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

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. The author contends that even in the absence of social change, "internal taste mechanisms" drive changes in fashion. He explores the ways these internal mechanisms operate in concert with social forces to determine our choices of names and other fashions as well.

Library Journal

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.\