Size / / /

Riffing off a post by Gregory Benford, Alec Austin writes about taste hierarchies:

The tendency of the French upper classes to (for example) prefer classical music over popular music, Bourdieu argued, was a learned social behavior, and whether deployed consciously or not, the associated taste hierarchy - wherein classical music is deemed 'better' or 'more refined' than tunes favored by the vulgar mob - reinforced class distinctions, separating the world of music-listeners into the cognoscenti and the plebes. (The plebes, of course, had their own taste hierarchy, which while not supported by social institutions like orchestras or opera halls, had both economic consequences and a real presence in society. To claim to subscribe to the upper class's taste hierarchy would be read as "putting on airs".)

One hopes that the relevance of this idea to literature, especially in the SFF vs. Mainstream discussion (as well as the endless SF vs. Fantasy conflict) is immediately clear.

Certainly something I was trying to bear in mind when predicting award nominees. Sherwood Smith hosts further discussion.



Niall Harrison is an independent critic based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He is a former editor of Strange Horizons, and his writing has also appeared in The New York Review of Science FictionFoundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, The Los Angeles Review of Books and others. He has been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a Guest of Honor at the 2023 British National Science Fiction Convention. His collection All These Worlds: Reviews and Essays is available from Briardene Books.
Current Issue
25 Mar 2024

Looking back, I see that my initial hope for this episode was that the mud would have a heartbeat and a heart that has teeth and crippling anxiety. Some of that hope has become a reality, but at what cost?
to work under the / moon is to build a formidable tomorrow
Significantly, neither the humans nor the tigers are shown to possess an original or authoritative version of the narrative, and it is only in such collaborative and dialogic encounters that human-animal relations and entanglements can be dis-entangled.
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
the train ascends a bridge over endless rows of houses made of beams from decommissioned factories, stripped hulls, salvaged engines—
Issue 18 Mar 2024
Strange Horizons
Issue 11 Mar 2024
Issue 4 Mar 2024
Issue 26 Feb 2024
Issue 19 Feb 2024
Issue 12 Feb 2024
Issue 5 Feb 2024
Issue 29 Jan 2024
Issue 15 Jan 2024
Issue 8 Jan 2024
Load More
%d bloggers like this: