My new book Status and Culture (on sale 8/30) synthesizes what we know about status and social behavior to explain taste, fashion, art, and other common cultural phenomenon.
I thought it would be helpful to list out the classic books for understanding how culture works (1/n):
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1. Thorstein Veblen - The Theory of the Leisure Class
Foundational text for understanding taste as an economic process: namely, the inevitability of New Money engaging in conspicuous consumption. Slightly tongue-in-cheek, but his arguments are more nuanced than often portrayed.
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2. Pierre Bourdieu - Distinction
Very long, with famously convoluted prose, but crucial for understanding the intersection of class and aesthetic preferences, taste and cultural capital. It's a critique of "Kantian aesthetics," so first read up on Kant's theory of taste.
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3. Immanuel Kant - The Critique of Judgement
Kant's cognitive theory of aesthetics and beauty influenced the next two centuries of culture. This is an extremely difficult read, and I recommend tackling it together with a companion work of contemporary scholarship on Kant.
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4. David Berger - Kant's Aesthetic Theory
There are many, many explainers on Kantian aesthetics, but this one was clear and short. (You know it's an important book when you can only understand it from reading other books.)
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5. Adam Smith - The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Very early exploration into the social origin of values, including why humans become attached to their arbitrary customs and how certain practices/objects take on symbolic associations with their primary adopters.
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6. Gabriel Tarde - The Laws of Imitation
An early sociological work from the late 19th century on how social trends form and manifest. Tarde notes the role of "trickle-down": where trends flow from high status to low status groups.
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7. Georg Simmel - On Individuality and Social Forms
Simmel's theory of simultaneous distinction and imitation remains one of the clearest theoretical models for fashion. Key Simmel essays: "Fashion", "Adornment", and "The Problem of Style" (latter two are in Simmel on Culture)
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8. Grant McCracken
@Grant27
- Culture and Consumption
Modern classic that rehabilitated many older theories on consumer culture by fixing their inherent flaws. Particularly important ideas on Old Money "patina" and how non-elites "chasing" elites causes elites to "flee" trends.
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9. Jean Baudrillard - The System of Objects
10. Jean Baudrillard - The Consumer Society
11. Jean Baudrillard - For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign
Essential philosophical works on consumerism and its political implications. ("sign value" = "status value")
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12. Stanley Lieberson - A Matter of Taste
In this incisive study of patterns in first names, Lieberson shows that trends aren't the manifestation of national psychology and mood, but have their own inner logic and mechanisms. Maybe the best data-based study on trend cycles.
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13. Carl Wilson
@carlzoilus
- Let's Talk About Love
To learn about taste, best start here. Wilson provides an easy explanation of Bourdieu's ideas, and this book remains important as one of the few serious explorations into the mass taste that sits outside elite opinion.
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14. Gary S. Becker - Accounting for Tastes
The microeconomics of taste. Not a light read (includes math), but offers insights into the overall effects of taste on individual consumer behavior, supply and demand, the effects of advertising, etc.
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15. Luca Vercelloni - The Invention of Taste
16. Jukka Gronow - The Sociology of Taste
Two insightful academic works on the history and practice of taste. Vercelloni is good on the history of taste, while Gronow's examples of taste in the Soviet Union are very useful reference.
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17. Mike Featherstone - Consumer Culture & Postmodernism
18. Peter Corrigan - The Sociology of Consumption
These books on consumerism are good introductions to the general issues in the field (that cross many academic disciplines) and points towards further avenues of study.
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19. David Lewis - Convention
The best way to understand culture is as a series of interlocking "conventions," and the best introduction to conventions is Lewis' philosophy of conventions.
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20. Michael Suk-Young Chwe - Rational Ritual
Following from Lewis's work on conventions, Chwe's book more specifically looks at the links between cultural behavior, coordination problems, and common knowledge.
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21. Edna Ullmann-Margalit - The Emergence of Norms
22. Margaret Gilbert - On Social Facts
Two books that ingeniously examine the emergence of social norms from the perspective of game theory and conventions.
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23. Jon Elster - Explaining Social Behavior
24. George Homans - Social Behaviour
Indispensable books that help you think about the motivated individual interactions at heart of social behavior.
(Elster's entire catalog is worth a read, including his explanations of Marxism.)
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25. Marshall Sahlins - Culture and Practical Reason
26. Clyde Kluckhohn - Culture and Behavior
Two sophisticated works of anthropology that try to examine what culture *is.* Sahlins is very lucid about how culture takes on value in contemporary society (it's not all economics)
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