Definitely (not) belonging to culture

Europeans’ evaluations of the contents and limits of culture

Bibliographic Data

ID7959992
AuthorsSemi Purhonen (0000-0002-4604-8670, Tampere University, corresponding author), Marc Verboord (0000-0002-6098-3075, Erasmus University Rotterdam), Ossi Sirkka (0000-0002-6088-646X), Nete Nørgaard Kristensen (0000-0002-8782-7179, University of Copenhagen), Susanne Janssen (0000-0002-8984-3498, Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Year2023
Volume101
Pages101840
Publication date2023-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePoetics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0304-422X • E-ISSN: 1872-7514
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.poetic.2023.101840
OpenAlexW4388254784
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited70

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 liberal-progressive political attitudes, highlighting the potential of extending cultural stratification research by the "bottom-up" study of patterned evaluations and understandings of the concept of culture itself

Ambivalence · Cosmopolitanism · Epistemology · Meaning (existential · Political culture · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Typology · Anthropology · Cultural Industries and Urban Development · Gender Studies · Law · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Psychology · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts

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