BOURDIEU ON POWER, CULTURE AND SOCIOLOGY OF TASTE: THE CASE OF MARIJA JURIĆ 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.