Cultural Taste and Social Mobility

Cultural Taste and Social Mobility Stijn Daenekindt Cultural Taste and Social Mobility Stijn Daenekindt PhD Dissertation Department of Sociology Ghent University Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of Ghent University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Sociology Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Henk Roose Academic year: 2014-2015 PhD Supervisor Prof. Dr. Henk Roose (Ghent University) Doctoral Advisory Committee Prof. Dr. Koen Van Eijck (Erasmus University Rotterdam) Prof. Dr. Piet Bracke (Ghent University) Doctoral Exam Committee Prof. Dr. John Lievens (Ghent University, Head of Committee) Prof. Dr. Koen Van Eijck (Erasmus University Rotterdam) Prof. Dr. Marc Verboord (Erasmus University Rotterdam) Prof. Dr. Piet Bracke (Ghent University) Prof. Dr. Mieke Van Houtte (Ghent University) CONTENTS Chapter 1 Introduction 1 PART I Cultural Taste Chapter 2 Ways of Preferring: Distinction through the 'What' and the 'How' of Cultural 33 Consumption Chapter 3 De-institutionalization of High Culture? Realized Curricula in Secondary 55 Education in Flanders, 1930-2000 PART II Social Mobility Chapter 4 A Mise-en-Scène of the Shattered Habitus: The Effect of Social Mobility on 79 Aesthetic Dispositions towards Films Chapter 5 Cultural Chameleons: Social Mobility and Cultural Practices in the Private 99 and the Public Sphere Chapter 6 Social Mobility and Cultural Dissonance 121 Chapter 7 Conclusion and Discussion 145 Appendix 159 Acknowledgements 167 Articles on which the chapters of this dissertation are based Chapter 2 Published as: Daenekindt Stijn & Roose Henk (2014). Ways of preferring. Distinction through the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of cultural consumption. Journal of Consumer Culture, first published on October 10, 2014 as doi:10.1177/1469540514553715. Chapter 3 Published as: Daenekindt Stijn & Roose Henk (2015). De-institutionalization of High Culture? Realized Curricula in Secondary Education in Flanders, 1930-2000. Cultural Sociology, accepted, in press. Chapter 4 Published as: Daenekindt Stijn & Roose Henk (2013). A mise-en-scène of the shattered habitus: the effect of social mobility on aesthetic dispositions towards films. European Sociological Review, 29(1), 48-59. Chapter 5 Published as: Daenekindt Stijn & Roose Henk (2013). Cultural chameleons: Social mobility and cultural practices in the private and the public sphere. Acta Sociologica, 56(4), 309-324. Chapter 6 Published as: Daenekindt Stijn & Roose Henk (2014). Social mobility and cultural dissonance. Poetics, 42(1), 82-97. Chapter 1 Introduction 1. Introduction 1. The cultural and the social a. Culture and cultural taste In sociology, the study of culture has expanded rapidly during the last couple of decades—in what has been referred to as the cultural turn (e.g., Friedland and Mohr 2004; Wuthnow and Witten 1988, Binder et al. 2008). The role of Pierre Bourdieu (e.g., 1977, 1984, 1990) is vital in this shift as he brilliantly outlined how culture plays a central role in stabilizing, legitimizing and perpetuating social inequality. For example, Reay (2011: 3) argues that the cultural turn has simultaneously been a Bourdieusian turn. Bourdieu studied cultural and symbolic stratification, and most of his work elaborates on the Weberian conception of class as lifestyle cultures, and how lifestyle characteristics can function as independent sources of power. Ever since, sociological research on culture has thrived. Studying French data collected throughout the sixties, Bourdieu (1984) observed a match between the social position of individuals and their cultural preferences and practices. That is, there is a homology between the social space and the cultural space. Bourdieu distinguished three different social classes—i.e., the bourgeoisie, the petite bourgeoisie and the working class—which all have different lifestyles. He also acknowledges different fractions within these classes, but for the moment it suffices to mention that the social position of individuals is expressed in their tastes, as each class exhibits characteristic preferences and practices. For example, legitimate culture—i.e., cultural practices and artefacts such as opera, classical music, golf, fine arts, etc.—is located at the top of the social stratification system; illegitimate culture—such as popular music or brassband—is situated at the bottom of the social ladder. Though Bourdieu’s observations—and especially the theoretical framework that accompanied it—are without a doubt invaluable, his work has not remained unchallenged. While few sociologists today would challenge the idea of the existence of a homology between the social space and the cultural space (an exception here is, for example, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002), several authors have argued that the nature of the homology as expressed by Bourdieu no longer applies and that it needs to be updated. For example, comparing data from 1982 with data from 1992, Peterson and Kern claim a historical shift in the nature of the homology (Peterson and Kern 1996; see also: Peterson 1992; Peterson and Simkus 1992). In this shift from snob to omnivore—which is especially tangible among younger generations—individuals occupying positions high in the social hierarchy no longer exclusively consume highbrow culture, but include preferences for lowbrow culture in their cultural profiles. The existence of the cultural omnivore has been confirmed by numerous empirical studies, and results consistently show that omnivores are highly educated, young, and belong to the upper social strata (e.g., Peterson 1992; Van Eijck 2001; Peterson 2005). However, the evidence for the fact that the rise of the omnivore is a recent historic shift is not that convincing (e.g., Roose and 3 Daenekindt 2015). For example, according to some authors, omnivorousness was already present from the fifties onwards (Van Eijck et al. 2002; Jaeger and Katz-Gerro 2010; Katz-Gerro and Jaeger 2013). Similarly, Lahire argues that the claim that omnivorousness is something new “confuses a change in the model of reality (the scientific point of view on the world) with a historic change of reality itself” (Lahire 2008: 182). Either way, the literature on omnivorousness portrays an alternative version of the homology as outlined by Bourdieu, but confirms the existence of a match between the cultural and the social. It is exactly because there are social patterns in cultural preferences and practices—whatever the specific nature of the homology—that they become sociologically relevant. Social patterning enables culture to become a cue for position in the social stratification system, and for culture to become an accurate and powerful status marker in social interaction. In this way, studying culture is key to understand how inequality in society is made and sustained. So, in this PhD thesis I study culture. But what is culture? A wide variety of definitions of the concept prevail across and within disciplines in social science. A major division in the way culture is conceptualized is “the one that separates studies of culture as an implicit feature of social life from studies of culture as an explicit social construction" (Wuthnow and Witten 1988: 50). The implicit approach considers culture as abstract features of social life, such as norms, values, symbols, traditions, signs, schemes, etc. (e.g., Jepperson and Swidler 1994; Wuthnow and Witten 1988). The explicit approach deals with culture as symbolic products which are explicitly produced. The empirical approach in this PhD thesis aligns with the second approach as I empirically study culture as a specific realm in social life, entailing cultural practices, cultural artefacts, the arts, folk culture, etc. (e.g., Wolff 1999; Spillman 2002). However, this does not mean that I am not interested in the more general and tacit understanding of culture. My empirical strategy to study explicit culture not only aims at improving our understanding of culture in its explicit form, but also to further our understanding of culture in its implicit form (cf. Acord and DeNora 2008). In this way, I applaud Binder et al. (2008: 8) in their claim and “[…] happily embrace the chameleon-like nature of culture as a concept and the many shapes and forms culture takes”. More specifically, I study culture to further our understanding of the role of culture in the process of social inequality by studying implications of social mobility. My focus on mobility is an empirical strategy to address two recent—and closely associated—evolutions in cultural sociology. (1) In the first place, several cultural sociologists have recently called for a recognition that individuals are ‘multi-socialized’ and argue that the ‘singleness’ and ‘homogeneity’ of individuals has been grossly overestimated in cultural sociological theory (e.g., Lahire 2011). (2) Additionally, sociological thinking on ‘culture’ has changed radically during the cultural turn, and more and more sociologists recognize that individuals “know much more of their culture than they use” (Swidler 2001: 13). Socially mobile individuals have been confronted with two different contexts of socialization— contexts with substantial differences in terms of culture—making them the perfect research topic to 1. Introduction study whether and how a multitude of socializing influences can be combined and reconciled within individuals. I focus on intergenerationally socially mobile individuals—that is, individuals occupying a different position in the social stratification system

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