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Cultural Omnivores In Context : An Examination Of Neighborhood Effects On Cultural Taste, Alexander Mcclung

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

After a review of the "cultural omnivore" debate in sociology, the following thesis proposes an examination of how place "matters" for cultural taste. The Anglophone response to Bourdieu's (1984) Distinction that the U.S. elite forgo highbrow snobbism for wide-ranging "omnivore" cultural taste contains several assumptions about culture and its relationship to socioeconomic mobility. These responses, collectively known here as the "omnivore debate" are critiqued on the basis that they pay inadequate attention to the contexts surrounding cultural taste. But it is knowledge of context that is required to understand how taste might be related to socioeconomic mobility. In fact, none …