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are correspondingly disempowered.
Think “senior managers versus shop
floor workers”. So, by analysing how
what we like determines our social
status, often across generations,
we get a fuller picture of the power
players – and the powers at play – in
our society.
Bennett shared these granularities
and more in a conversation with
Campus Review.
CR: What is the underlying purpose of
this project?
Acquired tastes
The largest-ever study of
cultural taste tells us how
powerful we are.
Tony Bennett interviewed by Loren Smith
I
am a middle-class woman, aged
between 40 and 59, with a postgraduate
education.
Except I’m not. That was a prediction
of my identity, based on my cultural
tastes, by a global team of researchers.
They shared a sample of their survey
questions with the ABC, the source of
my result.
The real survey forms the basis of the
Australian Cultural Fields project. The
largest of its kind, it asked over 1200
Australians roughly 200 questions about
their fondness for Tim Winton over
Jodi Picoult, for example, or pop as
compared to classical music. In addition,
they requested that people share their
age, educational attainment, job and
other census-like facts, including those
pertaining to their partners and relatives.
16
The researchers, from Western
Sydney University, the University of
Queensland, New York University and
Diego Portales University in Santiago,
Chile, then analysed the data set as a
whole. From this, they determined a lot.
Most strikingly, the strongest indicator
of taste was class. In general, the more
educated you are and the ‘better’ your
job, the more highbrow your tastes, and
vice versa.
Funded by the Australian Research
Council, the project further found
that age and gender also dictated
taste. But why does this – any of
it – matter?
Tony Bennett, project director and
research professor in social and cultural
theory at Western Sydney University,
can clarify. He contends that there’s
a reason the phrase ‘cultural capital’
exists: it forms one of French sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu’s three arms of
power, the other two being economic
and social.
The powerful are the advantaged
in society, while the disadvantaged
TB: To look at the ways in which people’s
cultural activities, tastes, interests
and knowledge align with the ways
in which inequalities are organised –
through relationships, the home, the
education system and the occupational
class structure.
[In Australia] there isn’t a strong
deferential class c