An Analysis of the Relation Between Musical Judgment and Cultural-Economical Capitals (A Case Study of Students of Music in Shiraz)

Sociology of knowledge is one of the oldest subfields in sociology. In this field the social determination of knowledge is investigated. Musical judgment is a kind of knowledge. Therefore, sociology of musical judgement is a subfield of sociology of knowledge. In sociology of musical judgement, the social determination of musical judgement is explored. In this research, the relations between musical judgement and cultural background and economic situation of the art students in Shiraz are investigated. The researcher tries to find out the relations between society and music, in a systematic way. In order to achieve this purpose, the Pierre Bourdieu’s theory was used. The purpose of this research is not to provide a wide variety of scientific statements about the mentioned relations and therefore, even in the theoretic literature, only the theories that have directly influenced Bourdieu are mentioned. Cultural capital, economic capital, stylistic judgement of taste and content-based judgement of taste are the main factors in this research and the question is: Do these factors have any influence on each other? The data is collected by the questionnaires in art institutions in Shiraz. The method of collecting data was systematic and random sampling. Using Cochran’s formula, 384 cases were chosen among 2,000 people. As it was mentioned before, the framework for this research is Bourdieu’s theory. Bourdieu’s theory is explained shortly and before that, the theories that have influenced Bourdieu’s theory –Kant, Panofsky and Blaise Pascal’s theories– are reviewed. Bourdieu believes that any person occupies a position in the fields in society. Therefore, every one in the field has a specific judgment about musical works of art, according to his position. He provides a research tool for the researcher to investigate the field. By using these conceptual tools, the researcher has wanted to introduce a viewpoint that is dynamic and does not provide a fixed theory about the relationship between society and art. Results achieving by Using Pearson’s correlation coefficient, show that there is a positive and significant relation between these factors: cultural capital and stylistic judgment of taste, cultural capital of the family and content-based judgment of the taste, economic capital and content-based judgment; while there is a negative and significant relation between these factors: cultural capital and content-based judgment of taste, cultural capital of the family and stylistic judgment of taste, economic capital and stylistic judgement of taste. Considering these results, we could say that in the field of art institutions in Shiraz, the theory of Bourdieu is approved and there are relations between the abovementioned factors. Society influences our judgement of musical taste. At the end of the article these factors are explained and the way they influence the judgement of taste is discussed.