Understanding Cultural Omnivorousness: Or, the Myth of the Cultural Omnivore
TL;DR: The authors explored the coherence of the omnivore thesis and found that there is a sector of the population of western countries who do and like a greater variety of forms of culture than previously, and that broad engagement reflects emerging values of tolerance and undermines snobbery.
Abstract: The concept of omnivorousness has become influential in the sociologies of culture and consumption, cited variously as evidence of altered hierarchies in cultural participation and as indicative of broader socio-cultural changes. The ‘omnivore thesis’ contends that there is a sector of the population of western countries who do and like a greater variety of forms of culture than previously, and that this broad engagement reflects emerging values of tolerance and undermines snobbery. This article draws on the findings of a study of cultural participation in the UK to explore the coherence of the omnivore thesis. It uses a survey to identify and isolate omnivores, and then proceeds to explore the meanings of omnivorousness through the analysis of in-depth, qualitative interviews with them. It concludes that, while there is evidence of wide cultural participation within the UK, the figure of the omnivore is less singularly distinctive than some studies have suggested.
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: This paper argues that privacy behavior is an upshot of both social influences and personal incentives, and takes the preference for privacy itself as the unit of analysis, and analyzes the factors that are predictive of a student having a private versus public profile.
Abstract: The rapid growth of contemporary social network sites (SNSs) has coincided with an increasing concern over personal privacy. College students and adolescents routinely provide personal information on profiles that can be viewed by large numbers of unknown people and potentially used in harmful ways. SNSs like Facebook and MySpace allow users to control the privacy level of their profile, thus limiting access to this information. In this paper, we take the preference for privacy itself as our unit of analysis, and analyze the factors that are predictive of a student having a private versus public profile. Drawing upon a new social network dataset based on Facebook, we argue that privacy behavior is an upshot of both social influences and personal incentives. Students are more likely to have a private profile if their friends and roommates have them; women are more likely to have private profiles than are men; and having a private profile is associated with a higher level of online activity. Finally, students who have private versus public profiles are characterized by au nique set ofcultural preferences—of which the ‘‘taste for privacy’’ may be only as mall but integral part.
608 citations
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors studied the relationship between eating out and domestic organisation, family meals and eating out in the UK and concluded that eating out is a form of domestic organisation.
Abstract: Acknowledgements List of figures List of tables List of boxes 1. The study and its rationale Part I. Modes of Provision: 2. The development of the habit of eating out in the UK 3. The meanings of eating out Part II. Access: 4. Patterns of eating out 5. Domestic organisation, family meals and eating out Part III. Delivery: 6. Personal service in public and private places 7. Last suppers Part IV. Enjoyment: The Attractions of Eating Out: 8. Eating out and its gratifications 9. The enjoyment of meal events Part V. Conclusion: 10. Eating out and the theories of consumption Methodological appendix: data collection and analysis References.
419 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors take stock of the most recent scholarship on symbolic boundaries and how these interact with social boundaries, and highlight key mechanisms which they address, among them: the strategic management of collective identities, cultural classification, the construction of authenticity, moral boundary maintenance, and genre-crossing.
Abstract: This paper takes stock of the most recent scholarship on symbolic boundaries and how these interact with social boundaries — more durable and institutionalized social differences. Our primary goal is to raise awareness of a growing body of empirical work, and to highlight key mechanisms which they address, among them: the strategic management of collective identities, cultural classification, the construction of authenticity, moral boundary maintenance, and genre-crossing. We introduce the articles included in this issue and discuss how ethno-racial boundaries intersect with class, immigration, and nationhood. We also describe new work on aesthetic boundaries, as well as recent efforts pertaining to gender, sexuality, the workplace, and religion. We close with a discussion of promising research on health, risk, and policy. We hope to demonstrate some of the intellectual rewards of interdisciplinary engagement, and encourage others to more systematically contribute to analyzing fundamental boundary processes.
248 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors take stock of the most recent scholarship on symbolic boundaries and how these interact with social boundaries, and highlight key mechanisms which they address, among them: the strategic management of collective identities, cultural classification, the construction of authenticity, moral boundary maintenance, and genre-crossing.
231 citations
TL;DR: The concept of cultural intermediaries has been a productive device for examining the producers of symbolic value in various industries, commodity chains and urban spaces, highlighting such issues as the blurring of work and leisure, the conservatism of new and creative work, and the material practices involved in the promotion of consumption as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The term ‘cultural intermediaries’ is good to think with: it has been a productive device for examining the producers of symbolic value in various industries, commodity chains and urban spaces, highlighting such issues as the blurring of work and leisure, the conservatism of ‘new’ and ‘creative’ work, and the material practices involved in the promotion of consumption (e.g. Bovone, 2005; Entwistle, 2006; McFall, 2004; Moor, 2008; Negus, 2002; Nixon and Crewe, 2004; Smith Maguire, 2008; Wright, 2005). In addition, cultural intermediary research offers an important complement to the study of cultural production, within which questions of agency are typically focused on consumers, and questions of power on institutions. The concept of cultural intermediaries usefully prioritizes issues of agency, negotiation and power, moving the everyday, contested practices of market agents to the fore for the study of the production of culture (Garnham, 2005; Havens et al., 2009; Smith Maguire and Matthews, 2010). Generally, research on cultural intermediaries has followed two different (although not incompatible) directions: cultural intermediaries as exemplars of the new middle class, involved in the mediation of production and consumption (following e.g. Bourdieu, 1984, 1996); and cultural intermediaries as market actors involved in the qualification of goods, mediating between economy and culture (following developments in actornetwork theory and new economic sociology, e.g. Callon et al., 2002; Muniesa et al., 2007). Engagements within and between these streams of work have resulted in conceptual developments: for example, du Gay’s (2004) discussion of devices and dispositions, and Cronin’s (2004) elaboration of multiple regimes of mediation. Nevertheless,
184 citations
References
More filters
TL;DR: This article found that high-status persons are far from being snobs and are eclectic, even omnivorous, in their tastes, which suggests a qualitative shift in the basis for marking elite status-from snobbish exclusion to omnivouring appropriation.
Abstract: Appreciation of fine arts became a mark of high status in the late nineteenth century as part of an attempt to distinguish highbrowed Anglo Saxons from the new lowbrowed immigrants, whose popular entertainments were said to corrupt morals and thus were to be shunned (Levine 1988; DiMaggio 1991). In recent years, however, many high-status persons are far from being snobs and are eclectic, even omnivorous, in their tastes (Peterson and Simkus 1992). This suggests a qualitative shift in the basis for marking elite status-from snobbish exclusion to omnivorous appropriation. Using comparable 1982 and 1992 surveys, we test for this hypothesized change in tastes. We confirm that highbrows are more omnivorous than others and that they have become increasingly omnivorous over time. Regression analyses reveal that increasing omnivorousness is due both to cohort replacement and to changes over the 1980s among highbrows of all ages. We speculate that this shift from snob to omnivore relates to status-group politics influenced by changes in social structure, values, art-world dynamics, and generational conflict
1,894 citations
"Understanding Cultural Omnivorousne..." refers background in this paper
...In a later article (Peterson and Kern, 1996: 906), omnivorousness is seen as a feature of a dominant class: ‘As highbrow snobbishness fits the needs of the earlier entrepreneurial upper-middle class, there also seems to be an elective affinity between today’s new business-administrative class and…...
[...]
Book•
13 Dec 2016
TL;DR: The authors The Miraculous status of consumption, the Vicious circle of growth, and the social logic of consumption towards a theory of consumption personalization or the Smallest Marginal Difference (SMD).
Abstract: THE FORMAL LITURGY OF THE OBJECT Preface - George Ritzer The Miraculous Status of Consumption The Vicious Circle of Growth THE THEORY OF CONSUMPTION The Social Logic of Consumption Towards a Theory of Consumption Personalization or the Smallest Marginal Difference (SMD) MASS MEDIA, SEX AND LEISURE Mass-Media Culture The Finest Consumer Object The Body The Drama of Leisure or the Impossibility of Wasting One's Time The Mystique of Solicitude Anomie in the Affluent Society CONCLUSION On Contemporary Alienation or the End of the Pact with the Devil
1,530 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a framework is proposed to analyze the relationships between social structure, patterns of artistic consumption and production, and the ways in which artistic genres are classified, which helps to integrate findings of consumption surveys and explain the emergence of new artistic genres as a form of ritual classification.
Abstract: A framework is proposed to analyze the relationships between social structure, patterns of artistic consumption and production, and the ways in which artistic genres are classified. This framework helps to integrate findings of consumption surveys and to explain the emergence of new artistic genres as a form of ritual classification. Societies' artistic classification systems vary along four dimensions: differentiation, hierarchy, universality, and boundary strength. These dimensions are affected by formal characteristics of social structure, the organization of educational systems, and internal relations among cultural dimensions. The dynamics of ritual classification are mediated according to whether artistic production is carried out through commercial, professional, or bureaucratic means.
1,066 citations
TL;DR: The authors found that cultural tolerance constitutes multicultural capital as it is unevenly distributed in the population and evidences class-based exclusion, and that people use cultural taste to reinforce symbolic boundaries between themselves and categories of people they dislike.
Abstract: The author provides quantitative evidence of a cultural phenomenon. Using data on musical dislikes from the 1993 General Social Survey, He links literatures on taste, racism, and democratic liberalism by showing that people use cultural taste to reinforce symbolic boundaries between themselves and categories of people they dislike. Contrary to Bourdieu's (1984) prediction, musical exclusiveness decreases with education. Also, political tolerance is associated with musical tolerance, even controlling for educational attainment, and racism increases the probability of disliking genres whose fans are disproportionately non-White. Tolerant musical taste, however, is found to have a specific pattern of exclusiveness : Those genres whose fans have the least education-gospel, country, rap, and heavy metal-are also those most likely to be rejected by the musically tolerant. Broad familiarity with music genres is also significantly related to education. He suggests, therefore, that cultural tolerance constitutes multicultural capital as it is unevenly distributed in the population and evidences class-based exclusion
923 citations
"Understanding Cultural Omnivorousne..." refers background or methods in this paper
...Interestingly, by these criteria in 21st century Britain, heavy metal is a consecrated genre (cf. Bryson, 1996), as is the jazz classic, Kind of Blue....
[...]
...Bryson (1996) developed and analysed the idea that the omnivore might be culturally tolerant, showing not only that omnivores in the USA had wider tastes, though they were not appreciative of everything, but that they were also more liberal on racial and political matters, hence her connection…...
[...]
...This indicates, as Bryson (1996) suggests with reference to heavy metal in the USA, that some popular culture remains beyond the pale of omnivorous tastes....
[...]
TL;DR: Bourdieu's analysis of class and culture errs in neglecting two important aspects of social structure: social networks and class relations at work He expects high-status culture to be useful in class because it is correlated with class, but culture used at work includes both genres related to class and genres unrelated to class.
Abstract: Bourdieu's analysis of class and culture errs in neglecting two important aspects of social structure: social networks and class relations at work He expects high-status culture to be useful in class because it is correlated with class, but culture used at work includes both genres related to class (used in domination) and genres unrelated to class (used in coordination) High-status culture is correlated with class but excluded, not used, in the competitive private sector The most widely useful cultural resource is cultural variety, and social network variety is a better source of cultural variety than is class itself
881 citations
"Understanding Cultural Omnivorousne..." refers background in this paper
...Erickson (1996) considered omnivorousness more as an instrumental rather than as an expressive orientation, showing, on the basis of a sample of Canadian security industry workers, that the cultural knowledge of those in supervisory positions ranged more widely....
[...]