For generations, preference for “high” and disdain for “popular” culture was a means the elite used to distinguish themselves from the masses. In sharp contrast, the display of high status today relies on familiarity with the full range of cultural fare. This change in evaluation of status poses a challenge for the future of the fine arts.
References
1.
BourdieuPierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984 [1979]. Bourdieu explores the ways French taste differs by class; this study has spawned a generation of research.
2.
GansHerbert J.Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste.New York: Basic Books, 1999. Updated from a 1970s essay, this edition identifies a range of taste cultures.
3.
LamontMichele. Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and the American Upper Middle Class.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Lamont asked Frenchmen and Americans how they choose the people with whom they want to associate. Parisians stress manners, New Yorkers money, and the Americans generally stress morals.
4.
LevineLawrence W.Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America.Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. Levine examines the 19th-century creation of the highbrow idea showing, for example, how the popular Shakespeare became “difficult.”.
5.
PetersonRichard A.HullPamela C.KernRoger. Age and Arts Participation: 1982–1997 National Endowment for the Arts, Research Monograph 34. Santa Ana, Calif.: Seven Locks Press, 2000. Shows that American audiences for the fine arts are rapidly aging.
6.
PetersonRichard A.KernRoger. “Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore.”American Sociological Review61 (1996): 900–07. Documents the omnivore-univore pattern and suggests an explanation.
7.
PetersonRichard A.SimkusAlbert. “How Musical Taste Groups Mark Occupational Status Groups.” in Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality, ed. LamontMichèleFournierMarcel. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Omnivorousness as a style of status signaling is introduced here.
