Cultural Consumption, Class Mismatch, and Gender As a Determinant Factor

Studies of cultural consumption have a distinctive academic tradition after Bourdieu’s book “Distinction” (1984) where each class has their own cultural tastes and high class people are considered as high culture, giving them the authority of class domination. A major question currently subject to debate is whether we can identify these hierarchy matches between class and culture. This paper examines this question, collecting and analyzing the results of cross-national empirical research. Research has shown there is considerable evidence contradicting the results of Bourdieu, even in France where Bourdieu conducted his own research (Lamont, 1992). This may be due to the fact that existing class-based approaches put too much emphasis on the class, rather than focusing on diverse social groups and the meaning behind a person’s preferences for certain culture.

As an alternative to the existing class approach, the approach based on gender will be presented with data from Survey on cultural Enjoyment 2010 data, South Korea as well as other empirical research results conducted in many countries such as France, West Germany, the United States, and the other developed countries. These empirical findings suggest that women consume more cultural activities than men, even after controlling traditionally important variables, for example, class and education. In addition, women have a tendency to prefer high culture, even women with low education or class background, implying the distinctive meaning of women favoring high culture compared to men. A discussion of several reasons for these results will be followed focusing on the particular meaning to women’s identity and status. We will conclude with the suggestions for future research to address more issues related to the interactions between social factors such as race, gender, and class, along with analyzing the latent meaning of preferring certain culture for each social group.