The Wild Hunt for Omnivores: Stratification and Taste in Music

• In Event: 240 - Section on Consumers and Consumption Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Paper Session: Table 06. Music and Taste

Abstract

The study of musical preferences has supplied cultural sociology with a number of compelling debates in regards to the role of stratification. Bourdieu argues that tastes are complicit in the reproduction of class inequalities, with special emphasis on the role of cultural capital within the educational system. Others have found that taste is more specifically related social status and not class, as Weber has long suggested to us. The paper presented here aims to investigate the proposed relationship between stratification (social status, educational attainment, and household income per capita) and taste in music. Utilizing data from the 2012 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, 7,878 respondents are analyzed. A five category dependent variable for music listener is employed in a partial proportional odds regression. The findings presented below suggest that when controlling for other factors in the model (age, gender, race/ethnicity, community size, and region of the respondent), measures of stratification are statistically significant across all comparisons. Social status, educational attainment, and household income per capita appear to have a positive relationship with increasing inclusivity in regards to taste in music. Educational effects are especially pronounced though, suggesting a continued link between post-secondary education and taste. If inclusive taste is the new marker of legitimate cultural capital, then the relationship between educational attainment and distinction may persist in the US context.

Author

• Thomas Anthony Calkins, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee