Neither Classes, Nor Micro-Classes: The Occupational Composition of Cultural Strata

While there is broad consensus among sociologists that high culture is used in modern societies to draw social boundaries between elite and non-elite groups, there is much less agreement on which elite groups these boundaries demarcate. The most widespread view is that it is the upper classes in general who use culture to distinguish themselves from others. However, Bourdieu’s later work suggests that, rather than entire classes, it is the fraction of the upper class rich in cultural capital (such as artists and university professors) who use culture to differentiate themselves from the fraction rich primarily in economic capital (e.g., bankers). At the same time, recent work on “micro-classes” (Grusky) suggests that individual occupations are the natural sites of lifestyle differences.

While sociologists usually define classes empirically based on the occupations of their members, there have been few attempts to study the tastes of specific occupations or to analyze inductively which grouping of occupations best aligns with cultural boundaries. We address this gap by using a dataset from the public library system of St. Petersburg, a major Russian city, containing over 2 million records, including information on the employment of the readers. This dataset allows us to study the preference for high-brow literature among members of specific occupational groups and to develop an inductive three-part cultural stratification schema, which contrasts (a) working-class and clerical occupations, (b) professional occupations, and (c) literary specialists—journalists, editors, copywriters, translators (ISCO-88 group 2451). This last category occupies a position between class fractions and micro-classes, representing a group of diverse occupations disproportionately recruited from graduates of literature departments. The three-part schema outperforms various occupational groupings traditionally used to capture taste differences between classes and class fractions (e.g., EGP, ORDC). The theoretical implications suggest building connections between the sociology of taste and the sociology of expertise.