Social Stratification and Identity Construction

Abstract

In contemporary times, the most influential theories that have focused on the ways in which taste-formation and cultural consumption are linked to social differentiation and stratification have been produced within the sociological field by Max Weber, George Simmel and, more recently, Pierre Bourdieu, to name but the most prominent writers. However, the notion that one of the main functions of art in society is to operate a distinction between people is much older than standard sociological theories of ‘taste as refinement’. For example, we looked earlier at theories suggesting that human creative performance can be interpreted as a form of sexual display, and therefore, as a crucial element in the battle for survival of the human species. In other words, artists and other creative people are set apart by their own creativity in a way that puts them at an advantage from an evolutionary point of view. Ellen Dissanayake reinforces this point when she argues:

the fact that people everywhere value the arts and take the trouble to express themselves aesthetically suggests to an evolutionary biologist that there is a reason: doing this, (rather than not doing this) contributes to human evolutionary fitness. Faced with the overwhelming evidence that people everywhere make and respond to the arts, the ethologist would have to presuppose that the arts must have survival value.

(1998, 61–2)