ESRI Research Seminar: “Social Mobility and Cultural Omnivores”

Venue: ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2

Speaker: Professor Tak Wing Chan, University of Oxford.
Tak Wing Chan is the Tutor for Human Sciences at New College, and a University Lecturer in Sociology. He is also the Director of the Oxford Network for Social Inequality Research. Learn more about his research here

Recent research on the social stratification of cultural consumption has converged to the following finding: although individuals in advantaged social positions are more likely than others to consume highbrow culture, they have no general aversion against other cultural forms. In other words, it is more apt to describe such individuals as cultural omnivores than cultural snobs. But where do cultural omnivores come from? Do they reflect a general democratisation of culture in contemporary societies? Or are they the products of the social mobility experience at the individual level? In this paper, we use data from a large and nationally representative survey to investigate the relationship between social mobility and cultural omnivorousness. Using diagonal reference models, we show that upwardly mobile individuals are less omnivorous than individuals who are intergenerationally stable in advantaged positions