Mens & Maatschappij - Volume 98, Issue 2, 2023

Anything but country and western: Analysing cultural omnivorism in the United Kingdom

Cultural sociologists have developed two conflicting approaches related to stratified cultural consumerism: (i) the homology thesis and (ii) the cultural omnivorism thesis. The first approach suggests that the higher educated have an exclusive taste that consists of highbrow cultural forms only. The second approach argues that such highbrow snobs have been replaced by cultural omnivores that bridge the former highbrow-lowbrow divide with their broad taste. Since both approaches have been corroborated before, this article aims to explore the reasons behind the existing ambiguity. More specifically, I distinguish between weak and strong omnivorism to reduce conceptual unclarity, and further investigate the indecisive role of mobility in explaining omnivorism. This leads to the following research question: Does cultural taste correspond with strong omnivorism, weak omnivorism or homology, and what role does intergenerational mobility play in this classification of taste? This question is examined using latent class analysis with CCSE data collected in the U.K. in 2003/2004. Four distinct latent clusters were found: a highbrow-, popculture-, univore- and weak omnivore-cluster. Omnivorism thus only exists in its weak form, and even then, highbrow snobs exist simultaneously, showing that the two approaches are not mutually exclusive at all. The weak omnivores appeared to be higher educated than average, but highbrow snobs remained the highest-educated of all. Remarkably, these highbrow snobs also experienced the greatest upward mobility. Both educational level and mobility can thus predict taste, but experiencing mobility does not necessarily seem to lead to an omnivorous taste pattern.

The effect of socioeconomic status and political opportunity structures on protest participation: a multilevel analysis of 17 European countries

In recent years, protesting has become an increasingly pertinent form of political participation. Within the literature on political participation, both socioeconomic status (SES) and political opportunity structures (POS) have been shown to affect protest participation, but not often have these factors been studied in relation to each other. This study addresses this gap in the literature by analysing the effects of both SES and openness of POS on individual protest participation, as well as the moderating effect of POS on the effect of SES. Multilevel models were estimated using data from the European Social Survey and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. The results show that both SES and openness of POS positively affect individual protest participation. The moderating effect of POS openness was not significant, indicating that the positive effect of SES on protest participation remains consistent across different political opportunity structures. Thus, we have shown that political inequality based on socioeconomic status is persistent across European countries, however, it does not depend on political opportunity structures.

The influence of gentrification on neighbourhood belonging: Differences between ethnic groups in the urban context

This study investigates the relationship between gentrification in urban neighbourhoods and feelings of belongingness. It was expected that gentrification has a negative influence on neighbourhood belonging because of the (fear of) displacement of original residents and the disruption of social cohesion. It was also hypothesized that this effect would be the strongest for longer established ethnic minority groups compared to less-established ethnic minority groups and that the effect would be the weakest for Dutch natives. These expectations were based on theory that feelings of belongingness to the neighbourhood of long-established groups are related to their ethnic/racial identity and level of rootedness in the city. These hypotheses were tested using the Rotterdam Neighbourhood Profile data from 2015 (N = 9.190). Contrary to our expectations, the results show that gentrification generally has a small positive impact on the level of connectedness to the neighbourhood. Regarding the various ethnic groups, there appears to be no difference between them in terms of the relationship between gentrification and neighbourhood belonging. The results of this article complement the discussion on the often proclaimed negative effects of gentrification in the city. Implications for urban policies, and the gentrification policy in Rotterdam in particular, are also discussed.

In-work poverty in the welfare state: The effects of gender, educational attainment, occupational status, and age

Globalization has put a new kind of pressure on the welfare state. Due to a rise in flexible contracts, a stable income is no longer a given, which results in an increase in the working poor. This article examined the extent to which the effect between in-work poverty and individual characteristics like gender, educational attainment, age and occupational status depends on the type of welfare state someone lives in. The welfare state classification used in this article is based on an article by Jacques and Noël (2020), who distinguished between the degree of universalism, residualism and targeting within universalism. A multilevel-analysis was conducted using EVS, OECD and Eurostat data (N = 14,405), which showed that gender, age, educational attainment and occupational status, contrary to macro characteristics like Gini coefficient and GDP per capita, have significant direct effects on in-work poverty. The main contribution of this paper, however, is that some of these individual direct effects differ per policy context. These differences do not completely align with the targeting within universalism theory posed by Jacques and Noël, which indicates that critical reflection of their theoretical framework is necessary.