Art, Economics & The Cultural Omnivore
June 25, 2015
by Diana Greenwald | Filed in: Conferences
In the past, Arts & Econ has focused on economics. There are, however, many contributions from other social sciences. At Creative Networks and Cultural Output: Economic Contexts for Literary and Artistic Consumption, Kerry McCall presented a thought-provoking overview sociological studies culture and its consumption. There is a robust sociological literature about demand for culture by different social groups.
In his landmark book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (1979), sociologist Pierre Bourdieu asserts that “there is an economy of cultural goods [with] a specific logic.”[1] This logic is determined by the education and upbringing—the habitus—of the participants in the cultural economy. He writes:
Bourdieu concludes that class may not only be expressed but also may be defined and transmitted to future generations through the consumption of cultural goods. You define your class standing, and your class standing is in turn defined by your cultural consumption. In particular, he focused on the distinction between “high” and “low” or “popular “ art.
“In a sense, one can say that the capacity to see (voir) is a function of the knowledge (savoir)…A work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is the code into which it is encoded” [2]
McCall highlighted how people’s engagement with the arts has changed since Bourdieu studied 1970’s France. In place of distinctions between high art and popular art, the “cultural omnivore” has emerged among upper-class art consumers, while lower income individuals tend to be “cultural univores” (see Peterson and Kern, 1996). The breadth—rather than depth—of a person’s engagement with the arts indicates their social standing.
In his book Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School (2011), sociologist Shamus Rahman Kahn eloquently describes this omnivorous behavior:
The new way to demonstrate elite status is to be a chameleon, to participate in any and every register of cultural consumption. What implications does the cultural omnivore have for those studying the interaction between the arts and economics? It has several.
“The new…elite listen to classical and to rap; they eat at fine restaurants and at diners. They are at ease everywhere in the world. We even seem to demand this omnivorousness pluralism of our elite. We don’t want a patrician president; we want a man who knows how to act around the queen of England but is just as comfortable sitting in a lawn chair holding a beer summit….[Elites] are comfortable almost anywhere. It is as if the new elite are saying, “Look! We are not some exclusive club. If anything, we are the most democratized of all groups. We are as comfortable with rap as opera. We can dine finely or at a truck stop. We accept all!” [3]
First: scholars interested in the demand for art tend to focus on one art form at a time—painting, sculpture, music or literature. The cultural omnivore argument indicates that demand for art cannot be considered one art form at a time. Instead, it is the ensemble of artworks consumed that speaks to a person’s tastes.
Second: most social and economic histories of art depend on an assumption cultural consumption is designed to be aristocratically exclusive, to define a distinct “high-brow” taste. This could, however, be the application of an outdated model. Cultural omnivorousness may not be just a twenty-first-century phenomenon (as explored in Privilege), but a twentieth and perhaps even late nineteenth century one. Searching for the cultural omnivore through the history of art and culture may be a fascinating future avenue of research.
Finally, it clearly indicates that economics is not the only social science that can contribute innovative concepts and methods to the study of the arts.
[1] Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Kindle Edition), trans. Richard Nice (Oxford: Routledge, 1984), Kindle Location 433.
[2] Ibid., Kindle Locations 459-465
[3] Khan, Shamus Rahman (2010-12-28). Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School (Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology) (pp.134-135). Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition.
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