Cultural Capital in China? Television tastes and cultural distinction among college students in Beijing

Abstract

Can television taste function as cultural capital in contemporary China? This paper investigates, for the first time, how Chinese engage with global pop culture to mark their positions in China’s swiftly changing social and cultural hierarchies. Using multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) of a survey (n=422) and 48 interviews with students at an elite Beijing university, we identify three distinct taste dimensions: not-knowers versus dislikers; TV lovers versus avoiders; and Western and Eastern TV taste. We identify dimensions 1 and 3 as cultural capital dimensions: respondents on the “high end” draw taste-based social boundaries vis-à-vis those on the low end, who in turn accept the hierarchies implied in these tastes. The two dimensions differ in the criteria used to make aesthetic distinctions, the type of cultural knowledge they rely on, and in the strength of their boundary-drawing. We conclude that the “Western” taste is more exclusive than the “dislike” taste. The first is mainly based on aesthetic criteria (complexity, authenticity), whereas the second combines aesthetic (complexity, depth) and cosmopolitan (language skills, international experience) distinctions. While the liking of both dimensions is related to parental cultural capital (education, occupation, urbanity), the “Western” taste also correlates with parental economic capital and international experience. This “discovery” of cultural capital in China has implications for our understanding of cultural and cosmopolitan capital, of the global diffusion of cultural goods and the aesthetic and status systems implied in these goods, and for our understanding of culture and stratification in China.

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Family background and the choice of Hispanic Philology among liberal arts students in China

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