Anita Dremel: BOURDIEU ON POWER, CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY OF TASTE: THE CASE OF MARIJA JURIĆ ZAGORKA
Scientific paper
Anita Dremel, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Philosophy, J.J. Strossmayer University in Osijek
DOI: https://doi.org/10.59014/LBXG3157
Keywords:
Bourdieu, popular literature, power, sociology of taste, Zagorka
Abstract
Refraining from reasoning in support of the universal taste and the experience of
the beautiful, cultural sociology treats taste as socially contingent and constructed.
The objective of this paper is to outline a social critique of different judgements of
taste when it comes to different types of literary production based on the theoretical
framework established by Pierre Bourdieu and on the example of the reception of
popular literature, mainly historical romances written by Marija Jurić Zagorka. The
methodological approach thereby applied includes the deconstruction of common
distinctions based on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field and doxa, genealogy of
highbrow taste in the era of so called highly textual modernism, critical analysis of
gender discourse underlying cultural evaluations of literary production by women
and for women, and the practicing of the ethnographic shift towards the reader in
her context. This empirically contextualized analysis of literary tastes expressed by
various recipients in Croatian cultural history has led to the results that reveal a long
persistence of popularity and adoration of Zagorka’s novels on the one hand and
harsh, almost visceral, disgust with her production by official discourse on the other,
confirming the thesis that judgments of taste are based on society (and class). However,
these results do not suggest a linear (let alone causal) relationship between the
class system and the system of cultural classifications as well as between consumerist
desire and taste. Historical novels by Marija Jurić Zagorka, mainly written in the
first half of the 20th century, contain a foundationally strong inscription of opposed
social strata, thus providing a useful and relevant empirical basis for the analysis of
complex processes of cultural modernization and accompanying changing forms of
social power.
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