Avoiders gonna avoid: The anatomy of cultural non-participation in Finland, 2007 to 2018.

• In Event: 1441 - Comparative Sociology

Abstract

There seems to be a fervent belief that culture is, among other desirable ideals, “good for you”, and this has been the baseline of the cultural policies in many countries (Mulcahy 2006). Unlike taste or knowledge, some forms of cultural participation are subvented through public funding to differing degrees, which makes it yet more important to ask which groups intentionally withdraw – or are left out – from which forms of it.

We address the debate on cultural non-participation and its reasons by providing a longitudinal view into the phenomenon in Finland 2007 and 2018, between which several important socio-cultural changes have taken place: the emergence of social media, the rise of right-wing conservative parties, and an increasing speed of globalization. Here, cultural non-participation works as a tangible form of distaste, tastes being “perhaps first and foremost distastes” (Bourdieu 1984, 56).

We explore the change in non-participation in Finland between 2007 and 2018; what forms of different cultural non-participation patterns could be distinguished; and what socioeconomic factors affected which form of cultural non-participation most in both years. Using Finnish survey data on cultural consumption allows us to scrutinize trends in a Nordic welfare country with supposedly less hierarchies and a strong egalitarian spirit with equal, decommodified opportunities.

In general, the non-participation levels have increased over time. While the changes in non-participation look small from the macro level, their internal dynamics face a steep change between 2007 and 2018, making the access to higher education a continuously more significant barrier between the groups that attend any kind of cultural activity. Our results indicate that the alleged egalitarianism does not reach cultural participation: avoiding certain forms of culture is more and more related to differences in education, as the groups with lower education distance themselves gradually from cultural participation.

Authors

• Riie Heikkilä, Tampere University

• Taru Lindblom, Tampere University