A Matter of Taste: How Names, Fashions, and Culture Change

by Stanley Lieberson

Overview

What accounts for our tastes? Why and how do they change over time? In this innovative book Stanley Lieberson analyzes children's first names to develop an original theory of fashion. Children's names provide an opportunity to view the pure mechanisms of fashion, unaffected by commercial interests that influence many fashions and tastes, says Lieberson. He disputes the commonly held notion that tastes in names (and other fashions) simply reflect societal shifts. There exist also "internal taste mechanisms" that drive changes in fashion even in the absence of social change, Lieberson contends. He explores the intricate and subtle ways in which internal mechanisms operate in concert with social forces to determine our choices of names. And he applies these conclusions to classical music, the decline of the fedora, women's garments, and other examples of change in fashion. Examining extensive data on names over long periods of time, Lieberson discovers an orderly regularity to the process of change. He considers an array of naming practices-how Rebecca became a popular name, why the names of certain important and attractive biblical characters are rarely chosen, and the influence of movie stars and characters in movies and novels. The book also inquires into name selection by specific ethnic and racial groups-Mexicans' choices of names for their sons and daughters, African-American naming tastes from the time of slavery, changing names among American Jews throughout the twentieth century, and ethnic influences on naming in assimilated white groups. Lieberson concludes with a discussion of broader applications of internal mechanisms, suggesting that they operate widely in culture, across the entire "cultural surface."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300173871
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	10/31/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

What People are Saying About This

John R. Sutton

An empirical tour de force with powerful implications for the study of fashion, popular culture, and beyond.
—(John R. Sutton, University of California, Santa Barbara)

Howard S. Becker

It's a wonderful book. Lieberson has a distinctive style of thinking and writing. Any topic he turns his attention to will produce a result that is idiosyncratic, and unique, and absolutely worth attention.

Michele Lamont

This study of changes in choice of first names is the occasion for a clever analysis of changes in fashion, and of causal explanation more generally. With his usual theoretical sophistication, Lieberson marshals a remarkably wide range of evidence to provide us with a very interesting read. A major achievement by a major scholar.
—(Michele Lamont, Princeton University)

Bonnie Erickson

Lieberson approaches fashions in first names with a powerful understanding of complexity and with the inventive playfulness and humor that embroider his conversation. This is great fun, and great sociology.
—(Bonnie Erickson, University of Toronto)

Editorial Reviews

Social scientists have long been interested in the question of how notions of taste and fashion change over time. Do aesthetic judgments reflect external forces such as state policies, class stratification, or commercial advertising, or are these judgments informed by largely subjective factors that are difficult to pin down in scientific terms? Lieberson (sociology, Harvard) has written a subtle and technically sophisticated analysis of changes in taste by examining the cultural patterns influencing the first names given to children in the past two centuries. As Lieberson notes, "compared with fashions in clothing, cars, and sodas, the naming process can be studied without worrying about the effect of organizations dedicated to influencing these tastes." While he acknowledges the impact of external forces on name selection (the emergence of popular movie stars, for example), he emphasizes the importance of "internal taste mechanisms" that shape fashion "even when external conditions are fixed." This carefully reasoned study should be of interest to sociologists, historians, and students of cultural studies. Recommended for academic libraries.--Kent Worcester, Marymount Manhattan Coll., New York Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

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