Genres, Objects, and the Contemporary Expression of Higher-Status Tastes

Abstract

Are contemporary higher-status tastes inclusive, exclusive, or both? Recent work suggests that the answer likely is both. And yet, little is known concerning how configurations of such tastes are learned, upheld, and expressed without contradiction. We resolve this puzzle by showing the affordances of different levels of culture (i.e., genres and objects) in the expression of tastes. We rely on original survey data to show that people of higher status taste differently at different levels of culture: more inclusively for genres and more exclusively for objects. Inclusivity at the level of genres is fostered through familial socialization, and exclusivity at the level of objects is fostered through formal schooling. Individuals' taste configurations are mirrored in and presumably reinforce their adult social-structural positions. The results have important implications for understanding the subtle maintenance of status in an increasingly diverse and putatively meritocratic society.

What cultural hierarchy? Cultural tastes, status and inequality

“…This would be an impossible task, as there are many interpretations of this model (Coulangeon & Duval, 2015; Holt, 1997; Lizardo & Skiles, 2015). Instead, our aim is to capture the key features of, and assumptions in, the misrecognition model (e.g., Childress et al., 2021; Friedman & Reeves, 2020; Lizardo, 2018). We illustrate our theoretical framework in Figure 1.…”

“…According to this model, elites use their domination of societal institutions to create a widely shared belief that their cultural lifestyles have higher status than other lifestyles. This widely shared belief originates in a cultural hierarchy that assigns status to cultural activities and objects and, by doing so, leads individuals to adopt cultural lifestyles whose status matches that of their socioeconomic position (SEP; e.g., education, income or social class; Accominotti et al., 2018; Childress et al., 2021; Lizardo, 2018). The empirical prediction from the misrecognition model is a social space of lifestyles that maps onto the unequal distribution of SEP in the population.…”

A new middle-class fraction with a distinct subjectivity: Tech workers and the transformation of the entrepreneurial self

“…The lifestyle of tech workers therefore provides support for the ‘cultural omnivores’ theory. With this concept, Peterson and Kern (1996) argued that the upper echelons of society are deploying both high-brow and low-brow culture in their day-to-day lives to distinguish themselves (see Childress et al, 2021 for a recent discussion). Building on Friedman and Reeves (2020), I argue that this lifestyle allows tech workers to establish cultural authenticity while pulling away from declining middle-class fractions economically.…”

“…This technology holds decommodifying potential but must be considered an individualist reaction to structural problematisations. Finally, tech workers display a shared lifestyle of ordinariness that is embedded within an omnivore way of life and linked to relatively high forms of economic and cultural capital (Childress et al, 2021; Peterson & Kern, 1996). While engaged in both high-brow and low-brow cultural activities, tech workers are keen on signalling an inclusive lifestyle with a genuine social character.…”

Social Exclusion in the Arts: The Dynamics of Social and Economic Mobility Across Three Decades of Undergraduate Arts Alumni in the United States

“…These hierarchies of taste reinforce and interact with complex dynamics of racial/ ethnic and social exclusion, especially as definitions of "elite" taste have morphed to include some conditional engagement with forms of popular culture. For instance, Childress et al (2021) studied the ways in which elites subsume categories of popular culture into their taste-making apparatus but only conditionally-for example, including horror films but only some works within the genre.…”