'Bourdieu in de provincie. Over wetenschappelijke sociabiliteit en de distinctieve waarde van sekse', in: De Achttiende Eeuw 42 (2010) nr.1, p.16-41 Viewed from a gender perspective taste and distinction are hardly neutral concepts. Yet, in historical studies of taste and distinction gender as analytical tool is conspicuously absent, in contrast to class. No doubt this would have been different if gender had featured more prominently in Pierre Bourdieu’s seminal work La Distinction (1979). Still, since there are many points of convergence between the theoretical concepts of habitus, cultural capital, and gender, Bourdieu provides a number of cues for more gender-sensitive explorations of distinction as will be argued in this paper. After a brief introduction of the key concepts the author sets out to probe the distinctive effects of gender for men and women, first with a critical auto-analysis of present-day academic sociability and then with a historical case-study of scientific sociability in the early modern period.