[雙語翻譯]文化消費外文翻譯--文化消費模式中的社會不平等（英文）

1、Social Inequality in Cultural Consumption PatternsKoen van Eijck, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands? 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.AbstractSocial inequality in cultural lifestyles can be u

2、nderstood using cultural capital theory or status theory. Empirical studies cannot easily produce results that allow for a proper comparison of the merits of these theories. In addition, the central role of habitus in bo

3、th theories is problematic from a theoretical perspective, as relations between habitus and observed behavior are not straightforward and much of cultural behavior is affected, if not shaped, by variable social contexts.

4、IntroductionCultural consumption patterns have solid social roots. They are affected by parental schooling levels and family socialization, level of education, occupational status, and income (Chan, 2010; Mohr and DiMagg

5、io, 1995). All of these determinants are somehow related to class and status, thus causing social inequality in cultural consumption. The central aim of this contribution is to assess the merits of the main theoretical e

6、xplanations for this social inequality in cultural consumption by evaluating the existing empirical evidence. The most prominent theoretical accounts, i.e., cultural capital theory and status theory, will be addressed. D

7、ifficulties with attempts to empirically settle which one of these theories is more valid will be addressed. In addition, special attention will be paid to the habitus as the linking pin between socioeconomic background

8、and cultural lifestyles. Finally, possible directions for future research are suggested.Cultural Inequality: Theoretical AccountsCultural inequality can be theorized to follow from differences in skills or resources. It

9、takes resources, or capital (cultural, economic, and social) to develop and implement a certain lifestyle. Unequal command of these resources leads to different lifestyles. This ties in with a second common theo- retical

10、 account, which sees lifestyles as expressing social honor or prestige by demonstrating access to certain, more or less scarce, resources. Such prestige may not only be a mere by- product of a lifestyle, but it may also

11、be a reward that is consciously sought after by engaging in certain esteemed activities.Knowledge and ResourcesAccording to Bourdieu (1984), cultural lifestyles depend primarily on cultural capital. This cultural capital

12、 is acquired during (early) socialization and inculcated in the habitus, which structures subsequent cultural practices. This entails a process that Bourdieu called cultural reproduction, where parents rich in cultural c

13、apital transmit this capital to their children, who simultaneously invest and expand it in their educational career and emerge out of this process endowed with a large amount of cultural capital of their own. Thecultural

14、 skills thus embodied engender an aesthetic disposition that encourages a taste for highbrow culture. Behind this reasoning lies the assumption that highbrow culture is more complex than popular culture. Thus, in his inf

15、ormation-processing theory, Ganzeboom (1982) argued that the ability to process complex cultural information is a requirement for highbrow cultural consumption. This argu- ment was based on the work of Gary Becker (1964)

16、 on human capital, Bourdieu’s notion of cultural capital (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977), and more psychological ideas from Berlyne (1974). The latter rest upon assumptions regarding the complexity of cultural stimuli, whi

17、ch are hard to assess empirically. However, it does make intuitive sense to assume that the joy derived from cultural consumption depends on people’s ability to interpret them. The most pleasurable experiences occur when

18、ever people’s skills at deciphering a cultural stimulus match the challenge, or complexity, posed by this stimulus. It thus follows that, in order to enjoy complex culture, one needs the cognitive resources, or skills, t

19、o deal with this complexity. These skills depend on intelligence, experience, or creative talent, which are partly reflected in schooling levels, but also enhanced by cultural socialization and acquaintance with the worl

20、d of culture. This is cultural capital theory’s explanation for life- style differentiation in a nutshell: people and cultural activ- ities can be matched to one another because differential socialization practices lead

21、to different information process- ing skills and cultural activities differ in the skills they require.Status and Social PrestigePeople’s cultural lifestyles tell us something about their social position. Society at larg

22、e confers a certain amount of honor to members of specific social classes. Belonging to a certain class can be signaled by displaying the appropriate lifestyle. It is exactly because they indicate the possession of certa

23、in skills and resources that cultural lifestyles have a communicative function allowing them to convey a certain status. At the close of the nineteenth century, Veblen (1953[1899])argued that lifestyles mainly reflected

24、economic differences. He coined the term conspicuous consumption to indicate that the overt possession of expensive consumer goods functioned as an effective mode of status display. Ten years after Veblen’s mocking accou

25、nt of the upper classes of his day, Weber (1968International Encyclopedia of the Social Chan and Goldthorpe, 2007a; DiMaggio and Useem, 1978; Van Eijck, 1999). Veblen’s notions of conspic- uous consumption and conspicuo

26、us leisure based on income differentiation are clearly not very helpful for understanding lifestyle differentiation today. Income is of relatively little use if we want to understand taste differences. When actual behavi

27、or outside one’s own home is the dependent variable, income effects are somewhat more common (Bihagen and Katz-Gerro, 2000; Kraaykamp et al., 2007; Van Berkel and De Graaf, 1995). Income seems to only affect activity per

28、 sé, distinguishing between, e.g., those who do not attend visual art institutions at all vs those who do so (Chan and Goldthorpe, 2007b). It hardly differentiates between one expressed preference or type of partici

29、pation and another. Thus, it seems valid to assume that income is a prerequisite for consumption rather than a clear cultural tastemaker, as Ganzeboom (1982) argued. Occupational class or status is often found to be more

30、 important than income (Alderson et al., 2007; Chan and Goldthorpe, 2005; Kraaykamp et al., 2007). Class or status positions clearly represent more than a person’s place in a straightforward economic hierarchy. Given the

31、 prevalence of status effects over class effects in most of the analyses reported in Chan (2010; see also the contributions to the special issue of Poetics (35: 2–3) entitled ‘Social status and cultural consump- tion in

32、seven countries’), social status still seems to play an important role, also after income is controlled for. The importance of status over occupation lends support to a conceptualization of lifestyles as expressions of s

33、ocial group membership, or socio-cultural boundaries, rather than of specific cultural or economic resources. Yet the most important determinant of cultural lifestyles is education (Chan, 2010). It is not exactly sure wh

34、at this means, as education seems to enhance all sorts of activities, not just the more complicated or elitist ones, without guaranteeing a very intellectual mode of appropriation. Nevertheless, cultural capital strongly

35、 structures lifestyles, as Bourdieu posited. Even if relations are less deterministic than he suggested, the idea of a certain homology of social and cultural positions still has merit. This is further confirmed by the a

36、nalyses of specific job characteristics. Where income merely affects some forms of participation per sé, education and, to a lesser extent, occupa- tional status additionally differentiate between distinct taste pat

37、terns. Finally, much of the analyses referred to here demonstrates that education, income, and occupational status have unequal yet cumulative effects. Social stratification is more than income, occupation, or education:

38、 it is a combina- tion of each of these, where education is the element that is most consequential for lifestyle formation, followed by occu- pation and, lastly, income. This order of importance is in line with the embod

39、ied cultural capital regime sketched by Lizardo (2008). The link between taste and education as a cultural structuring principle of social space is and remains very strong.Cognitive vs Status IndicatorsIt is difficult to

40、 draw strong conclusions regarding the rivaling accounts of cultural lifestyle differentiation from these findings. Status attainment theory and information processing theory often come up with similar predictions, such

41、as positive effects of cultural family socialization or educational attainment onhighbrow cultural participation. Clever, detailed hypotheses are needed in order to generate test results that actually differentiate betwe

42、en the two perspectives. What is especially needed is a way to disentangle the different potential effects of education, as schooling has both cognitive (resource) and status (boundary) consequences. This requires detail

43、ed measures of cultural capital that allow scholars to distinguish between (effects of) cultural knowledge and (effects of) cultural status. This has been attempted in studies on educational attainment, where distinction

44、s were made between effects of parental reading and parental beaux arts participation (De Graaf, 1986; De Graaf et al., 2000). De Graaf interpreted effects of parental reading as representing an impact of educational res

45、ources, or skills, whereas the absence of parental beaux arts participation effects was argued to disprove the relevance of highbrow status culture involvement. Sullivan (2001) provides a more direct measure of cultural

46、capital as information (processing) and finds that the effects of pupil’s reading on their scholastic achievement are fully mediated by their vocabulary and cultural knowledge. She concludes that “the reason for the effe

47、ct of cultural participation on academic attainment is that cultural participation is associated with intellectual resources which help pupils at school” (Sullivan, 2001: p. 910). Cultural knowledge also turned out to be

48、 more relevant than beaux arts participation later on in the educational career (i.e., admission to Oxford University: see Zimdars et al., 2009). In a sense, such tests offer what Ganzeboom (1982: p. 188) suggested as a

49、first test, i.e., assessing whether the highest correlations are found between activities that demand equal types of skill and knowledge, or between activities that demand the same kind of formal attendance. If education

50、 is more closely correlated with (parental) linguistic skills and knowledge than with (their) beaux arts participation, information theory seems to offer the best explanation for the intergenerational reproduction of edu

51、cational opportunities. But why does education, in its turn, enhance cultural participation? Is this a matter of having received relevant instructions or pertinent information too? Nagel and Ganzeboom (2002) assessed the

52、 impact of taking arts educa- tion classes on participation in legitimate culture. These effects were found to be small and in fact attributable to self-selection (their longitudinal design showed these ‘effects’ to be p

53、resent already at age 14, before actual enrollment). Similarly, differ- ences in cultural participation between educational categories were already partly present before the educational career was finished due to differe

54、ntial family socialization (Nagel, 2010). These results should not be too surprising, as there is little emphasis on highbrow culture in school curricula in countries such as Britain, the United States, or the Netherland

55、s (De Graaf et al., 2000; Sullivan, 2001). But here too, elaborate path models would be required to fully disentangle the effects of information processing and status attainment using very specific cultural capital indic

56、ators. Another possible way of disentangling status- and infor- mation processing effects would be to focus on instances of status inconsistency or social mobility. Whenever people have schooling levels that do not match