Tastes of Freedom, Tastes of Necessity
The present article is based on a qualitative investigation of food practices conducted in Geneva. It analyzes the mixed effects of the ever-wider spread of dietary norms across the social space. While taste dispositions (i.e. what individuals perceive as « good-tasting ») and dietary dispositions (i.e. what they perceive as « healthy ») appear to be quite distinct within working classes, they seem to become undifferentiated as we climb up the social class ladder. The crossing of those two dimensions allows to derive a scheme outlining the relationship to food and its close interrelation to social position. Ultimately, the present research demonstrates that a finely tuned version of the legitimist model presented by Pierre Bourdieu in La Distinction continues to be relevant for the analysis of contemporary food practices.