Search

In this paper, I provide evidence for the substantive relevance of a phenomenon that has been argued to be crucial in connecting cultural inequalities to stratification outcomes: “ culture talk, ” or the use of popular culture and the arts as conversation subjects with friends and acquaintances. In spite of its theoretical importance, this outcome has not received much empirical attention. To address this gap, I document the socio-demographic correlates of culture talk using survey data from a probability sample of Americans. I report three main findings. First, culture talk frequency across five culture consumption domains is stratified by socioeconomic status, primarily be education and secondarily by income, net of self-reported culture-consumption frequency. Second, the socioeconomic status effect on culture talk is strongest for those who are most culturally active. Finally, engagement in traditionally high status cultural pursuits (e.g. the fine arts) is a better predictor of culture talk across all domains than consumption in less class stratified domains (e.g. movies). I close by elaborating the theoretical and substantive implication of these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research in the sociology of taste has focused primarily on the role of socioeconomic status (SES) in modulating patterns of cultural choice. This has led to a general neglect of the role of age as a structuring factor in its own right. In this paper, we turn our attention to cross-sectional and over-time differences in expressions of cultural taste across age groups. We concentrate on the phenomenon that Bryson (1996) has referred to as “symbolic exclusion”: namely, the (differential) propensity of persons to express dislike for certain cultural styles. Comparing musical dislikes from the 1993 General Social Survey data to a replication of the same instrument in 2012, we find that, overall, Americans are less likely to express dislikes across most musical categories, with the most substantial declines observed for Rap and Heavy Metal, especially among college-educated young adults. The exceptions to this pattern are the Country, Folk, and Religious styles, all of which are more likely to be disliked in 2012 than they were in 1993, and Rock and Classical music, both of which are increasingly rejected by high-status young people at the same time that they are less likely to be rejected by their same-status older counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]