What Does it Mean to be a Cultural Omnivore? Conflicting Visions of Omnivorousness in Empirical Research

Robert De Vries,Aaron Reeves

doi:10.1177/13607804211006109

Robert De Vries, Aaron Reeves

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/13607804211006109

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Abstract

The ‘omnivore’ hypothesis currently dominates the academic literature on the social patterning of taste. It argues that cultural elites no longer resemble the traditional stereotype of an elitist snob. Instead, they are more likely to be ‘omnivores’ with broad tastes encompassing both elite and popular cultural forms. The omnivore hypothesis has inspired more than two decades of research and debate, without a clear resolution. In this article, we argue that progress in the omnivore debate has been impeded in part due to an elision of two distinct interpretations of the omnivore hypothesis: a strong interpretation, which holds that cultural elites are generally averse to class-based exclusivity; and a weak interpretation which holds that, while elites have broad tastes which encompass popular forms, they do not necessarily repudiate class-based exclusion. We demonstrate how drawing this distinction helps to clarify the existing empirical evidence concerning the omnivore hypothesis.

Highlights

The distinction between ‘elite’ and ‘mass’ consumers once dominated theories of cultural consumption (Gans, 1974)
Where the elite-mass theory sets ‘snobs’ with exclusive, highbrow tastes against the mass of popular consumers, the omnivore hypothesis holds that elites do not reject popular culture as shallow and barbaric
While the omnivore hypothesis has become the dominant frame through which academics understand the social patterning of taste (Chan, 2013; Lizardo and Skiles, 2015), it is not without its critics

Summary

Introduction

The distinction between ‘elite’ and ‘mass’ consumers once dominated theories of cultural consumption (Gans, 1974). The first – which we term the weak interpretation – holds that (1) social elites tend to be more culturally engaged than non-elites (enjoying or consuming a larger volume of cultural forms) and (2) that their tastes often cross the boundary between elite and mass culture This broad and inclusive palette (more inclusive than that of a univore or of a classical snob) qualifies them as omnivores. Our distinction between strong and weak omnivorousness turns on the way in which ‘cultural omnivores’ are hypothesised to relate to non-elite (in Peterson’s terminology) cultural forms This is under-specified in the original formulation of the omnivore hypothesis (Peterson, 1992; Peterson and Kern, 1996). GROUP 1 comprises studies which principally employ coarse-grained quantitative data on cultural

Findings

Author’s conclusions

Discussion