Professor-writers and machinist-painter-photographers: Investigating the duality between occupational categories and artistic hobbies

Even though participation in the arts (a.k.a. hobbies) of employed persons has risen steadily since the early twentieth century, research has not systematically explored the relationship between occupations and hobbies. We address this gap by investigating the intersection and cultural co-constitution of these two forms of engagement by drawing on Breiger's influential work on duality. We introduce a machine-learning approach called association-rules to generate a two-mode network comprising occupations and hobbies using data from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. Our analysis shows that the relationship between the two constructs is not consistent with the cultural omnivorousness model. Instead, attributes of the two constructs like temporality and degree of collaborativeness shape their association with implications for their cultural significance. Pottery and painting, generally solo hobbies, are associated with most professions, but are the exclusive domain of gendered male, blue-collar occupations that have less autonomy on working hours. Collaborative music hobbies, entailing considerable commitment, on the other hand, are exclusively associated with occupations with such autonomy. Weaving and writing, portable hobbies that have a reputation of being ‘woke,’ are connected to white- and blue-collar sedentary jobs. Sharedness of hobbies and variability in their cultural significance have implications for the erosion and maintenance of cultural and social distance between occupational groups. Degree of collaborativeness, likewise, has implications for connectedness within hobby groups as well as visibility and embeddedness of occupational groups in local communities.