Aesthetic Taste Expression and Symbolic Boundary Work

One of cultural sociology's most important contributions to the study of social inequality has been the explication of the role that the possession of cultural resources plays in the ordering of society and social groups. To investigate the relationship between the expression of aesthetic tastes and symbolic exclusion, I analyze original data that measure variation in respondents' propensity to change their expressed taste about a particular cultural object given information about that object's typical fans. I find that respondents were likely to change their opinion to approximate the taste expression of a group of high-status others, but did not change their opinion when told the taste of a group of low-status others, except in the case of low-status persons being told that a group of low-status persons taste for the object was negative, in which case low-status respondents (but not high-status respondents) reacted by giving a more positive evaluation. I also analyze respondents' perception of solidarity with the groups they were told about, and find that differences in taste between respondents and the group are a stronger predictor of the perception of social distance than were differences in status (measured by education and occupation). Finally, with regard to perceptions of social distance, I find that the possession of cultural capital decreases the propensity for symbolic exclusion.