Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore

• Published in: American sociological review Vol. 61; no. 5; pp. 900 - 907
• Main Authors: Peterson, Richard A., Kern, Roger M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Sociological Association 01.10.1996
• Subjects: Aesthetic Education; Aesthetics; Art galleries & museums; Art music; Change; Classical music; Consumption; Control variables; Country music; Cultural Change; Cultural consumption; Culture; Dysgeusia; Elites; Family income; Fine arts; Generation conflicts; Generational Differences; Genre; Identification; Interviews; Marital Status; Mass culture; Minority culture; Music; Music genres; Musical aesthetics; National Surveys; Omnivores; Opera; Politics; Popular culture; Regression (Statistics); Regression analysis; Research (taste); Social change; Social classes; Social Status; Sociology; Sociology of knowledge and sociology of culture; Sociology of leisure and mass culture; State Surveys; Status attainment; Taste; Trends; U.S.A; USA; Values; Variables; Century 19; United States Of America; England; New York; United Kingdom > UK; United States > US; Social Change; Educational Attainment; Art; Appropriation; Corruption; Immigrant; Social group; Upper Class; Cohort Analysis; Values; Political status; Generation Gap; Moral; Elite; Social status; Middle Class; Snobbery; Intellectual; Exclusion; Social dynamic; Taste; Cultural change; Anglo-Saxon
• ISSN: 0003-1224; 1939-8271
• DOI: 10.2307/2096460

Appreciation of fine arts became a mark of high status in the late nineteenth century as part of an attempt to distinguish "highbrowed" Anglo Saxons from the new "lowbrowed" immigrants, whose popular entertainments were said to corrupt morals and thus were to be shunned (Levine 1988; DiMaggio 1991). In recent years, however, many high-status persons are far from being snobs and are eclectic, even "omnivorous," in their tastes (Peterson and Simkus 1992). This suggests a qualitative shift in the basis for marking elite status--from snobbish exclusion to omnivorous appropriation. Using comparable 1982 and 1992 surveys, we test for this hypothesized change in tastes. We confirm that highbrows are more omnivorous than others and that they have become increasingly omnivorous over time. Regression analyses reveal that increasing "omnivorousness" is due both to cohort replacement and to changes over the 1980s among highbrows of all ages. We speculate that this shift from snob to omnivore relates to status-group politics influenced by changes in social structure, values, art-world dynamics, and generational conflict.