A Model of Cultural Reproduction in China

Tracing Consumption to Parental Social Origin

Bibliographic Data

ID2323596
AuthorsGordon C Li (0000-0003-1224-3512, National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume59
Issue4
Pages605-624
Publication date2025-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0385 • E-ISSN: 1469-8684
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/00380385251322622
OpenAlexW4408962600
LanguageEN
References cited56

This article traces differences in cultural consumption in China - sources of status markers and boundaries - to parental social origin, and explains the mechanism of cultural reproduction in China. It identifies the high-status cultural signals, the forms that cultural capital assumes and the underlying processes. The enthusiasm for childhood cultivation and western-oriented aspirations among the privileged parents have developed into a Chinese form of cultural capital - an ingrained aversion to rural backwardness and aspirations for the West. This forms a cultural hierarchy in which those raised in privilege have a distinctive western-oriented cultural consumption, a difference not overcome by educational attainment. Hence, the process in China diverges from Bourdieu's well-known model based on legitimisation through state or formal education. This proposed mechanism is empirically validated using structural equation modelling

Backwardness · Biology · China · Consumption (sociology) · Cultural capital · Cultural reproduction · Economic growth · Economics · Elite · Political science · Privilege (computing) · Reproduction · Social capital · Social mobility · Social reproduction · Social science · Sociology · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Ecology · Gender Studies · Law · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Capital and Networks

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