The hipster is a difficult group to define for those that seem to be the most exemplary examples of the term are also the most offended by the label.

A year ago Mark Greif, a professor in Literary Studies at the New School, and his colleagues began their investigation of the ‘hipster’.  In a recent essay in the NY Times, Greif reflects upon some of their findings  and explains how Pierre Bourdieu’s masterwork, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, provides a base to understand the meaning of ‘hipster’.

In conducting the study, Greif was immediately surprised by the intense emotions and self-doubt that seemingly superficial topic generated.

The responses were more impassioned than those we’d had in our discussions on health care, young conservatives and feminism. And perfectly blameless individuals began flagellating themselves: “Am I a hipster?

Greif turns to Bourdieu – A French sociologist who died in 2002 at the age 71 after achieving a level of fame and public interest rarely obtained by academics –  to help us understand why so much seems to be stake. While Bourdieu’s biographical details provide little connection to people wearing skinny black jeans and riding fixed-gear bikes, his account of the way what people consume becomes a means of separating themselves from other groups provides the framework to study the rise of the hipsters.

Taste is not stable and peaceful, but a means of strategy and competition. Those superior in wealth use it to pretend they are superior in spirit. Groups closer in social class who yet draw their status from different sources use taste and its attainments to disdain one another and get a leg up. These conflicts for social dominance through culture are exactly what drive the dynamics within communities whose members are regarded as hipsters.

From this perspective the coffee shops, bars, and Roller Derby track become the sites of social struggle.

Once you take the Bourdieuian view, you can see how hipster neighborhoods are crossroads where young people from different origins, all crammed together, jockey for social gain.

The main strategy in this competition is to establish yourself as being more ‘authentic’ than everyone else.

Proving that someone is trying desperately to boost himself instantly undoes him as an opponent. He’s a fake, while you are a natural aristocrat of taste. That’s why “He’s not for real, he’s just a hipster” is a potent insult among all the people identifiable as hipsters themselves.

This does not only apply to people with ironic mustaches.

Many of us try to justify our privileges by pretending that our superb tastes and intellect prove we deserve them, reflecting our inner superiority. Those below us economically, the reasoning goes, don’t appreciate what we do; similarly, they couldn’t fill our jobs, handle our wealth or survive our difficulties. Of course this is a terrible lie.