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Capital, Consumption, Communication, and Citizenship: The Social Positioning of Taste and Civic Culture in the United States

School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dhavan V. Shah

School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Nam-Jin Lee

School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Mark A. Rademacher

School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Lucy Atkinson

School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Thomas Hove

School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

In this article, the authors analyze the field of cultural consumption in the United States. Using the 2000 DDB Lifestyle Study, they examine a cross-section of Americans in terms of their occupational categories, media usage, consumption practices, social behaviors, and indicators of civic and political engagement. In doing so, the authors find many parallels to the determinants of taste, cultural discrimination, and choice within the field structure observed by Bourdieu in 1960s French society. However, there are also some notable differences in terms of the composition of cultural capital consistent with the concept of omnivorousness. The distribution of positions is largely defined by patterns of taste that discriminate between refinement, moderation, nurturance, and a communal orientation, on one side, and coarseness, excess, aggressiveness, and an individual orientation, on the other. Historical and national differences partly account for this variation, but a major role may be played by the increasing formation of identities around media and consumption, leading to a more gendered and ideological positioning of taste cultures in the U.S context.

Key Words: Bourdieu • correspondence analysis • high culture • cultural capital • middlebrow • omnivore • political participation • popular culture

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