{"title":"Educational Mobility and Cultural Omnivorousness in Germany","authors":"Yevhen Voronin, Mark Lutter","doi":"10.1177/17499755241247991","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755241247991","url":null,"abstract":"Cultural omnivorousness is widely studied as a dimension of the stratification of taste, related to class or status positions. However, taste is also structured by patterns of social mobility, especially educational mobility. Building on Lizardo’s Bourdieu, Distinction, and Aesthetic Consumption article, we expect that cultural omnivorousness systematically depends on patterns of educational mobility. Specifically, we predict that a higher inherited educational capital triggers a taste for less legitimate culture. Using survey data on tastes in music in Germany, we tested the effects of acquired and inherited cultural capital in predicting tastes for less legitimate cultural forms of taste at the level of genres and the effects of educational mobility in predicting cultural omnivorousness. Our results suggest that, first, the effect of parents’ education in predicting taste for less legitimate music genres is larger than the effect of the respondents’ own education. Second, the analysis reveals significant differences in omnivorous taste across segments of educational mobility groups. In general, there are three groups that show the highest omnivorousness: upwardly and downwardly mobile groups between middle and high positions and stayers in the high-level segment, whereas immobile individuals in the lower segment are the most univorous. Contrary to expectations, respondents with upward educational mobility who reach a high level of education accumulate omnivorous attitudes to a high degree. This study shows partial support for the statements of theory and proposes trajectories for future research.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141801592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Exploring Digital/Non-digital Entanglements Through Everyday Practice Connections in Young People’s Gaming","authors":"T. Bengtsson, Kristian Haulund Jensen","doi":"10.1177/17499755241259927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755241259927","url":null,"abstract":"With the digitalization of everyday life, the distinction between online and offline life is less relevant. Thus, we suggest that researchers ask how the digital and the non-digital are entangled, rather than if they are. In this study, we explore how video gaming is a digitally saturated practice that is embedded in young people’s everyday lives. We analyse 56 qualitative interviews with young Danish video game players to investigate how their gaming connects to and is formed by other practices. By examining gaming’s linkage to friendship and family practices, we show how connections are preformed and sustained through both digital and non-digital social interactions of dialogue and exchange. Additionally, we show how the values of video gaming travel beyond the game and have an impact on the wider social and cultural positions of the young practitioners. Focusing on practice connections adds new perspectives to the complex relationship between digital and non-digital elements. Unravelling these practice relationships is important if we are to understand how the lives of contemporary youth are increasingly formed by digitalized practices.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.4,"publicationDate":"2024-07-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141810073","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Who is on Show? Globalization of Private Contemporary Art Museums in China","authors":"S. Kharchenkova, Lisa-Marie Merkus","doi":"10.1177/17499755241246030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755241246030","url":null,"abstract":"Sociological research on global flows of visual art has primarily investigated artistic presence in the organizations located at the center of the art world. This article shifts the focus to a country outside the traditional center, as it investigates the nationalities of artists who have exhibited at the recently emerged private contemporary art museums in China. It demonstrates that Chinese artists dominate in their exhibitions, which points to a home bias. However, there is also evidence of a cultural hierarchy, with the dominance of a small number of European countries and the USA, and of the regional dominance of East Asian countries. The article demonstrates that a focus on a country outside the center enables us to see the prominence of regional cultural flows in the globalization of visual art. Moreover, it shows that private museums, which are relatively independent of state control, are an important venue to show non-Chinese contemporary artists in present-day China. The increase in non-Chinese artists in exhibitions over time, which is due to the establishment of new private museums, suggests the rising, albeit tentative, centrality of China globally in terms of the importance of its institutions. This article contributes to research on globalization in the sociology of art, and to the understanding of the dynamics of local and transnational cultural flows in contemporary China.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141352836","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Activist Character: Power and Empowerment in Bestselling Activist Memoirs in the United States","authors":"J. Gøtzsche-Astrup","doi":"10.1177/17499755241249620","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755241249620","url":null,"abstract":"This article introduces the activist as a widely disseminated character within the culture of social movement societies. Drawing on studies of activist identities, Alasdair MacIntyre on characters, and the sociology of critique, it argues that the activist provides one way of imagining unjust structures of power and the possibilities of critical empowerment. The article unpacks this character in 20 bestselling activist memoirs in the United States. Across the memoirs, the structures of power are understood as total, decentred, and internalised by the individual. Empowerment involves a work on the self that taps into a disruptive source of power outside these structures. While this construction of the activist is shared, it is also inflected through two distinct repertoires in which the activist is empowered through their authenticity or a transformative love that transcends the individual.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141361635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reactionary Exiles. How Conspiracy Theorists Deal with Socio-Technological Exclusion","authors":"Kamile Grusauskaite, Jaron Harambam, S. Aupers","doi":"10.1177/17499755241248726","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755241248726","url":null,"abstract":"Due to growing public concerns regarding the consequences of disinformation and conspiracy theories, major tech companies have introduced policies to curtail them on their platforms. Until now, the academic debate has largely focused on whether these punitive policies are effective. In this study, we address the question of how de-platformed ‘conspiracy theorists’ themselves experience and deal with such socio-technological exclusion. Drawing on seminal theories in the symbolic interactionist tradition, we conceptualize conspiracy theories as stigmatized ‘knowledge’ and empirically study the ways that conspiracy theory producers manage their stigma after de-platforming. Particularly, we draw on an analysis of 22 in-depth, qualitative interviews, ethnographic observations with (former) conspiracy YouTubers and a digital ethnography. Our findings demonstrate that YouTubers respond to de-platforming by emphasizing the ‘silver linings’ of their exclusion and by accommodating, bypassing and reframing their ‘stigma’. De-platforming contributes to their legitimacy in the face of their audiences and enables them to carve out space to cultivate a new, stronger form of conspiracy capital and status. This study contributes to the literature on conspiracy theories from a cultural sociological perspective. It advances our understanding of how de-platforming may backfire, strengthening people’s beliefs and standing within their subculture.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141365040","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Elite Reproduction and Power in the Neoliberal Era: The Image-Making of King Carl XVI Gustaf as ‘Sweden’s Leader’","authors":"Mikael Holmqvist","doi":"10.1177/17499755241252192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755241252192","url":null,"abstract":"One group of elites that often escapes attention among sociologists are royals, who seem to be regarded as uninteresting and irrelevant study objects for the analysis of elites’ reproduction and power in contemporary society. Still, as suggested by, for instance, the death of the British Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 and the installation of the Danish King Frederik X in 2024, royals enjoy extraordinary attention among the general public and media, which testifies to their potentially important social, moral and political functions and roles. Based on an extensive examination of the longest reigning monarch in the world today, the Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf, I suggest how he, through media, has been constructed as ‘Sweden’s leader’; by idealizing such neoliberal virtues as activity, entrepreneurship, positive thinking, self-management and similar expressions of ‘leadership’. A key concept for my analysis of the fabrication of the King is ‘image-making’, which derives from Ervin Goffman’s work on the ‘presentation of self’. Essentially, the King aspires to be seen as a role model in contemporary Sweden, a country that has become all the more market-oriented during the last 50 years, which is critical to understanding his legitimacy, and hence ability to exercise power.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141376820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: The Sociology of Literature","authors":"John M. Vana","doi":"10.1177/17499755241242670","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755241242670","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140997912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: The Global Rules of Art: The Emergence and Divisions of a Cultural World Economy","authors":"Christian Morgner","doi":"10.1177/17499755241236080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755241236080","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140995776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Noemi Ciarniello, Emiliana De Blasio, Donatella Selva
{"title":"Neoliberal Feminism and Political Leadership: The Representation of Giorgia Meloni and Elly Schlein in Popular Culture","authors":"Noemi Ciarniello, Emiliana De Blasio, Donatella Selva","doi":"10.1177/17499755241238135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755241238135","url":null,"abstract":"Building on a long tradition of studies on the intertwining of politics and popular culture, the article examines the representation of the two Italian political leaders of the moment, Giorgia Meloni and Elly Schlein, offered by women’s magazines. The study focuses in particular on two interrelated aspects: on the one hand, the extent to which the discursive strategies to talk about the leaders, their personal lives, careers and ideas contribute to strengthen the contemporary hegemony on feminism; on the other hand, the discursive strategies used to represent the leaders through a frame of competition typical of the neoliberalism. Indeed, we refer to the most recent trends in feminism research, contested among post-feminism, neoliberal feminism and celebrity feminism. Within this framework, we examined whether and how female political leaders can become icons of life, style and power in a way that is functional to the neoliberal narrative. The critical discourse analysis conducted on eight Italian women’s magazines over the course of a year makes it possible to highlight some results that contribute to the reflection on neoliberal feminism and female leadership. In particular, leaders are presented through argumentative strategies of genealogism, exceptionalism and compensation: the ways in which magazines justify their position of power refer to family relationships and character qualities, emphasizing the characteristics closest to the neoliberal model and overshadowing all others, including political ideas. Rather, leaders are deradicalized and depoliticized to favour instead a reassuring narrative in which women have broken the glass ceiling. In that way, women’s magazines renounce representing women leaders for their ideas and ideologies, and instead focus on their unique mark of difference: their gender.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141011061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Adolescents’ Music Tastes in the Streaming Era: The Case of Belgium","authors":"Luca Carbone, Laura Vandenbosch","doi":"10.1177/17499755241244529","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755241244529","url":null,"abstract":"The sociological literature about music considers youth as a crucial period for the development of one’s music tastes and identity. Yet, scarce research has documented the taste profiles of adolescents and their composition in relation to identity characteristics, especially in the current streaming era. In this article, we integrate different strands of literature analyzing the role of music tastes in identity building to define and segment the composition of contemporary adolescents’ taste profiles. We employed data from a cross-sectional study among Belgian adolescents ( n = 533, Mage (SD) = 15.3 (1.6), 61.1% girls, 83.2% Western European) and used latent class analysis to derive their taste profiles. Multinomial logistic regression subsequently segmented the socio-cognitive, social, and digital characteristics of these profiles. Our findings contextualize adult taste profiles among adolescents and the streaming landscape, shedding light on cultural tastes as gendered technologies of self-presentation.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141005684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}