Abstract

The comment questions whether cultural distinctions in the 1960s were as rigidly aligned by class as is sometimes believed. Alan Warde's data from focus groups and questionnaires bring out some fundamental ways in which people think their own taste and that of others - for example, the way they continually emphasize taste being "just personal" (as against being class-based or other group-based judgments). But rather than reflecting any new, more "democratic" tendencies, this may be more revealing of general mechanisms underlying judgments of taste, and incorporating them as parts of personal identity and everyday guides for action and discrimination. The comment suggests interpreting the statements of interviewees in these terms rather than in terms of dichotomic historical comparisons.