Cultural Capital, Artistic Tastes and Status Boundaries Among Russian University Students

Abstract

Mikhail Sokolov – Candidate of Science in Sociology, Professor, Political Science and Sociology Department, European University at Saint Petersburg. Address: 3a, Gagarinskaya St., Saint Petersburg, 191187, Russian Federation. E-mail: msokolov@eu.spb.ru
Maria Safonova – Candidate of Science in Sociology, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Higher School of Economics. Address: 16, Soyuza Pechatnikov St., Saint Petersburg, 190008, Russian Federation. E-mail: msafonova@hse.ru
Galina Сhernetskaya – MA in Sociology, Graduate, Political Science and Sociology Department, European University at Saint Petersburg. Address: 16, Soyuza Pechatnikov St., Saint Petersburg, 190008, Russian Federation. E-mail: gaaalka@gmail.com

This article tests Pierre Bourdieu’s, and Richard Peterson’s / Paul DiMaggio’s theories of cultural consumption using data from a survey of students of an elite Russian university. While this sample is obviously not representative of general population, it arguably allows comparing crucial expectations arising from the two theories. Due to specifics of admission procedure, it included young people who were endowed with high levels of cultural capital (passing highly competitive exams) and those who were endowed with economic capital (paying high tuition fees) interacting with each other on an almost daily basis. It follows from Bourdieu’s treatment of cultural capital that co-existence of members of different factions of societal elite would inevitably result in high cultural capital group rejecting the tastes of a less sophisticated audience and in this way establishing its superiority. In contrast, “cultural omnivore”/“cultural mobility” theory expects a more peaceful coexistence with high cultural capital group developing liking, rather than disliking, for objects consumed by low cultural capital group and using them as a communicative resource. An innovative aspect of this study is that, instead of using regressions to find correlations between quality and quantity of tastes and class position of individuals to whom these tastes belong, we rely on testing competing hypotheses concerning the organizations of spaces of tastes as such. The specific hypotheses derived specify (1) the overall distribution of artistic tastes (the polarization of the high- and the low-brow tastes vs centre-periphery structure with mainstream and consensual tastes in the middle), (2) homology of different forms of high culture vs segmented forms of cultural consumption, (3) distribution of accounts of liking as portrayed against the background of cultural knowledge. Generally, our findings yield full support for the cultural omnivore model. Counter the snob model, high cultural capital group demonstrates significantly more liking for the most familiar and accessible artistic figures, than low cultural capital group. We discuss the implications of these findings with regard to other aspects of Bourdieu’s theoretical contributions and our understanding of status boundaries in modern Russia.