This article explores the social distribution of involvement in highbrow culture in light of three issues being discussed in cultural sociology. One is that highbrow cultural orientation is an indicator of cultural capital or of social status. A second, the ‘meltdown scenario’, suggests that not only the popularity of highbrow activities, but also their distinctiveness, has decreased among younger cohorts in comparison to older cohorts. A third deals with the ‘feminization’ of highbrow culture. These issues are empirically addressed in contemporary Finland using nationally representative survey data. Highbrow culture is measured in three dimensions of cultural practices – knowledge, taste and participation – covering four different fields: music, literature, cinema and the visual arts. The results support all three arguments: First, education and occupational class are important social determinants of involvement in highbrow culture in Finland. Second, younger age cohorts show less interest in highbrow culture than do older Finns. Third, women tend to be more involved in highbrow culture than men. The results indicate considerable stability across the measures of highbrow culture and cultural fields. Social determinants of knowledge and cinema, however, are different from those in other dimensions and fields.

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Music and literature are analysed in terms of liking different cultural genres following a three-step analytical strategy. First, the distributions of likes/dislikes of different music and literary genres are examined. Second, we examined how the genres are interrelated. Third, we investigated how interrelating genres condensed into different taste patterns can be explained by five background variables: gender, age, education, income and residential area. In addition, there is a short analysis of the connections among taste patterns across the two cultural areas. The results suggest clear social differentiation in tastes, both in music and in literature, in Finland. Age and especially gender proved to be at least as important as education in explaining musical and literary taste patterns in general and highbrow tastes in particular. Three major correlations representing ‘highbrow’, ‘popular folk’ and ‘popular action’ tastes across the two cultural areas were found, indicating clear homologies between musical and literary taste.

The way of life and essence of the Finnish new middle class are discussed. Within a theoretical framework that one might call Bourdieuan, the analysis is based on a questionnaire by Pierre Bourdieu in his book La Distinction (1979) and an interview material consisting of life stones of Finnish new middle class people As a preliminary conclusion, it is argued that taste is by no means as important a criterion for the new middle class in Finland as it is in France In the Finnish middle class emphasis is rather on subjectivity, on personal relations and their therapeutic nature, i e. on the way of life in a broader sense. Also, it is argued that the so-called ambivalent type of the new middle class is something specific with regard to both class and modernity.