In the model of analysis of practices and cultural tastes in Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction, Bourdieu argues that the economic and cultural capitals are, on the one hand, more important variables than secondary factors such as age, gender, and residence, and, on the other hand, that their volume and composition explain the structuring of lifestyles. Since the 1990s, sociologists emphasized this second set of variables, including variables of age and generation, as structural ones. The multiple correspondences analysis we conducted on 2008 data from the statistical survey of French cultural practices of the Ministry of Culture confirms that, if the axis of social stratification remains first in the structuring of cultural practices, the second is now an axis of age. A longitudinal study highlights the generational effect behind age, which supports a structuring principle of contemporary cultural practices. This dimension would then mean a cultural turn in the analysis of cultural practices.
Keywords
- cultural capital
- distinction
- cultural diversity
- generation
- cultural practices