TY - JOUR

T1 - Definitely (not) belonging to culture

T2 - Europeans’ evaluations of the contents and limits of culture

AU - Purhonen, Semi

AU - Verboord, Marc

AU - Sirkka, Ossi

AU - Kristensen, Nete Nørgaard

AU - Janssen, Susanne

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - Despite the long history of debating its meaning and its current unprecedented ubiquity both in scholarly and popular discourses, little is systematically known about how “culture” is conceived by ordinary people. This paper examines how evaluations of the contents and boundaries of expressive culture are patterned among people in and across present-day European societies, and to what degree these evaluations associate with sociodemographic and politico-cultural divisions. Using survey data collected in 2021 in nine European countries and applying latent class and multinomial regression methods, the analysis reconstructs Europeans’ boundaries of the concept of culture – which objects, places and practices they see as belonging or not belonging to culture,and with which objects they remain ambivalent. The results show that the classical distinction between narrow (exclusive) and broad (inclusive) notions still structures Europeans’ evaluations of expressive culture, but it operates in several modes and with national and sociodemographic variations. In contrast to traditional assumptions, the narrow evaluations are associated with lower-status groups, while the upper-status groups embrace broad notions of culture. Moreover, the broad evaluations are associated with factors such as cultural cosmopolitanism and liberalprogressive political attitudes, highlighting the potential of extending cultural stratificationresearch by the “bottom-up” study of patterned evaluations and understandings of the concept of culture itself.

AB - Despite the long history of debating its meaning and its current unprecedented ubiquity both in scholarly and popular discourses, little is systematically known about how “culture” is conceived by ordinary people. This paper examines how evaluations of the contents and boundaries of expressive culture are patterned among people in and across present-day European societies, and to what degree these evaluations associate with sociodemographic and politico-cultural divisions. Using survey data collected in 2021 in nine European countries and applying latent class and multinomial regression methods, the analysis reconstructs Europeans’ boundaries of the concept of culture – which objects, places and practices they see as belonging or not belonging to culture,and with which objects they remain ambivalent. The results show that the classical distinction between narrow (exclusive) and broad (inclusive) notions still structures Europeans’ evaluations of expressive culture, but it operates in several modes and with national and sociodemographic variations. In contrast to traditional assumptions, the narrow evaluations are associated with lower-status groups, while the upper-status groups embrace broad notions of culture. Moreover, the broad evaluations are associated with factors such as cultural cosmopolitanism and liberalprogressive political attitudes, highlighting the potential of extending cultural stratificationresearch by the “bottom-up” study of patterned evaluations and understandings of the concept of culture itself.

U2 - 10.1016/j.poetic.2023.101840

DO - 10.1016/j.poetic.2023.101840

M3 - Journal article

VL - 101

JO - Poetics

JF - Poetics

SN - 0304-422X

IS - 101840

ER -