oa Culturele consumptie en de habitus - De rol van kennis en esthetische disposities

Cultural consumption and the habitus: The role of knowledge and aesthetic dispositions.

The habitus is a crucial concept in Bourdieus theory of taste. In this article, we assess the relations between cultural taste or participation and two measured elements of habitus: aesthetic dispositions and domain-specific knowledge. To his end, we have analyzed a sample of 2,500 Flemings in 2003-2004. Active culture lovers attach more significance to the form of cultural products than to their function and are more interested in serious societal issues such as science and politics, but also in lifestyle topics. The results further show that these indicators of elements of the habitus greatly increase the explanatory power of the models for predicting cultural taste and consumption while their addition to the models diminishes the impact of more general socioeconomic background characteristics.