Signs of ‘Emerging’ Cultural Capital? Analysing Symbolic Struggles Using Class Specific Analysis

Introduction

One common assumption in research on the social structuring of cultural consumption is that the symbolic value attached to every cultural product/practice is similar for every individual – that everyone more or less acknowledges the existence of some cultural hierarchy. This hierarchy ranges from consecrated ‘highbrow’ works worth contemplating, such as attending an opera or visiting a museum, to practices denounced as mere entertainment or ‘lowbrow’ culture. Certainly research using large-scale surveys assumes that each respondent attaches similar worth to similar cultural products and that highbrow cultural practices count as status markers. This assumed societal consensus on cultural classifications, on the symbolic value attached to cultural practices/products and on their potential for social distinction has not remained unchallenged however. Writing in the 1980s, US sociologist Paul DiMaggio (1987: 452) states, ‘Artistic classification systems are becoming more differentiated and less hierarchical, classifications weaker and less universal.’

This weakening of boundaries and the waning of the universality of classifications may have repercussions for the status of highbrow arts as a form of cultural capital. Indeed, there is considerable debate about the status of highbrow cultural products as a means of ensuring and proclaiming a dominant social position. Does attending an opera or visiting a museum, for example, function as a symbol for status? And for whom? Or has the legitimacy of the beaux arts dwindled in view of recent societal developments, such as the rise of the entertainment industry, the Internet boom or the advent of the omnivorous consumer? If so, then the monopoly the fine arts has as a form of cultural capital can be contested and other, less canonised forms of culture – computer games, television programmes, pop music or jazz, for example – can be seen as more central as elements of distinction for certain social groups. Prieur and Savage (2013) have reserved the term ‘emerging’ cultural capital for contemporary, predominantly urban forms of cultural practices that exist alongside highbrow taste. This new form of capital is considered to be the prerogative of the young and champions a screen-based, Anglo-cosmopolitan commercial culture that is appropriated with a certain ironical stance versus a Eurocentric, cerebral, ascetic and serious highbrow culture. So, cultural capital is still central for understanding the link between social inequality and cultural consumption, but its content may have changed and may continue to do so.

Besides this possible shift in the content of cultural capital regarding global oppositions in the field of lifestyles, there may be different, more ‘localised’ symbolic struggles and principles of distinction at work. This idea resonates with Mohr’s critique about the universal applicability of the structuring dimensions in a field. He argues that a general analysis of the field of lifestyles – however fruitful – misses possible local status oppositions and distinctive forces (Mohr, 2013; cf. Calhoun et al., 1993). Thus, certain practices may have similar worth for different individuals – and the symbolic value attached may be quite universal as a classification scheme in individuals’ minds – but may generate or involve totally different forces of distinction in actual practice. Attending an opera may be considered the epitome of culture, but is deemed unreachable by some. Instead, other cultural practices and dispositions generate social distinction in more ‘localised’ social environments: for example, young people attending a party or participating in a recreational run with college friends. ¹

In this article, I want to analyse empirically possible variations in the distinctive force of certain cultural practices for different age clusters. I argue that the nature of cultural capital may vary among age groups, thus challenging the idea of a universal standard of cultural worth and highlighting multiple and competing forms of cultural capital striving for recognition and perhaps functioning within certain boundaries of – or at certain localities within – the global field of positions. Age is interesting as a characteristic since it involves a generational aspect and may suggest shifts, changes or evolutions. Using survey data that have shown their usefulness in detecting underlying structuring dimensions in lifestyles in Flanders, I apply Class Specific Analysis (CSA), a technique building on Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), which allows studying segments of individuals with reference to the total sample (Le Roux and Rouanet, 2004, 2010). Thus, sub-clouds of individuals are selected in the multi-dimensional space and their principal axes are visualised, interpreted and compared to the principal axes of the global cloud.

Theoretical Background

A good theoretical starting point is DiMaggio’s (1987) insights on artistic classification systems. He argues that within a heterogeneous, highly differentiated society, cultural activities serve as identity markers, as common subjects of conversation and as status indicators: ‘[t]aste, then, is a form of ritual identification and a means to constructing social relations’ (DiMaggio, 1987: 443). Cultural activities may vary in meaning for different groups and also serve different purposes. They may be deployed as status behaviour by people attending and being conspicuously present at an event; they may be used as a means to be sociable or serve as subject matter in everyday conversation. Familiarity, knowledge and mastery of certain activities function as a resource then, as a way of proclaiming and producing a favourable social position, that is, more of an overt manifestation of an unconsciously developed, ‘habitualised’ disposition than as something conscious or part of a rational choice strategy. The fine arts especially have functioned as a common and universally understood marker of high social status in western societies.

Bourdieu’s ideas on cultural capital, especially his insights into how ‘traditional’ highbrow culture related to the bourgeoisie has become ‘naturalised’ and institutionalised over time, provide a useful reference. His concept of field further encourages thinking about processes of consecration in ‘Darwinian’ terms (Bennett, 2005). Consecration is the result of a symbolic struggle for the legitimacy of certain cultural goods and practices that focuses on the relative nature of cultural capital instead of seeing it as a universal, essentialist concept: ‘Capital is a relational concept that designates a social force that works within a field in which it is subject to contestation. […] As it depends on perception, there can be no universal standards […]’ (Prieur and Savage, 2011: 569). A social field à la Bourdieu is a snapshot of the ongoing process of debating and redefining what activities are valuable or worth endorsing, what cultural practices are superior and for whom.

Within the social space you can see different and differing oppositions at work. There is growing evidence that the specific content of cultural capital is being contested. For example, working class respondents in the UK claim they are not ‘in awe of legitimate culture and find no value in refinement’ (Bennett et al., 2009: 205), and do not demonstrate ‘a deference towards legitimate culture’ (Bennett et al., 2009: 212). So the idea that the activities of the dominant classes are universally and generally legitimate is questionable. What is consecrated may not have universal legitimacy and different forms of ‘capital’ may be at work simultaneously. Moreover, even though some practices may be regarded as more valuable or more legitimate by everyone – providing evidence for the existence of some scheme that is universally and often implicitly maintained regarding the value of certain activities – in everyday practice some activities/dispositions may be deployed differently and may have different consequences for different individuals according to their positions in the social space.

This article also tackles one of the issues that have been raised – rightly so – against Bourdieu’s relational method. On the concept of field and the principles at work within a field, Mohr (2013: 124) notes that only global oppositions are considered when relating social positions to practices and that ‘[o]ther conflicts, other engagements and, especially, more localised struggles over resources and positions are not taken into account in this mode’. With Class Specific Analysis (CSA) it is possible to overcome that kind of critique and analyse some of these local struggles, to explore empirically what social forces are at work and what kind of struggles take place within certain segments of the global space. Of course, the choice for certain social segments and the criteria on which this happens are pivotal to this empirical exercise. One strategy could be to take already existing groups that are inherently linked to the social hierarchy, such as managers, unskilled manual labourers or technicians, for example, and investigate the variation in the socially distinguishing force of certain cultural practices within each group. This would allow one to see how participation in the fine arts or visiting the opera functions as status markers for different occupational groups who take up different positions in a social hierarchy – however those positions are defined and constituted. In an attempt to get at possible past contestations and symbolic struggles, it is necessary to use longitudinal data that link practices to positions in the social space. Bourdieu (1996: 159) justly claims that ‘[…] distances between styles or lifestyles are never better measured than in terms of time’. One could therefore investigate whether highbrow practices were socially distinctive in the past – say the 1970s – and how, in what way and for what social segments they continue to be so today. Because of a lack of longitudinal data, however, I resort to another strategy that explores cross-sectional variation and use age as a central variable.

In that way, age acts as an indicator for at least two things: life phase and generation. With regard to cultural practices and their socially distinctive features, life phase refers to the material resources and the accumulated cultural and social capital different age groups typically dispose of. Generation brings in longitudinal thinking and refers to the educational experiences and socialising influences of different cohorts. There is evidence that since the 1960s the importance of highbrow culture – recognition of classical music and the fine arts – has declined in Flanders like in most western societies. One possible reason is the change in the educational system and school curricula since the 1960s/1970s. The fine arts, especially the literary canon, were criticised because they offered themes and stories that were perceived as too distant from the life-world of adolescents and teachers were encouraged to offer pupil-oriented, out-of-school literacies (Vacca, 2002). Moreover, school curricula in Flanders follow a world-wide trend towards including more lowbrow culture in art, literature and language classes (McEneaney and Meyer, 2000). The evolution of participation in extra-curricular cultural activities in Flemish schools also shows an increase in attendance for popular events like movie-going instead of focusing exclusively on highbrow culture (Daenekindt and Roose, 2014b). A second reason is that highbrow activities have to compete for participants with a wide array of alternatives as a result of the booming of commercial popular culture and the entertainment industry. Because of competition with commercial music and films, many highbrow products find it difficult to maintain cultural centrality and the position as institutionalised cultural products that had been taken for granted in the past (Warde et al., 1999). Television and Internet reinforce these trends. Third, in Flanders, state support for culture is no longer restricted to consecrated genres or organisations staging classical music, opera or theatre; DiMaggio (1991) refers to this as the de-institutionalisation of highbrow culture. Fourth, educational expansion and the steady increase in rates of social mobility result in a mingling of tastes at the high end of the stratification system, which affects the symbolic value attached to the traditional fine arts (Daenekindt and Roose, 2013, 2014a; cf. Verboord and Van Rees, 2008).

Because I used age in a cross-sectional survey of the population, it was impossible to disentangle these life phase or cohort effects. Yet if CSA is found to reveal differences between the global space and certain age groups regarding structuring principles, it would open up the possibility of exploring what symbolic struggles are actually going on around what kind of cultural practices, what constitutes cultural capital and to what extent and in what way highbrow culture functions as a status marker for the young and the old.

Data and Statistical Method

I use data from the survey ‘Cultural Participation in Flanders 2003–4’, a large-scale survey conducted among a representative sample of the Flemish population. Flanders is the densely populated and highly urbanised Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Data are collected by means of a Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI), resulting in a sample size of n = 2849 with a response rate of 61 per cent (AAPOR, 2011). The survey contains information on participation in and attitudes towards a wide range of cultural activities and leisure practices, and is similar to ‘Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion’ from the UK (Bennett et al., 2009) and ‘Survey of Public Participation in the Arts’ from the USA (National Endowment of the Arts, 2009). ²

The social space is constructed by means of a Specific Multiple Correspondence Analysis using 64 variables that can be subdivided into two groups. First, participation variables include cultural activities, such as watching television, going to the movies, reading comics, going to a restaurant, travelling, doing sports and so on (Roose et al., 2012). Second, in an attempt to get at the dispositional aspects of cultural behaviour, there is a set of variables tapping into the ways people do things. These include motives for travelling, expectations about movies, attitudes about what constitutes good food, preferences about the fine arts and so on. Variables in the first group are dichotomous; in the second group they have three categories: ‘like’, ‘neutral’ and ‘dislike’ or ‘agree’, ‘neither agree/nor disagree’ and ‘disagree’. ³

Three dimensions turn out to be essential in making up the global social space in Flanders – dimensions that are similar to comparable studies using MCA in the UK (Bennett et al., 2009), Denmark (Prieur et al., 2008) and Serbia (Cvetičanin and Popescu, 2011). The first dimension is an engagement–disengagement axis contrasting an active, outward-oriented lifestyle with a more domestic and passive leisure pattern. This opposition in behaviour is related to attitudes that oppose openness to new things versus an orientation favouring the familiar, things that have proven their quality. Dimension 2 opposes a preference for action, adventure and thrills versus a more contemplative, reflective lifestyle with a taste for consecrated or legitimate forms of culture. The third axis again depicts openness to new things versus a neutral stance towards openness. This openness is a dispositional characteristic applicable to a variety of domains – sport, movies, travel, food, for example – and is not confined to the public/private sphere or to highbrow or lowbrow activities. Axes 1 and 2 are related to indicators of social position. Axis 1 is associated with the educational credentials and with the cultural participation of the parents, and dimension 2 is linked with age, an indicator of life phase or birth cohort. Axis 3 is linked to a combination of characteristics. For people aged 65+ who are relatively poor in cultural capital, openness is associated with a preference for consecrated, figurative art – a ‘bonne volonté culturelle’. For the highly educated between the ages of 35 and 45 with a lot of cultural capital, it is related to ‘omnivorousness’. For individuals younger than 25, openness manifests itself through a strong predilection for amusement and action.

MCA gives a bird’s eye view of a global field in flux – from a sociologist’s stance as it were. Moreover, the nature of a field is inherently historical. After all, the field and its dimensionality are the result of historical struggles which remain entrenched in any cross-sectional image of it. Moreover, MCA is a relational method à la De Saussure: cultural practices are not to be considered per se, but in relation to other cultural activities, activities within the field of cultural practices, objects and dispositions. Yet the three general principles of distinction mentioned above may conceal other logics at work, principles that are confined to a certain locality within the social space and restricted to a certain social segment. Class Specific Analysis (CSA) allows us to unpack these localised logics, which may contain some traces of the contestations that have taken place over time within the field. More specifically, with CSA it is possible to analyse if and to what extent oppositions and distinctions within specific subpopulations are similar to the dimensionality of the general population presented above. In other words, can it be said that distinctions drawn within specific sub-clouds of individuals and the cultural practices/activities related to these distinctions are similar to the dimensions in the field as a whole? To what extent are socially distinguishing cultural practices differently structured for individuals younger than 25 and older than 55?

So, I only include the extreme age groups in this exploration, namely people younger than 25 (n = 532) and older than 55 (n = 881). The rationale behind this is that the 55+ age segment – that is, people born before 1948 – have attended school before the democratisation and expansion of higher education. In Flanders, the −25 group (born after 1980) have been – or are – educated within a much less rigid school system and have experienced the results of the changes within the field of cultural production mentioned above. This may affect the social force of highbrow culture, a distinguishing force that I imagine to be more manifest with older and highly educated people. I expect that the cultural activities structuring the sub-cloud of youth will not centre on the fine arts and classical music as status benchmarks – or will not centre on them as much – but instead will focus on things that are considered typical of their lifestyle, namely clothing, music and television.

A first glance at the cloud of individuals from the global space shows a number of differences between age segments. Table 1 presents the breakdown of variance along the axes and age. η² (= the ratio of the between and total variance and comparable to R² from regression analysis) is large on axes 1 and 2, respectively, .20 and .29; it is very small on axis 3 (.01). This means that in general, age accounts for 20 and 29 per cent of the variance in dimensions 1 and 2. The variation in individual scores along axis 1 is bigger for 55+ than for −25 (.12 > .07) and similar for axis 2 (.06 ≈ .06). Axis 3 is not differentiated by age. Figure 1 is a ‘visualisation’ of the data from Table 1 and displays the dispersion of the two sub-clouds. The concentration ellipse for the young is slightly tilted to the left – although less so than for the 55+, which has a much smaller angle with the first dimension. Also note the positioning within the global space: the young are scattered in the south-west quadrant relatively closer to the engaged and action/adventure poles, while the older individuals are positioned in the north-east. They are more ‘disengaged’ and inclined to highbrow, legitimate cultural forms, such as classical music and the fine arts, while shunning action and adventure. This provides a general picture. However, I will continue zooming in on the structuring dimensions of the two sub-clouds using CSA and focus on the first two dimensions of the global space.

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Table 1.

Coordinates of mean points and variances of sub-clouds on the first three axes (breakdown of variance along axes and age).

Age	Weight	Mean point coordinates			Variances
		Axis 1	Axis 2	Axis 3	Axis 1	Axis 2	Axis 3
14–24	532	−0.17	−0.26	−0.05	0.0713	0.0600	0.0765
25–54	1436	−0.08	−0.02	+0.01	0.0952	0.0684	0.0589
55–85	881	+0.23	+0.19	+0.02	0.1226	0.0565	0.0552
				within-Age	0.0991	0.0631	0.0610
				between-Age	0.0254	0.0254	0.0007
				total (λi)	0.1245	0.0885	0.0617

Notes: Used transition formula from coordinate of modality to modality mean point = coordinate * SQRT(λ_i); Variances based on one-way ANOVA on coordinates (NB: sum of Squares divided by n). η² on axis 1 = .20, axis 2 = .29 and axis 3 = .01.

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Figure 1.

Sub-clouds of two age segments in principal plane 1–2 with mean points and concentration ellipses.

Analysis and Results

To run the CSAs on the two sub-clouds, I use SPAD 7.4 and a macro written by Brigitte Le Roux that calculates distances/contributions of the sub-clouds within the global space. The differences between individuals and their cultural practices make sense in the global space. When trying to get at what activities and dispositions generate distance between individuals within a specific sub-group or segment of the population, the focus on the oppositions in the global space loses significance. It is the distances and the principal components that make up the restricted sub-space that become of interest when unravelling the structuring dimensions of each cluster – be it with reference to the global cloud (Le Roux and Rouanet, 2010: 61–9). Class Specific Analysis looks for principal dimensions within a sub-cloud – the elderly, for example – without ‘extracting’ it from the global space. It allows you to see and consider the sub-cloud inside the global space, though it is projected on its own principal dimensions. CSA starts off with a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of all the global structuring dimensions I obtained from the Specific MCA for the sub-clouds only. Thus two CSAs are produced.

Looking at the correlations of factors characterising the sub-clouds with the dimensions that make up the global space, it becomes clear that the sub-cloud of the young has rather specific structuring principles as opposed to the sub-cloud of the 55+, which is structured similarly to the global cloud or total population. Correlations coefficients between axis 1 in the sub-cloud and the global first axis for the young is .80; for the older group, it is .97 (both p < .001). For axis 2 these numbers are, respectively, .31 and .72 (both p < .001). To explore the oppositions at work in the sub-cloud of the young, one compares the contributions of the modalities structuring the sub-cloud of the young with the global space. Axis 2 for the −25, especially, shows the least resemblance to the structuring within global space. Interestingly, axis 2 is the dimension opposing action/adventure versus a preference for highbrow culture and contemplative practices, like visiting museums or reading prose/poetry (see Tables 2 and 3, as well as Figures 2 and 3).

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Table 2.

Contributions of modalities (in per cent) for first two axes in sub-cloud of individuals ‘14–24 years’ (n = 532).

Age: –25 (n = 532)	Contribution of modalities					Contribution of modalities
Axis 1	Left		Right		Axis 2	Left		Right
Watching TV: music channel	–	–	Often	9.3	Sport: to change limits	Neutral	2.2	Agree	5.3
Film: contains violent scenes	–	–	Like	5.9	Travel: other cultures	Neutral	1.3	Agree	4.0
Watching TV: VT4	–	–	Often	4.0	Sport: kick	Neutral	0.9	Agree	3.0
Film: uses a lot of special effects	–	–	Like	3.6	Arts: abstract expressionism	–		Like	2.6
Watching TV: KA2	–	–	Often	3.4	Sport: a beautiful body	–		Agree	2.6
Film: contains action & adventure	Neutral	1.4	Like	2.6	Travel: meet new people	–		Agree	2.4
Arts: (post-)impressionism	–	–	Dislike	1.7	Travel: visit culture	Disagree	2.4	–	–
Travel: party and fun	Neutral	1.0	Agree	1.5	Arts: (post-)impressionism	Dislike	2.4	–	–
Arts: late Renaissance/baroque	Neutral	1.3	Dislike	1.5	Arts: surrealism	–	–	Like	2.2
Reading	Yes	1.5	No	0.9	Listening to jazz/blues/soul/funk	Never	1.0	Often	2.2
Travel: sea & beach	–	–	Agree	1.4	Travel: adventure	Neutral	0.8	Agree	2.1
Sport: kick	Neutral	1.1	Agree	1.4	Watching TV: music channel	–		Often	2.0
Film: makes you laugh	Neutral	1.3	Like	1.0	Film: original in form and style	–		Like	2.0
Travel: visit culture	–	–	Disagree	1.3	Travel: hiking and trekking	Neutral	1.3	Agree	1.9
Arts: baroque portraits	Neutral	1.1	Dislike	1.3	Food: try new recipes	Neutral	1.0	Agree	1.9
Sport: a beautiful body	Neutral	1.1	Agree	1.3	Visiting museum contemp. arts	–	–	Yes	1.7
Food: familiar fare	–	–	Agree	1.2	Sport: team spirit	Neutral	1.6	–	–
Arts: Flemish primitives	Neutral	1.0	Dislike	1.1	Arts: abstract art	–	–	Like	1.6
Listening to chanson	Once/while	0.9	Never	1.1	Film: critical comment on society	–	–	Like	1.4
Listening to classical music	Once/while	1.1	–	–	Arts: conceptual art/Dadaism	–	–	Like	1.3
Total contribution: 63%		17%		46%	Total contribution: 66%		17%		49%

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Table 3.

Contributions of modalities (in per cent) for first two axes in sub-cloud of individuals ‘55–85 years’ (n = 881).

Age: 55–85 (n = 881)	Contribution of modalities					Contribution of modalities
Axis 1	Left		Right		Axis 2	Left		Right
Going to a restaurant	–	–	No	3.3	Arts: baroque portraits	Neutral	2.4	Like	10.2
Visiting museum fine arts	Yes	3.1	–	–	Arts: late Renaissance/baroque	Neutral	2.1	Like	8.4
Travel: other cultures	Agree	1.0	Disagree	2.5	Arts: Flemish primitives	Neutral	2.7	Like	8.2
Travelling	Yes	0.9	No	2.5	Arts: (post-)impressionism	Neutral	0.9	Like	4.0
Film: original in form and style	–	–	Dislike	2.5	Listening to classical music	–	–	Often	3.9
Food: try new recipes	–	–	Disagree	2.4	Arts: landscapes	Neutral	1.4	Like	2.3
Listening to classical music	Often	2.2	Never	1.3	Film: contains action & adventure	–	–	Dislike	1.7
Food: familiar fare	Disagree	0.9	Agree	2.2	Travel: visit culture	–	–	Agree	1.7
Visiting museum contemp. arts	Yes	2.1	–	–	Travel: party and fun	Neutral	1.1	Disagree	0.9
Shopping	–	–	No	1.8	Arts: abstract expressionism	–	–	Like	1.4
Travel: visit culture	Agree	1.7	Disagree	1.7	Arts: surrealism	–	–	Like	1.0
Travel: hiking and trekking	–	–	Disagree	1.7	Doing sport	–	–	No	1.0
Doing sport	Yes	1.1	No	1.6	Going to a restaurant	–	–	No	0.9
Watching television: VTM	–	–	Often	1.2
Food: eating at home is the best	–	–	Agree	1.4
Listening to music: opera	Once/while	1.4	–	–
Reading	Yes	1.4	No	1.2
Attending concerts	Yes	1.3	–	–
Total contribution: 63%		25%		38%	Total contribution: 56%		12%		44%

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Figure 2.

CSA of sub-cloud ‘14–24 years’ with modalities contributing more than average to sub-plane 1–2.

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Figure 3.

CSA of sub-cloud ‘55–85 years’ with modalities contributing more than average to sub-plane 1–2.

Table 2 and Figure 2 show the modalities that contribute more than average to the orientation of axes 1 and 2 for age segment −25. For the young, axis 1 centres on television and on the type of programmes/channels watched, which is contrary to the global space in which axis 1 stands for participation in a variety of activities. The items that contribute the most, that is, those most important in interpreting the dimension, are watching music channels like MTV or TMF, and commercial channels that regularly programme action movies and series, popular sitcoms (e.g. Friends) and reality television like Big Brother (VT4 and KA2). A manifest dislike for legitimate arts, like the Flemish primitives, late Renaissance or baroque works, baroque portraits and (post-)impressionism, ⁴ as well as contemplative activities like reading or visiting cultural sites when on holidays, reinforces the image of a dimension that opposes a preference for action and adventure on television and in real life versus a neutral stance towards action, adventure, partying and sports done for kicks.

Axis 2 contrasts a neutral attitude with a disposition towards an active lifestyle indicated by doing sport for kicks, wanting to push one’s limits and wanting to obtain a beautiful body, as well as backpacking to meet new people or explore other cultures. Here, a sportive disposition is supplemented with openness towards new things and a sociable attitude towards the ‘other’ in terms of travel. This openness also seems to manifest itself through a preference for avant-garde art – abstract expressionism, surrealism and Dada or listening to jazz, for example – without the devotion to the more consecrated forms of art which is the case in the global space. The love of art in the global space encompasses all genres, with the older, figurative genres being more important in the orientation of the second dimension than the more recent abstract forms.

The sub-cloud of people older than 55 is structured along the same dimensions as the global space. Axis 1 distinguishes an out-of-the-house, active lifestyle including concert attendance, museum visits, travel and sport activities from a more passive, home-bound disposition centred around watching commercial television and the attitude that ‘eating at home is the best there is’. With the 55+, engagement is manifested more through culture and travelling, less through going to the movies, shopping or going to a pub. The second axis for the 55+ contrasts a preference for consecrated art forms such as impressionism and baroque portraits, as well as more contemporary genres (surrealism and abstract expressionism), with a neutral stance; in the global space these aesthetic preferences are opposed to outright rejection. In contrast to the younger age groups, consecrated, figurative art and more avant-garde art go hand in hand, and co-exist as status markers.

Conclusion and Discussion