BBC Radio has a show called In Our Time, and they did
An episode on the history of taste.
I find this very interesting because this is one of the ways in which people self segregate. Taste as a concept seems to have started with aristocrats taking issue with the new middle class. Now I find there is some kind of twisted version of this among what one could call the "lower classes." Any attempt at improving one's lot in life is often veiwed as fakery- the opposite of "keeping it real."
The middle class, in this case is precisely in the middle, maligned by both of the other socioeconomic classes. The middle class for its own part, has a sort of myopic egalitarianism, usually assuming the rich have been corrupted and the poor are disadvantaged and if we just get out there and help out everyone will learn to live just like us. That is, until they don't. Then we get pretty bitter, for surely they are being unreasonable, right?
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