• 4: TASTE AND FASHION
• 5: THE BEAUTY OF SOCIAL FORMS
• 6: CONCLUSION
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY