The High Art of Sociology

Wow... talk about a thorough and exhaustive ethnographic study taste. From a sociological and scientific standpoint I drew some objections and inconsistencies in his practice and methods, however his interesting and predictable his findings proved to be.
First of all, in the introduction and the first part of Section I, Bourdieu was quick to acknowledge the fact that his survey and matrix was at once French and applicable to the distinctions of taste of all people, and though he intended this not to be strictly a French exploration, it certainly came of that way. Perhaps I am just a working class person who prefers Blue Danube to Well Tempered Clavier, or perhaps it's because I am just an American without the necessary building blocks of culture because I was raised on film and jazz, but what Bourdieu seems preoccupied with is not the stratification of high and low culture, but with items of taste (not particularly high brow or low brow) His insistence that the more well cultural (and favorably employed) find beauty in objects, images, and music not typically associated with says more about the Bourdieu and the objects Bourdieu chose as examples rather than the aesthetic competencies, shortcomings, and class of his subjects.
If there is one thing we can use from the Levine reading in this instance, it is that tastes and the objects of those fetishes change rapidly and without regard to what is “better” or “more complicated” art. Just as Shakespeare was “elevated” from common theater culture to the Bastian of Western Literature and Art, so too could the objects of which Bourdieu proposes to be low or high culture. Perhaps those working class people in France who prefer the aesthetic experience of a sunset to a car crash are just ahead of the curve, or through their “naiveté” are expressing the universals of artistic experience. Those who prefer the impressionists to the cubists are not merely unsophisticated in their tastes and sensibilities, but merely uncomplicated.
Frankly, as complete as his study was in many aspects, I think he failed to see that he in his own way was imposing his cultural expectations of what constitutes high and low forms of art. I understand he is working within the parameters of what is accepted as culture, i.e classical music and painting. However, in doing so he is showing his own cultural hand, in the poker game of sociology, which is often a no-no in ethnographic research. I cannot argue with his proposals and maybe not even with his conclusions, I would like to see a similar study done in which the people themselves create the criteria which is popularly judged to be higher or lower on the rungs of the cultural ladder.