A Model of Cultural Reproduction in China: Tracing Consumption to Parental Social Origin

Abstract

This article traces differences in cultural consumption in China – sources of status markers and boundaries – to parental social origin, and explains the mechanism of cultural reproduction in China. It identifies the high-status cultural signals, the forms that cultural capital assumes and the underlying processes. The enthusiasm for childhood cultivation and western-oriented aspirations among the privileged parents have developed into a Chinese form of cultural capital – an ingrained aversion to rural backwardness and aspirations for the West. This forms a cultural hierarchy in which those raised in privilege have a distinctive western-oriented cultural consumption, a difference not overcome by educational attainment. Hence, the process in China diverges from Bourdieu’s well-known model based on legitimisation through state or formal education. This proposed mechanism is empirically validated using structural equation modelling.