Where do cultural omnivores come from? The implications of educational mobility for cultural consumption

Summary

We use data from Understanding Society to investigate the association between social mobility and cultural omnivorousness. By applying diagonal reference models to our data, we show that both parent’s and respondent’s own educational level affect visual arts consumption, with the weight of the former being about a third in magnitude as the latter. This is inconsistent with Bourdeau’s view that habitus is primarily determined by the family of origin. In addition, we show that there is no difference in the relative weights of origin and destination between the upwardly mobile and the downwardly mobile. Finally, upwardly mobile individuals are less omnivorous than those who are inter-generationally stable in higher educational levels. These results challenge various views which attribute the emergence of cultural omnivores in contemporary society to social mobility.