Changing relations: Class, education and cultural capital

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529 www.elsevier.com/locate/poetic

Changing relations: Class, education and cultural capital Jostein Gripsrud, Jan Fredrik Hovden *, Hallvard Moe Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, PO Box 7802, NO-5020 Bergen, Norway

Abstract Based on analyses of survey data of the cultural practices of Norwegian students in 1998 and 2008, this article addresses the changing relations between class, education and cultural tastes of students in Norway – particularly focusing on what Bourdieu termed ‘‘cultural capital’’. Proceeding from international and Norwegian debates regarding the nature and social importance of cultural capital, the article first discusses the changing relation between social class and educational careers. On this basis, changes with regard to the use of music and literature, both in forms of genres and individual artists/authors, are analysed. While general relations between preferences for musical and literary genres and social background appear to be quite stable, with traditional highbrow genres in both years being closely related to students with high levels of cultural capital, students’ interest in traditional highbrow genres have weakened considerably in the period under study. This suggests that traditional forms of highbrow culture are becoming increasingly more irrelevant for most students cultural lives, but also more socially distinctive, and they still appear to command a large degree of recognition. However, the article concludes, the general decline in interest towards such forms of culture suggests an increasingly precarious position for traditional highbrow culture.1 # 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction In the early 1960s, shortly after his fieldwork in Algeria, Pierre Bourdieu turned his attention to the French university system. Together with his colleagues he published several studies, including Les he´ritiers (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1964; translated as The Inheritors in 1979), a study of the social recruitment of French students and their relation to culture, and Rapport pe´dagogique et communication (Bourdieu et al., 1965; translated as Academic

* Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Gripsrud), [email protected] (J.F. Hovden), [email protected] (H. Moe). 1 Project title and website: Democracy and the Digitisation of Audiovisual Culture (DIGICULT). http://digicult.uib.no/. 0304-422X/$ – see front matter # 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2011.09.007

508

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

Discourse in 1994), a study of students’ relations to the university system – particularly to the teaching situation and the language of teaching. These studies are today probably among Bourdieu’s least read major works (the English translation of Les he´ritiers has been out of print for decades). But in these books – Les he´ritiers in particular – one can identify many arguments and themes which later became central in works like L’amour de l’art (Bourdieu and Darbel, 1990 [1966]), Reproduction (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990 [1970]), Distinction (Bourdieu, 1984 [1979]), and Homo Academicus (Bourdieu, 1988 [1984]): the unequal access to the educational system and its central role in social reproduction; the formation of social elites; the relation between social upbringing and cultural taste; as well as the role of high culture in France as a mark of distinction and in a general sociodicy of French society legitimizing and masking social differences. The fact that the concept of cultural capital was first used in lectures in 1965 and, then, in some chapters in an anthology on inequality in France the following year (Darras and Gruson, 1966) – using arguments and statistical materials from the studies of the university system – suggests the importance of these studies in the development of Bourdieu’s sociology of culture. As Bourdieu implies in his prefatory note to Les he´ritiers (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1964), students appear as particularly promising subjects object for studies of the relations between social privileges and culture. He noted that students from the higher classes not only had embodied skills, habits and attitudes which served them directly in their scholastic tasks and were central for their academic success (cultural capital meaning not least the ability to judge the market and choose the right studies). The students also had a richer, more diverse cultural life and more extensive knowledge of every area of culture – including extracurricular culture like films and jazz. Students from lower classes, by contrast, had a much lower propensity and ability to acquire high culture. The principal focus for Bourdieu in this work is the university as a site for social and cultural reproduction through a cumulative logic, and the importance of inherited cultural capital for both (Bourdieu et al., 1965). The question of the specific importance of the higher educational system in the formation of cultural tastes, by contrast, is a somewhat subdued theme in these works. In 1998, we conducted a broad survey of the social backgrounds, relations to the educational system and cultural practices, preferences and knowledge of students at institutions of higher learning in Bergen, Norway (Gripsrud and Hovden, 2000). We had two main purposes in mind. First, within the 1998–2001 project Cultural Disorder, directed by Jostein Gripsrud, the specific idea was to investigate more closely the role of the educational system in the formation of cultural tastes, traditionally regarded as very important, and through that the formation of (a) public(s) for the arts. As Bourdieu emphasized in his choice of title, students are inheritors (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1964). During their studies and afterwards, they constitute a key part of the audience for many forms of more-or-less high culture outside of the cultural mainstream – modern theatre, classical concerts and new musical experiments, dance performances, modern and classical literature, traditional folk music, etc. Students are thus important both for the social standing of these cultural practices and the livelihoods of artists in these arenas. Second, students are important indicators of cultural trends and changes that affect not only the social composition of future social elites but also a country’s public cultural sphere. Historically, students have always been early adopters of cultural trends and practices that only later become accepted in the institution of art (e.g., jazz, photography, film, comics). We therefore envisaged that the relations between the social origins and cultural practices of students would indicate coming changes in social

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

509

status and popularity of cultural practices.2 Also, given our interest in the interplay between the role of early socialization (habitus) and educational socialization for the formation of students’ tastes, the large and increasing proportion of young people in Norway and elsewhere who now take some form of higher education makes the question increasingly timely. It was also a part of our original conception that the survey should be repeated at ten-year intervals so as to follow developments over time. We were fortunately able to replicate the study in 2008 as part of the research initiative, DigiCult – ‘‘Democracy and the Digitization of Audiovisual Culture’’. We are therefore not only able to point out differences between France in the 1960s and 1970s, on the one hand, and Norway in 1998; we also have quite solid empirical evidence of differences between Norway 1998 and Norway 2008. This article presents and discusses data gathered in our two surveys – which in each year were accompanied by over twenty semi-structured, in-depth interviews, as well as by substantial photo-documentation of student milieus on and off campus. Largely agreeing with Bourdieu on the social importance of the higher educational system, we wished to improve the overall understanding of the specific nature and efficiency of the social mechanisms and patterns involved in the relations between class, education and culture in a society very different from that of France in the 1960s. Our discussion here is, then, first and foremost intended to throw some light on the historically changing and nationally variable nature of cultural capital while also reflecting on the other socio-cultural and political implications of our findings. 2. 1998–2008: social history and the digital changeover in media and communications Generations matter: the parents of the students of 1998 grew up in the 1950s and they themselves grew up in the 1970s and 1980s. The parents of the 2008 students grew up in the 1960s, while the students themselves grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. The six decades between 1950 and 2008 obviously provided very different societal contexts. Politically, in the 1950s and the 1960s, Norway was social–democratically dominated by Labour party governments until 1965. The 1980s saw the first (and only) post-war Conservative government taking office, introducing various liberalizing laws and (de)regulations. When the social democrats took over again, they were influenced by neoliberalism and New Public Management. But they were also blessed with a well-managed oil-based fortune. Economically, the large deposits of oil in the North Sea changed the Norwegian economy fundamentally from the early 1970s onwards. By 2008, Norway was considered among the richest countries in the world, ranking as number two (below Luxemburg) on the OECD’s list of GNP per capita.3 Still, 2

Two points need to be addressed regarding the question of generalization from our study. First, as Bourdieu points out in Les he´ritiers (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1964), student life is a peculiar social situation, where central frameworks of ordinary social life are broken (e.g., in the extensive blurring of work and cultural life), and it is lived by socially privileged adolescents. Even if we believe our data provide insight into the general cultural orientation of the future Norwegian elites and their changing relations to culture in this period, it is hard to say exactly how representative our findings are for such changes in the wider Norwegian population. A second, more serious problem – when looking at our two time points as indicative of cultural trends – is the constantly changing social selection mechanisms for entering the higher educational system. This said, after great changes in the previous decades, the period we studied appears quite stable in this regard. For example, whereas the percentage of 19–24 year olds who were students increased from 22% to 30% from 1992 to 2002, this percentage only increased 1% from 2002 to 2010 (Statistisk sentralbyra˚/Statistics Norway, 2011c). 3 Source: Statistisk sentralbyra˚/Statistics Norway (2011a).

510

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

Norway clearly maintains key characteristics of the Nordic welfare state model this far into the new Millennium. One sign of this is a steady increase in the number of students enjoying reasonable state loans and fee-free higher education: 132,000 in 1990, 186,000 in 2000 and almost 223,000 in 2008. And while larger generational cohorts go some way to explain the increase, it is also the case that a larger portion choose higher education: by 2009, 31% of all Norwegian men and women between 19 and 24 years were registered as students at a University or University College, compared to 28% in 2001. In general, 36% of Norwegians (aged 25–64) had some form of higher education by 2008 – a percentage that has risen an average of 1% per year since 1998, and which now puts the country well above the OECD average of 28%. And yet, it is well worth noting that the difference between social groups remains pronounced: while 58% of 19–24 year old children of parents with long educational careers were enrolled in higher education in 2009, this was the case for only 14% of children in the same age group with parents who only had basic education (up to 9 years) (Tuhus, 2010). Culturally, Norway changed from a remarkably homogeneous society to a more visibly diverse one. The intensified processes of globalization over these decades also affected Norway both politically and economically, and immigration has increased drastically since 1970. While immigrants still make up a comparatively low percentage of the total population in Norway (11.4%, including the Norwegian-born children of immigrants by 20104), the composition of the country’s immigrant population has changed: people from neighbouring Nordic states and Western countries represented the largest constituency in 1970, but by 2008, the majority of immigrants were from Africa and Asia. The increasing ethnic complexity of the population coincides with a series of changes in media technologies and policies that have thoroughly altered the structures and functions of the Norwegian public sphere. Until the early 1980s, political diversity in the Norwegian media system was ensured through active mass movements and newspapers connected to political parties while national coherence and cultural homogeneity was ensured by a one-channel public broadcasting monopoly. Commercial radio and television were launched in the 1980s, but not nationwide, and initially only with terrestrial distribution. More or less simultaneously, most newspapers severed their direct ties to political parties and, while admitting loyalty to certain values, proclaimed to be based in a purely professional journalistic ethos. In practice, this also made their commercial character more obvious. Such pronounced commercialization of important parts of the media system may be assessed as a form of homogenization, since the programming of commercial channels tend to be similar in kind. But when multi-channel television first arrived via satellite and cable in the 1980s, it was seen by many as contributing to cultural diversity and plenitude. With digitalization, the number of channels available both in Norwegian and in foreign languages rose dramatically. The public broadcaster, the NRK, introduced profiled channels based on social patterns in cultural preferences, and thus ‘‘high culture’’ was to a considerable extent isolated in specialized channels for fractions of the classes with higher education. Still, the NRK managed to remain the dominant operator both in radio and television in terms of audience size, and so it remained central to the mundane core of ‘‘Norwegianness’’. Another new element in the country’s media ecology also became more and more important from the mid 1990s on. In 1998, 57% of Norwegians had access to a computer at

4

Source: Statistisk sentralbyra˚/Statistics Norway (2011c).

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

511

home, compared to 90% in 2008. In 1998, use of the World Wide Web was cumbersome and not widespread – only 22% of the population had Internet access at home. Ten years later, it was of central importance in people’s lives (85% having access at home)5, the lives of students included. The Internet facilitates new business models that improve the viability of tiny niche markets. It offers an overwhelming mass of audio, audio-visual, photographic and written forms of expressions, and it has made it possible to distribute this material and communicate about it in new ways. In other words, there is now clearly much more, and much more easily accessible, mediated cultural content of all kinds. Developments have, on the whole, created a much more complex situation in terms of cultural stratification since parallel use of different media, cross-media applications and reception of content from a multitude of platforms all blend with the surviving patterns of traditional use. These changes have inspired critiques of Bourdieu. Already 15 years ago, Frow argued that ‘‘Bourdieu assumes the legitimacy of this ground [of high culture] is still imposed on the dominated classes; but it may well be the case, particularly since the massive growth of a television culture in which working-class people tend to be fully competent, that high culture, or rather the prestige of high culture, has become largely irrelevant to them’’ (Frow, 1995, p. 37). By 2011, one could add the impact of Internet culture to such an argument. But Norway has a particularity which made it very different from France long before the World Wide Web: a very strong egalitarian ideological tradition, which is coupled with a widespread refusal of any sort of cultural hierarchy, leading to a general disdain for ‘‘the cultural elite’’ that is so strong that it often proves difficult to find anyone who will admit to belonging to such a category. A debate has recently unfolded over the question of the existence of a cultural elite in Norway: is there really a social group that will fit the name, or is it rather a mythic phenomenon that belongs to the egalitarian, populist imagination? 3. A Norwegian cultural elite—a contradiction in terms? According to Ytreberg (2004), both high and low culture are marginalized in Norway, while a ‘‘middle culture’’ – a form of middlebrow culture – has the dominant position. In contrast to France, as described by Bourdieu, the bearers of Norwegian middle culture are not uneasy, aspiring for what is above, but strong and self-conscious, and have no anxieties about their fondness for popular culture. More recently, Harr and Krogstad (2011) took descriptions of Norwegians as ‘‘conspicuously modest’’ (Daloz, 2006) and equality-oriented as a cue for studying ideas about the cultural elite, as expressed in the press over the last three decades. They found a clear myth about the Norwegian cultural elite, which fits well with Bourdieu’s theory. However, the Norwegian elite – or more precisely, the myth of it – is treated differently than in France: rather than being elevated and admired, the idea of ‘‘the cultural elite’’ connotes something negative. It is considered a ‘‘dirty word’’, and increasingly so over the last three decades (Harr and Krogstad, 2011, p. 25). Furthermore, they argue, since no one comes forward in public debate feeling offended on behalf of the elite, such negative attacks remain unchallenged. More directly relevant for the present study, Skarpenes set out to challenge sociologists’ tendency to draw borders based on culture organized along a vertical scale – a tendency he saw as ‘‘almost a priori in character (or a doxa)’’ (Skarpenes, 2007, p. 5326). Taking 5 6

Source: Medienorge (2011). All translations from Norwegian are our own.

512

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

Lamont’s (1992) study of the upper–middle class in France and the USA as a starting point, he asked whether a class’ self-construction followed from such hierarchical distinctions from ‘‘the others’’. Skarpenes interviewed 113 highly educated members of the upper–middle class about their relations to ‘‘literature, film, art, music, etc.’’. (Skarpenes, 2007, p. 533) and found a focus on entertainment or popular culture to be typical of the culture of the social elite in Norway. Skarpenes’ informants did not like placing one form of cultural expression above another. They called that undemocratic, arrogant, patronizing, disrespectful or even pitiful. They also strived to not stand out, presenting their taste as average (Skarpenes, 2007, p. 547ff). In addition, the informants explicitly portrayed intellectuals in negative terms. In sum, Skarpenes argues, this should lead to questions about the relevance of Bourdieu’s theory in the Norwegian context. Harr and Krogstad (2011, p. 24) also discuss the relevance of Bourdieu’s contributions to a definition of a ‘‘cultural elite’’. They remind us that while Bourdieu’s theory is often the starting point for comparisons, his data are aging and the French cultural elite’s way of marking its distinction from the rest is now described differently by several scholars – including Lamont (1992), Lahire (2003) and Boltanski and The´venot (2006). These scholars see tendencies towards more heterogeneous self-(re)presentations, individually as well as collectively, than those found by Bourdieu. Indications in a related direction can be found also in work from the UK arguing that the elite is not necessarily so elitist after all (Bennett et al., 2009). Furthermore, studies from the US (Peterson, 1992; Peterson and Kern, 1996) show how the US cultural elite is now marked by being culturally ‘‘omnivores’’ instead of ‘‘monovores’’ (i.e., only consumers of high culture). The latter studies may indicate, though, that ‘‘distinction’’ is still important in the cultural area – it is just that the elite now also introduces its hierarchical ordering of cultural expressions to a number of formerly ‘‘untouchable’’ genres and cultural forms. The cultural elite’s privilege consists, as put by Gripsrud (1989), in its ‘‘double access’’ to both high and low culture while most people remain locked in the ‘‘low’’ part. There are, in other words, international tendencies which parallel the situation in Norway: elites are less willing to emphasize their status as such and would rather be understood as generous, tolerant, inclusive, etc. – attitudes in line with the ethical demands of globalisation and multicultural societies all over the world. But distinction lives on, precisely in the finetuned combinations of generous or omnivore inclusiveness, on the one hand, and the use of quite sharp distinctions and hierarchies within genres and forms that are no longer condemned: Hank Williams is fine, and maybe Dolly Parton on a good day, but most countrymusic singers are not. We may here be on to something that is found also in other Nordic countries, which share many characteristics with Norway: a small population in a small linguistic area, recently modernized, relatively socially homogenous and with relatively high educational and economic mobility. For instance, surveying omnivorousness by volume and composition in Finland, Purhonen et al. (2010) found that level of education had ‘‘a strong effect on both scales of the number of genres liked’’ (Purhonen et al., 2010, p. 280) for literature as well as music. Still, they argue, ‘‘exclusive highbrow culture, or cultural snobbery’’ is ‘‘almost non-existent’’ (Purhonen et al., 2010, p. 283). While acknowledging these parallels, there remains something distinctive about Norwegian egalitarianism and populism, and it will be worth keeping this in mind when looking at empirical results of our surveys.

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

513

4. Methodology and data The empirical material for this article comes from two traditional mail surveys of students in Bergen. The surveys used a similar methodology and questionnaires to maximize the comparability of the data. The first survey was conducted in late autumn/winter 1998–1999 on a random stratified sample of the four major institutions of higher education in Bergen: The University of Bergen, The Norwegian School of Business Administration, Bergen University College and the National College of Art, Bergen. Sixty-seven percent (1113 students) responded. The second survey was conducted in late autumn/winter 2008–2009, also adding The Norwegian School of Business Management, Bergen. The response rate was 55% (1223),7 raising the total number of students in the combined database to 2336.8 The questionnaires in 1998 and 2008 were similar both in length (93 questions in 1998, 97 in 2008) and in content. The questions aimed to produce indicators on students’ social and cultural inheritance – based on their mothers’ and fathers’ education, income, occupation, political offices and cultural knowledge, preferences and practices in a great number of arts and lifestyle areas. The majority of questions in the 2008-questionnaire were taken from the 1998questionnaire (in some cases with added or updated categories). Two-to-three pages of questions were dropped to make room for new issues, mostly related to the use of digital media. In both surveys, many of the questions were open-ended (‘‘Name some authors or books you think are very good’’, etc.). They were coded in full, thus providing an extremely rich source of information blurring traditional boundaries between surveys and qualitative data.

5. Social recruitment: polarization and cultural redistribution As noted earlier, the proportion of young people in Norway who become students has been steadily increasing for decades. As a consequence, more students than before have parents who also took part in higher education. Whereas 41% of Bergen students were first-generation students in 1998, this was the case for only 29% in 2008. Also, in 2008, it was much more common that both parents had undergone some higher education (increasing from 29% to 46%). Such changes, while mainly reflecting the rising educational level in the parental generation, no

7

The fall in response rate from 67% to 55% – using the same methodology – needs commenting upon. It was not entirely unexpected since lower response rates appear to be a widespread historical trend in Norway. For example, for the Norwegian Media barometer (http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/07/02/30/), the national response rate in the same period declined from 73% to 64%. Very probably, the single most important reason for this decline is the sharply rising number of requests to participate in surveys from various polling institutes. For students, this load is doubled by the educational institutions’ own survey research, and the large number of evaluation surveys in which students now have to take part. These tendencies are, again, no doubt linked to the dramatically increased technical ease and lower cost of the use of web surveys since the late 1990s. Looking at the available indicators in our net sample and the student population, however, both datasets appear adequately representative for the types of analyses we have undertaken. The major bias appears to be an overrepresentation of female students. This tendency is present, but relatively small in the 1998-data (up to +3% for the major institutions/institutes), but more marked in the 2008-students (up to 7% difference). Also, in the 2008-data (we do not have data for this for 1998), the youngest cohorts (<21 years) appear to be somewhat overrepresented (17% of the net sample vs. 5% of the gross sample). 8 The institutions included in the study have 95% of higher education students in the city. Bergen School of Architecture (140 students) declined our invitation to participate in the survey in 1998, and we ourselves excluded two small Christian private vocational colleges from our study.

514

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

doubt also signal important differences in how the two cohorts relate to the educational system in forms of expectations, orientations and aspirations. Fig. 1 shows the basic dimensions of the social space of Bergen students 2008. In addition, some major social shifts in the social profiles of student groups compared to 1998 are indicated by arrows.9 This map – which follows a similar analytical logic to the main map in ‘‘L’Anatomie du gout’’ (Bourdieu, 1974) and Distinction (Bourdieu, 1984 [1979]) – is based on a multiple correspondence analysis of indicators of the capital of students’ fathers. The aim is to suggest main differences in social origin (and indirectly, habitus) between students from different study programs. Similar to Rosenlund’s (2000) analysis of the social space of the Norwegian town of Stavanger, our map suggests a basic homology between the Bergen student space and Bourdieu’s analysis of the French social space of the 1970s. The two basic dimensions of difference are, first, capital volume (axis 1, vertical) and, second, capital distribution (axis 2, horizontal) – where cultural capital is also associated with work in the public sector and political capital. As Fig. 1 suggests, the increasing number of students in higher education has hardly changed the overall logic of educational recruitment, which is still one of social reproduction: if very seldom in the form of direct reproduction of a profession, overall, students tend to end up at study programs that lead to occupations comparable to their parents’ social status and capital composition (in other words, their class backgrounds). Children of fathers who are leaders in business, for example, are not only overrepresented at the schools of Business Administration and Business Management but also at the faculty of Law, and are underrepresented at the Faculty of Humanities. Children of fathers with industrial and craft-related work, on the other hand, are three times more likely to study at the vocational University College than at the School of Business Administration, and six times more likely when compared to Medicine.10 In fact, for 1998–2008, the reproductive logic appears to have increased rather than decreased. The increase of students with educated parents is smallest for the study programs that traditionally have the greatest proportion of students from the lower classes (e.g., social work and engineering), while several of the traditional elite studies – including law and medicine – appear to recruit even more disproportionately from the higher social classes than before. These changes not only indicate an increased social gap between students from lower and higher social classes (as defined by capital volume) regarding access to elite studies, the gap is even more marked with regard to differences in terms of parents’ capital composition: students of business administration in 2008 have, on average, parents whose economic capital is as high as that of similar parents in 1998 (relative to the other students), but with much less cultural resources of the kind that have traditionally been associated with legitimate culture – such as

9 The maps are based on two multiple correspondence analyses using indicators of students´ fathers and their current place of study for 1998 and 2008. Eigenvalues (Burt) for the first four axes are as follows: in 1998 (n = 1067) – .026 (32%), .011 (14%), .007 (8%), .003 (4%); for 2008 (n = 1113) – .363 (36%), .147 (15%), .008 (8%), and .003 (4%). In Fig. 1, only the 2008-analysis is shown, and arrows indicate major differences between 1998 and 2008. To maximize comparability, the active categories for 1998 and 2008 are identical: current faculty of study (13 categories), fathers’ type and level of education (13 categories), fathers’ gross income (5 categories), fathers’ interest in four cultural forms (classical music, classical Norwegian literature, theatre or painting – where the numbers of ‘‘yes’’ were added together to produce an index variable varying from 0 to 4) and father active in political party (yes/no). The only variable with changed categories was income, which was adjusted for inflation in this period. Table A1 in the online supplement shows the varying distribution of these indicators on current place of study, while Table A2 in that supplement shows the statistical properties for the MCA for the 2008-data. 10 For a more detailed discussion of intergenerational social and educational reproduction in Norway, see Hjellbrekke and Korsnes (2006) and Hjellbrekke et al. (2007).

dimension 1 ( 5,5%)

Inherited capital volume + Father higher medicine/psych edu.

Father higher law/econ edu.

1

Medicine

>1.2NKr

Father social science edu.

800-1.2NKr

Cult.idx:2

Law Business adm. (NHH)

Art studies

Father human. edu Economic capital Cultural capital + Political capital + Father teacher edu.

Father lower tecn. edu

Father politician

500-799NKr Cult.idx:1 Social science

-1 Humanities

dimension 2 ( 4,7%)

Father lower mercantile edu.

300-499NKr Natural science Cult.idx:0 Teaching Father secon. edu

Economic capital + Cultural capital Political capital -

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

Father higher nat.sci edu

Cult.idx:3-4

Major changes 1998-08 Minor changes 1998-08

-1

Engineering Nursing

<300NKr

Father primary. edu

Inherited capital volume Fig. 1. The social space of Bergen students 2008; MCA, axes 1 and 2. 515

516

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

interest in classical literature, painting, or classical music. A similar drop in reported parental interest in these cultural forms can be found for most technical and economic study programs (medicine is an exception), for social science and also for teaching. In contrast, for students in the humanities, both a relative lack of inherited economic capital and an abundance of inherited cultural capital have remained quite stable. The increasingly disproportionate distribution of this type of cultural resource in favour of sons and daughters of cultural elites indicates important changes in the relations between cultural and economic elites. 6. Cultural stability and change: literature, music and television In order to get a grip on the patterns of cultural stability and change in this period, we will focus on two art forms: literature and music. More specifically, we look at the general popularity and varying social appeal of various genres and artists/authors, as well as students’ knowledge of them. By superimposing these onto the social space presented previously in Fig. 1 as passive categories (as will be done in Figs. 3 and 5),11 we get some idea of the social profile of these practices and, thus, their possibility for offering a social distinction. In both cases, separate maps are provided for 1998 and 2008, making possible a comparison of differences between the two points in time. These differences will later be further contrasted to preferences for various television programs and interpreted in the light of more general changes in the students’ cultural orientation. Literature and music are interesting as contrasting examples for exploring social differences in the appreciation of art. First, there are many differences in the use and appreciation of literary and musical forms; e.g., in the demands of time and education; in their use in a solitary versus a social setting; in their demands of focus on behalf of the reader versus the listener, in their technological requirements; etc. – which we expect will have different bearings on their social use and distinctive value.12 Important changes in the relevant technology (e.g., the ubiquity of MP3 players today) have also taken place in this period. Second, the case of music (and that of particular music genres) has been central in the argument of a breakdown between high and low culture (in particular, see Chan and Goldthorpe, 2004; Peterson and Kern, 1996). We should note, however, that these studies have themselves been criticized for methodological simplicity in their exclusive focus on a single art form and for the use of a low number of vague genres to measure cultural orientation (see Bennett et al., 2009; Holt, 1998).

6.1. Literature In 2008, approximately one in four students in Bergen said they read every week, but only one in eight reported that they read every day. While the regularity of reading appears relatively unchanged from 1998, there are other important changes in the kinds of reading students prefer.13 11 In correspondence analysis, active categories are categories used by the algorithms to construct the space. Passive categories, in contrast, are categories that are simply projected on the principal axes/plane, without influencing the orientation of the axes. See Le Roux and Rouanet (2004, p. 49). 12 For a more detailed discussion of these differences, for example, see Purhonen et al. (2010) and Bennett et al. (2009, Chapters 5–6). 13 While ‘‘literature’’ in English is commonly used to refer to canonical genres, we will use the label ‘‘literary genres’’ to refer to all kinds of reading: literature proper, all fictional genres, and scientific and documentary genres.

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

517

Fig. 2. Reported interest in various literary genres; Bergen students 1998 and 2008, percentages.

In terms of the reported interest for various literary genres (see Fig. 2), we found that popular genres in 1998 such as crime/suspense, contemporary literature, graphic novels and historical literature all remain popular in 2008. Also, the general ranking of the genres in terms of popularity is roughly the same. The genre with the largest change in interest (a drop) is literary classics (‘‘older literature’’).14 If we look at the relation between the students’ social origin and the same genres in 1998 and 2008 (see Fig. 3), the complexity of the changes becomes more apparent. Romance, alternative medicine and graphic novels, in both periods, are clearly linked to lower class backgrounds, whereas contemporary and classic literature, poetry and political literature are all more popular with students from the more well-off classes. Most other genres – with the exception of sf/fantasy and natural science – are most popular with students with stronger cultural backgrounds. Genres most strongly linked with traditional legitimate taste – contemporary literature, psychology, classics and poetry – are all more clearly correlated with social backgrounds characterized by inherited cultural capital in 2008. Moreover, the differences in literary knowledge between students appear to have widened according to the same logic. While we found examples of very high literary knowledge in 1998 among students with relative modest cultural backgrounds and in a variety of study programs, in 2008, we found such knowledge almost exclusively among students characterized by the highest volumes of inherited cultural capital.15 A similar picture is found if we look at specific writers.16 Whereas most crime and suspense novelists – including Staalesen, Holt, Clancy, Grisham, and King – are consistently located towards the right or lower right part of the map (in both instances, a sign of relatively low inherited cultural capital), national and international classics – like Ibsen, Hamsun, Vesaas, Austen and Dostoyevsky – are all consistently placed towards the cultural pole. Since they have also suffered a general decline in popularity, they are all more clearly linked with high cultural inheritance in 2008 than in 1998. 14

Two relevant findings are worth noting. First, the percentage of students who had been a member of a book club in the last three years has been greatly reduced (from 41% to 24%), and fewer say they read literature reviews in newspapers. In 1998, 39% of students said they read ‘‘everything’’ of book reviews (29% in 2008) and 19% ‘‘nothing’’ (24% in 2008). Second, a smaller, but still notable, change is found in the number of students who say they have written unpublished poems or literature, which has been reduced from 19% to 13%. 15 The category ‘‘Know’’ refers to a question in the survey that asked respondents to name authors of 12 books (a mix of classical/contemporary and Norwegian/foreign works – including works by Kafka, Allende, Dante, Woolfe, Perec, etc.). The list was slightly different in 1998 and 2008, so as to lessen the problem of the ‘‘aging’’ of some popular authors. For this reason, we have used the z-score of the results in the map to make the categories more comparable: 0 = average for that year, 1 is one standard deviation below that average, +1 is one standard deviation above, etc. A similar strategy is used for the musical artists. 16 The authors and musical artists in these maps are those most often mentioned by the students.

518

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

a Inherited capital volume +

1998

Kundera Guillou Loe

Hemingway Grisham

1

Father interested in Norwegian classics

Mother interested in Norwegian classics

Hornby

Know+1σ Follet Adams CONTEMPORARY RDahl Know+2σ HISTORICAL Christensen POETRY POLITICAL Know+.5σ Ibsen Reads literature

Austen

Solstad

Clancy Irving Marquez Kafka

Ambjørnsen Holt

most days

Undset

Economic capital Cultural capital + Political capital +

Coehlo

CLASSICS Hansen Dostojevsky

TRAVEL

2-3 genres

BIOGRAPHY 4-5 genres

Economic capital + Cultural capital Political capital -

SF/FANTASY Know0σ NAT.SCIENCE

Interested in >5 genres Reads literature sometimes

ART&CULTURE

Mykle CRIME/SUSPENSE PSYCHOLOGY Tolkien PHILOSOPHY Skram CARTOONS Elstad ROMANCE/EROTIC King Christie Wassmo Know-.5σ Bjørneboe Gaarder

-1 Hamsun

Fossum <2 genres

Staalesen Know-1σ

Parents uninterested in Norwegian classics

Vesaas

Never reads literature

ALTERNATIVISM

Inherited capital volume -

b Dostojevsky Bjørneboe Father interested in Norwegian classics

Inherited capital volume + Hemingway

2008 Irving

1

Gaarder Mother interested in Norwegian classics

Solstad Know+1σ

Know+2σ Hosseini

Marquez Hamsun POETRY

CONTEMPORARY

Know+.5σ Loe RDahl

POLITICAL Tolkien Coehlo Ibsen

Grisham

Austen Reads literature most days TRAVEL Follet BIOGRAPHY Economic capital Adams ART&CULTURE Know0σ 2-3 genres Cultural capital + PHILOSOPHY Rowling Interested in >5 genres HISTORICAL SF/FANTASY Political capital + Skram CRIME/SUSPENSE -1 Mykle NAT.SCIENCE Kafka PSYCHOLOGY Vesaas Christie

Mankell

4-5 genres

CLASSICS

Kundera

Guillou

Reads literature, but not most days

Hornby

Ragde Nesbø Larsson

1

CARTOONS Know-.5σ

Ambjørnsen

Brown

<2 genres

ROMANCE/EROTIC

ALTERNATIVISM

Economic capital + Cultural capital Political capital -

Elstad

Clancy

Christensen

Parents uninterested in Norwegian classics

Holt

Undset

Fossum

Staalesen Never reads literature

Inherited capital volume Lindell Wassmo

King

Fig. 3. Relation between social origin and preference for literary genres and authors; Bergen students 1998 (a) and 2008 (b), MCA, passive points.

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

519

Table 1 Top 20 authors and musical artists named by Bergen students in 1998 and 2008; percentages are those who mentioned at least one author/artist. Top 20 authors

Top 20 musical artists 2008

1998 Knut Hamsun John Irving JRR Tolkien Lars S Christensen Anne Karin Elstad Ingvar Ambjørnsen Gunnar Staalesen Anne Holt Jens Bjørneboe Isabel Allende Herbjørg Wassmo Jostein Gaarder Erlend Loe Stephen King Henrik Ibsen Jan Guillou Agnar Mykle Amalie Skram Sigrid Undset Fyodor Dostoyevsky

3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Jo Nesbø Stieg Larsson Erlend Loe JK Rowling JRR Tolkien Lars S Christensen Dan Brown Knut Hamsun Unni Lindell Gunnar Staalesen Paulo Coelho Henning Mankell Jan Guillou Jostein Gaarder Khaled Hosseini Anne B Ragde Jane Austen John Irving Tore Renberg Isabel Allende

1998 5 4 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

U2 R.E.M. Sting Alanis Morissette Celine Dion Madonna Pink Floyd deLillos Beatles Bjørn Eidsva˚g Bjo¨rk Massive Attack Kari Bremnes Bob Dylan Tom Waits Jan Eggum Bruce Springsteen Nick Cave Elton John Anne Grete Preus

2008 18 11 8 8 7 7 6 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4

Coldplay Metallica U2 Beatles Foo Fighters Killers Kurt Nilsen Muse Bruce Springsteen Vamp Madrugada Pink Floyd Bjørn Eidsva˚g Tom Waits Bigbang Michael Jackson Kent Celine Dion Thomas Dybdahl Bob Dylan

9 7 6 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3

Most authors tend, in general, to maintain a roughly similar social profile between 1998 and 2008. Yet, there are interesting exceptions, and not only in the form of newcomers (e.g., Rowling and Hosseini). Marquez and Kafka (and to a lesser degree, Christie) have all moved from the economic towards the cultural pole. Furthermore, several Norwegian authors – perhaps most notably Bjørneboe, a socially critical, anarchist author with a background in Steiner pedagogy – have seen a dramatic upward movement in this social space (Figure 3). 6.2. Music Students’ taste in music shows many parallel patterns with those observed for literary genres. The relative popularity of the genres is likewise partly stable, albeit less so. As Fig. 4 shows, as

Fig. 4. Reported interest in selected musical genres; Bergen students 1998 and 2008, percentages.

520

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

Fig. 5. Relation between social origin and preferences for musical genres and artists; Bergen students 1998 (a) and 2008 (b), MCA, passive points.

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

521

seen for literary genres, we also see a major decline in interest for the musical genres that are the oldest and/or traditionally most legitimate (baroque, opera, jazz) and a rise in popularity for a number of other genres. Some of these were in 1998 linked to low-class audiences (country), some to the higher classes (rap). Also, the decline in interest for Irish folk music is very marked, perhaps indicating a broader move away from a taste for the rustic and rural (US country music is evidently perceived as something else). Looking at the social profiles of these musical genres (indicated by their location in the maps in Fig. 5), we find again a polarizing effect linked to cultural capital: genres that had a marked social profile in 1998, they also tend in 2008 to appeal to students with similar volume/ composition of inherited capital; and the genres most correlated with high volumes of cultural capital appear to be even more so in 2008. At the same time, modern popular genres like rap and house/techno are now both more clearly associated with students with backgrounds characterized by high levels of economic capital, and country has in Norway moved into the social mainstream from a lower social position in 1998. Our analysis suggests similar tendencies of relative stability in the social profile of many artists. Examples include Bruce Springsteen’s strong working-class appeal, The Beatles’ or Bob Dylan’s general association with students recruited from the cultural elites, and the general preference for various forms of ‘‘party music’’ among the groups in the right-hand part(s) of our map. 6.3. Cultural knowledge and interests As the previous maps have indicated, students’ knowledge of literary and musical genres is clearly linked to parents’ cultural resources for both of the years covered by our surveys. Given this, it is hardly surprising that the students’ knowledge of literary and musical genres are clearly correlated (r  .20). As can be shown, such knowledge is also linked to knowledge of film directors and visual artists – suggesting a pattern of cultural omniscience, if not necessarily, but probably also, omnivorous cultural practices. Both in 1998 and 2008, the students of social science and humanities had above average knowledge of all four areas, while students at the technical/economic programs and teaching are below average in everything but musical knowledge.17 In this particular regard, the fundamental difference between students from the higher and lower social classes in the case of Bergen appear quite similar to Bourdieu’s analyses of French students in the sixties (Bourdieu, 1984 [1979]). Inequality measures suggest that the knowledge gap with regard to literary authors has increased in this period. This is also true for knowledge of film directors and visual artists. Only knowledge of musical artists has become more evenly distributed.18 Support for this view can also be found in respondents’ answers to the open questions, where they were asked to list favourite artists and works. Whereas students in both years mentioned more musical artists than authors, the average number of names mentioned has risen for musical artists (from 4.3 to 4.5) and fallen for authors (from 3.0 to 2.6). The uniqueness of tastes was stronger in the choice of musical artists than in the choice of literary authors for both years, a likely indication of competence, but the difference has increased. Whereas the 50 most popular musical artists in 1998 together accounted for 44% of the total of named artists, this percentage fell to 36% in 2008. For authors, the 50 most popular authors accounted for 58% of all those named in 1998, 62% in 17

See the online supplement, Fig. A1. Gini-coefficients for students’ knowledge (0 = even distribution) 1998/2008: Authors .59/.77; film directors .64/.75; visual artists .28/.36; musical artists .17/.12; and television programs .13/13. 18

522

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

2008. Moreover, the stability for musical artists’ popularity was less than for authors (44% of the top 100 names was common for both years for musical artists, but 53% for authors), and the percentage of Norwegian names was consistently higher for literary favourites. Finally, the number of artists/authors mentioned outside the mainstream genres has declined. In 1998, 9 of the top 100 favourite musical artists were from the classical tradition or jazz (Andsnes, Coltrane, Davis, Domingo, Garbarek, Mutter, Pavarotti, Tellefsen, Toneff). In 2008, no one in the top 100 could be counted as belonging to this category.19 This clearly supports the thesis of a dwindling interest in older, traditional forms of legitimate culture, while also suggesting the importance of analysing more than one cultural form when studying general cultural patterns. 6.4. Television Even if the interest in and knowledge about traditional high culture clearly appears to be in decline, students have mostly either a neutral or positive attitude to the artists and genres associated with high culture. This is in striking contrast to the popular genres, where their tastes are much more divided. Television programs are a case in point (see Fig. 6). Here, the number of negative judgments follows the volume axis of cultural capital (from lower right to the upper left in this space), where students with the strongest cultural backgrounds (typically art students and humanities students) are often strongly negative to most shows.20 They also differ clearly from students with the most inherited economic capital (law, business), who are much more positive to both mainstream American shows and reality shows. These future elites are still united in their distaste for the shows most clearly linked to the specific preferences of the lower classes. This clearly qualifies the omnivore thesis discussed earlier – as elites do not graze indiscriminately across all forms of popular culture. Conversely, students with lower class backgrounds more often show distaste for more complex fiction series like The Wire and Deadwood, and the lifestyle and comedy of Friends. Still, the levels of distaste remain rather low, not least if we look more closely at the knowledge and actual use of, and interest in, cultural forms identified with traditional legitimate taste. 7. The decline of traditionally legitimate cultural forms In the period under study, one particular cultural shift merits closer attention. As we noted for musical and literary genres, the most marked drops in popularity were often in the oldest and supposedly most legitimate genres – including classical music, opera, and classical literature. However, this is not limited to literature and music. As Fig. 7 shows, it is rather part of a more general trend: a marked decline in interest and use of almost every form of culture that is identified with traditional legitimate taste. The proportion of students who have visited an art gallery in the last twelve months; or say they are interested in classical or avant-garde theatre; or have been at a performance of one of these art forms; or claim interest in the culture sections in the newspapers; or go to a museum or a cultural event for students – more examples could be provided – are all decreasing. This is indicative of, first, a general trend towards increased 19 For literature, the number of ‘‘classic’’ authors (roughly operationalized as authors that published their main works before World War II) appears to be quite stable (17 in both years), but the presence of authors with a status as ‘‘classic’’ who were largely active after the war (Camus, Bo¨ll, Steinbeck, Vesaas, Borgen, etc.) was clearly more common in 1998 than in 2008. 20 See also the online supplement, Table A3.

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

523

Fig. 6. Relation between social origin and strongly positive/negative judgments of television drama; Bergen students 2008, MCA, passive points.

privatization of cultural consumption, which can no doubt be linked to the improved possibilities for obtaining and consuming some types of cultural products in one’s home: whereas, for example, 46% of students in 1998 visited a cinema at least once a month, only 23% did so in 2008, but 43% watched films in their own or someone else’s home at least once a week. On the other hand, in spite of the large number of hours spent on the Internet and on computer gaming, the number of concerts attended, for example, has actually increased. The shift towards private consumption may thus be a selective one – or perhaps, one should rather say that popular music concerts are the exception that proves the rule. The latter would be perfectly in line with a second, general shift of emphasis towards the popcultural mainstream: whereas fewer are interested in classical theatre in 2008, more students now claim an interest in musicals. Fewer attend jazz and classical concerts, but more students go to pop/rock concerts. Fewer students say they are interested in reading older or contemporary serious literature, but the numbers for crime/suspense novels have risen. And so forth. This turning away from traditional legitimate culture is particularly noticeable in terms of the students’ cultural knowledge. Far fewer say they are familiar with major artists from classical

524

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

Fig. 7. Use of and interest in some forms of culture; Bergen students 1998 and 2008, percentages.

music (e.g., Anne-Sophie Mutter) and traditional folk music (e.g., Agnes Buen Garna˚s). Their familiarity with canonical visual artists is considerably reduced, as exemplified by major Norwegian artists like Gustav Vigeland (who created the famous Vigeland sculpture park in Oslo) and Christian Krogh. Similar trends can be seen for literature, where knowledge of central works of Kafka and Hamsun in 2008 appears much more rarely than in 1998.21 In general, these changes appear to follow a logic where the change in the students’ interest in certain older, legitimate cultural forms is closely associated with their parents’ cultural interest. For example, 1998–2008 changes in the interest in reading ‘‘older literature’’ closely follow changes in the proportion of students who say their parents are interested in reading classical Norwegian literature. It is also interesting to note here the disproportionately high levels of interest shown by humanities students, a general tendency also for other kinds of legitimate culture, suggesting the importance not only of one’s inherited cultural capital but also of one’s educational trajectory for the formation of cultural taste. A loss of contact with and interest in traditionally legitimate forms of culture appears to be most dramatic in the economic and technical classes. This suggests not only increasing social polarization between the cultural and economic elites in Norway but also a more precarious state of support and legitimacy for ‘‘highbrow’’ forms of culture which, for instance, have been closely related to philosophy and a variety of other scholarly disciplines. Overall, our findings show that many forms of traditional legitimate culture in this period have become simultaneously less

21

For musical and visual artists, the students could check a box for ‘‘Unknown’’ by the artist’s name. For film and literature, a list of works was given and students were asked to indicate their preference for these works, and name their author/director if known. It is worth mentioning the fact that almost all students in 2008 had access to Internet at home and so could easily have bluffed about their knowledge of books and films.

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

525

popular, but have upheld their general orientation in the social space, thus making them at the same time marginalized and increasingly socially distinctive. With this in mind, the levels of direct distaste we found are still low. This probably suggests that a certain reverence for the value of ‘‘high’’ culture remains strongly embedded in students’ minds. The fact that baroque music in 2008 is still one of the top 3 genres most say themselves interested in, even if in practice they never mention classical artists as their favourites, is one illustration of such a tendency. But what are the consequences if the actual practice of enjoying this music, or even knowing something about it, becomes more of a rare, somewhat nerdy hobby, like curling or stamp collection? We have argued that cultural forms and expressions tied to traditional legitimate taste see an overall distinct decline in interest among the students. Our findings can be interpreted as signs of the increasing irrelevance of these types of culture in the cultural lives of students – and of their parents. One obvious consequence concerns policy: the cultural forms linked to traditionally legitimate culture – from opera, via poetry to informational and educational television – have enjoyed privileges on the level of actual policy across the Western world. In much of Europe, they are even publicly funded with comparatively generous budgets. If such cultural forms loose importance for future elites, we should expect to see increased controversy around the basic questions of if, how and what forms of art and culture a state should support (e.g., Dworkin, 1985). The question that remains is how marginal practices of supposedly legitimate culture can become before they lose their relevance for the population in general – and thus their possibility to be efficient as forms of cultural capital. 8. Conclusion Based on our surveys from 1998 and 2008, we have argued that the socio-cultural differences between the student groups in Bergen have increased. This change appears to involve an increasingly disproportionate distribution of resources that have been traditionally associated with inherited cultural capital, both as indicated by their parents’ types of education and the students’ evaluation of their parental general interest in forms of culture with traditional high legitimacy (classical Norwegian literature, theatre, classical music, and painting). As we have suggested, below the waves of smaller cultural changes, there are persistent and strong links between the students’ social and cultural inheritance (in other words, their parents’ class position) and their basic cultural orientation. These distinctions have an overall enduring logic, some of which is suggested in Fig. 8.22 In both 1998 and 2008, students of the future cultural elites, for example, were not only characterized by a higher knowledge of all the cultural forms we tried to measure – as well as a higher activity (the number of concerts visited, time spent in reading) – but also by consistently more often showing an interest in particular cultural genres and traditions, especially the older legitimate forms (e.g., classical music, jazz, classical literature, poetry). 22

Fig. 8 was made by studying the locations of various position-takings and activities in the surveys imposed on the MCA in the form of passive points. This information has been used – mainly in aggregate form to suggest more general dispositions – to situate these position-takings along their approximate vector directions of this space (towards the lower left, toward the top, etc.), following the logic of presentations of pre-modern cosmologies used in structural anthropology (e.g., Bourdieu, 1990). The figure, thus, does not faithfully reproduce the factor planes of the correspondence analysis, but it is closer to what Bourdieu (1984, p. 452) terms a ‘‘theoretical schema’’.

526

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

NTS CAPITAL VOLUME +/A PARE GE -

TURE INDUSTRY CUL

Local news TELEVISION Crime/suspense literature Right-wing populism Little knowledge and interest in traditional “legitimate culture”

M ON OV OR ES

FOLK CULTURE Folk music Folk comedies / revue New Norse

ECONOMIC CAPITAL+ ENTS PAR

RE INDUST RY+ CULTU

LTURAL/POLITICAL CAPIT AL+ S CU T N E PAR

PA RE NT S

LE

OM

URBAN POPUL EAM/ AR CU STR N I LT A UR M Participation MA E in the (trad.) public sphere Conservatism (member political party, write to newspapers, read Charismatic ideology Meritocratic ideology feature articles etc.) CULTURAL OMNIVORISM Active in student politics Strong interest in / knowledge of Body / Fashion / Expensive clothing traditional Norwegian / European elite culture Feelings of physical attractiveness NEWSPAPERS (theatre, classical music, literature etc.) Prefer classical home style National news AND popular culture / contemporary genres Popular (American) trends Foreign news UNIVERSITY / NHH LITERATURE / ART THEORETICAL STUDIES PROFESSIONAL ELITES Read culture pages in newsp. ECONOMICS HUMANITIES Private broadcasting LAW Public broadcasting ART STUDIES Political Left-wing / socialist NATURAL SCIENCE Political Right-wing SOCIAL SCIENCE Avant-garde theatre Reality shows TEACHING Prefer “inventive” home style “Cosmopolitanism” VOCATIONAL STUDIES SOCIAL / HEALTH / TECHNICAL STUDIES

ES OR V NI

CULTURAL MONOVORISM

M FE

AL E

Feelings of physical unattractiveness and low academic worth Working-class-identity LO RE WE LTU U R/RU C RAL POPULAR

TS EN R PA

PAR E+ ENTS C / AG APITAL VOLUME-

Fig. 8. Some persistent cultural/social patterns; Bergen students 1998 and 2008.

This stability is also true for a majority of specific authors and musical artists (e.g., the humanities students’ preferences for Bob Dylan, the Beatles and Hamsun). Similar persistent traits can be observed for all social groups, like the future economic elites’ constant preferences for newer types of popular music and literature, their taste for ‘‘party’’ music, etc. In this way, many fundamental links between cultural genres and the students’ social position – both at the start of their social trajectory (their parents’ class position) and in their own probable social destination – appear very persistent in this particular subspace of the larger Norwegian social space, and with that, most probably, also the social distinction and social charisma associated with most of these practices. A basic difference must be acknowledged between at least two different ways in which familiarity with legitimate culture can function as capital as found in Bourdieu’s analysis. First, such a familiarity can be of major importance for the chance of scholastic success, both in lower education and in deciding chances for entrance into and success in programs of study that provide

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

527

access to privileged social positions – the reproductive aspect. Second, it can be important to the extent that the embodied cultural dispositions and their manifestations function as symbolic capital, that is, as generally recognized marks of social worth and exceptional abilities – the charismatic aspect (here, Bourdieu put great importance on the effect of the educational system).23 In Bourdieu’s analysis of France, these reproductive and charismatic aspects of cultural capital are strongly intertwined. In Norway, while there is good evidence of a strong link between parental resources and scholastic success (e.g., Hansen and Rogg, 1991; Hjellbrekke and Korsnes, 2006), familiarity with the most legitimate forms of culture appears to be of much less importance for most lines of education. The relative absence of traditional legitimate culture in primary and secondary school, along with the changes in the media system, also mean the family’s role in relation to this kind of culture is becoming increasingly more important. In a society with a late and recent modernization and high social and economic mobility, with a political system where careers can be made relatively independently of educational qualifications, many of the most-admired and powerful men and women – at least of the older generation – tend not to have completed higher education, and come from families with little of what would have been termed cultural capital in France. The educational system’s role in imposing a respect for the culture of the dominant classes on the lower classes is thus less important in Norway – with assumed consequences also for the charismatic aspects of cultural capital. Frow’s (1995) argument for the increasing irrelevance of the prestige of high culture, then, resonates with some of the findings among Norwegian students. Or, to be more precise, we find an increase in the irrelevance of high culture, but not necessarily its prestige. Furthermore, rather than the syncretism of taste described by Skarpenes (2007), we argue that distinctions remain relevant in the fine-tuned combinations of generous or omnivore inclusiveness, on the one hand, and in the use of sharp hierarchies within specific popular genres and forms, on the other hand. The metaphor ‘‘capital’’ suggests that ‘‘cultural capital’’ is an entity consisting exclusively of exchange value in Marx’s (1859) sense, i.e., an abstract phenomenon only useful in the exchange with something concrete and desirable – in Bourdieu’s sociology, social positions. But knowledge of Bach and Kafka may be suspected also to have quite a bit of what Marx could have called use value: a real resource in attempts at understanding the world and one’s role in it. Bourdieu’s theory does not have space or tools for an understanding of a social loss associated with, say, Johann Sebastian Bach’s music becoming increasingly forgotten and unheard. A key question for future research, then, is to try to answer how such losses are to be understood in sociological terms.

Acknowledgements The research has been financed through grants from the Norwegian Research Council and the Norwegian Media Authority. For their helpful advice, we wish to thank our colleagues in the SCUD research network, in particular Tony Bennett and Elizabeth B. Silva, as well as the anonymous reviewers. 23 See Weber’s famous definition of charisma: ‘‘. . .a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is considered extraordinary and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities’’ (Weber, 1978). As Bourdieu reminds us in an attempt to clarify the concept, symbolic capital is not a distinct type of capital, but an aspect that capital takes – to a larger or lesser degree – when it is misrecognized as capital and associated with charismatic beliefs (Bourdieu, 2000).

528

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

Appendices. Supplementary data Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2011.09.007. References Bennett, T., Savage, M., Silva, E.B., Warde, A., Gayo-Cal, M., Wright, D., 2009. Culture, Class, Distinction. Routledge, London. Boltanski, L., The´venot, L., 2006. On Justification: Economies of Worth. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Bourdieu, P., 1984 (1979). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Bourdieu, P., 1988 (1984). Homo Academicus. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. Bourdieu, P., 1990. The Kabyle house or the world reversed. In: Bourdieu, P. (Ed.), The Logic of Practice. Polity, London, pp. 271–283. Bourdieu, P., 2000. Pascalian Meditations. Polity Press, Oxford, UK. Bourdieu, P., Darbel, A., 1990 (1966). The Love of Art: European Art Museums and their Public. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. Bourdieu, P., Passeron, J.-C., 1964. Les he´ritiers: Les e´tudiants et la culture. Les E´ditions de Minuit, Paris. Bourdieu, P., Passeron, J.-C., 1990 (1970). Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. Sage, London. Bourdieu, P., Passeron, J.-C., de Saint Martin, M., 1965. Rapport pe´dagogique et Communication. Cahiers du Centre de Sociologie Europe´enne, Paris. Chan, T.W., Goldthorpe, J.H., 2004. Social Stratification and Musical Consumption: Music in England. University of Oxford Press, Oxford, UK. Daloz, J.-P., 2006. Political elites and conspicuous modesty: Norway, Sweden, Finland in comparative perspective. Comparative Social Research 23, 171–210. Darras, Gruson, C., 1966. Le Partage des be´ne´fices expansion et ine´galite´s en France. Les E´ditions de Minuit, Paris. Dworkin, R., 1985. A Matter of Principle. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Frow, J., 1995. Cultural Studies and Cultural Value. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. Gripsrud, J., 1989. ‘‘High culture’’ revisited. Cultural Studies 3, 194–207. Gripsrud, J., Hovden, J.F., 2000. (Re) producing a cultural elite? In: Gripsrud, J. (Ed.), Sociology, Culture & Aesthetics. Høyskoleforlaget/NFR, Oslo, pp. 55–90. Hansen, M.N., Rogg, E., 1991. Høyere utdanning i Norge: rekruttering, finansiering og omfordeling. Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning 32, 387–416. Harr, T.K., Krogstad, A., 2011. Myten om den norske kultureliten. Sosiologisk tidsskrift 2011 (1), 6–26. Hjellbrekke, J., Korsnes, O., 2006. Sosial mobilitet. Samlaget, Oslo. Hjellbrekke, J., Korsnes, O., Roux, B.L., Rouanet, H., Lebaron, F., Rosenlund, L., 2007. The Norwegian field of power anno 2000. European Societies 9, 245–273. Holt, D., 1998. Does cultural capital structure American consumption? Journal of Consumer Research 25, 1–25. Lahire, B., 2003. From the habitus to an individual heritage of dispositions: towards a sociology at the level of the individual. Poetics 31, 329–355. Lamont, M., 1992. Money, Morals and Manners: The Culture of the French and American Upper–Middle Class. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Le Roux, B., Rouanet, H., 2004. Geometric Data Analysis. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht. Marx, K., 1859. A contribution to the critique of political economy. (accessed September 2011). Medienorge, 2011. . Peterson, R.A., 1992. Understanding audience segmentation: from elite and mass to omnivore and univore. Poetics 21, 243–258. Peterson, R.A., Kern, R.M., 1996. Changing highbrow taste: from snob to omnivore. American Sociological Review 61, 900–907. Purhonen, S., Gronow, J., Rahkonen, K., 2010. Nordic democracy of taste? Cultural omnivorousness in musical and literary taste preferences in Finland. Poetics 38, 266–298. Rosenlund, L., 2000. Social Structures and Change. Høgskulen i Stavanger, Stavanger. Skarpenes, O., 2007. Den ‘‘legitime kulturens’’ moralske forankring. Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning 48, 531–557.

J. Gripsrud et al. / Poetics 39 (2011) 507–529

529

Statistisk sentralbyra˚/Statistics Norway, 2011a. Nasjonalregnskap. . Statistisk sentralbyra˚/Statistics Norway, 2011b. Studenter i høyere utdanning i prosent av registrert a˚rskull, etter aldersgrupper, kjønn og foreldrenes utdanningsniva˚. 1992, 2002 og 2010. . Tuhus, P.T., 2010. En av tre har høyere utdanning. Samfunnsspeilet 5–6. (accessed September 2011). Weber, M., 1978. Economy and Society. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Ytreberg, E., 2004. Norge: Mektig middelkultur. Samtiden 3, 6–17. Jostein Gripsrud, Dr. Philos, is a professor of media studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. He has published extensively on cultural sociology and a variety of subjects in media studies. His most recent book publications as (co-) editor and contributor include The Public Sphere (Sage, 2011) and Relocating Television (Routledge, 2010). He has been visiting professor and lectured at numerous universities across Europe and the US and was awarded the Belgian Francqui International Chair for 2011. Jan Fredrik Hovden, Dr. Polit., is an associate professor of social research methods at the University of Bergen, and also holds research posts at Volda University College and the University of Oslo. He defended his thesis, Profane and Sacred: A Study of the Norwegian Journalistic Field, in 2008. His work deals mainly with Bourdieu’s sociology and the related sociological tradition, particularly in regard to the study of cultural and social fields. Hallvard Moe, Ph.D., is an associate professor of media studies at the University of Bergen. He has researched media policy, especially issues related to public service broadcasting, and also written on public sphere theory. He is co-editor of The Public Sphere (Sage, 2011). Moe is currently undertaking a project on how online media transforms the public sphere. During Autumn 2011, he is visiting scholar at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI), Queensland University of Technology.