Television Omnivores? Snob and Slob Taste for Television Programs in the Netherlands in 2000

Abstract

Bourdieu (1979/1984) argued that people demarcate societal boundaries through a lifestyle that exhibits their cultural taste. Elites consume highbrow cultural products and the social lower strata consume lowbrow cultural products. Peterson and Simkus (1992) amended Bourdieu's theory by introducing the concepts of cultural omnivores and univores. Omnivores consume a wide variety of highbrow and lowbrow cultural products, whereas the lower social strata only consume lowbrow cultural products. Our research extends the application of these ideas to the field of television program taste, using data from a survey among a stratified probability sample of the adult Dutch population (n=825). Through correspondence analysis, we showed that people from higher status groups and with larger amounts of cultural capital watch less lowbrow television genres than implied by Peterson and Simkus' (1992) amendment. Our findings support Bourdieu's (1979/1984) original theory on the distinctive force of taste expressions.