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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.

Keywords

Chinese society cultural capital cultural consumption popular culture social reproduction

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

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