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DOI: 10.1177/17499755103877552011 5: 341 originally published online 25 March 2011Cultural Sociology
Alan WardeCultural Hostility Re-considered
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Cultural HostilityRe-considered
Alan WardeUniversity of Manchester, UK
AbstractIt is often remarked that dislikes are more revealing of taste than likes. The evidential basis of this
insight, which can be found in the work of Bourdieu (1984) and of Douglas (1996), who called
it cultural hostility, is slight. This paper specifies and evaluates the thesis, the cultural hostility
thesis, that people share strong, symbolically significant, dislikes which function to demarcate
cultural boundaries between antagonistic social groups. I examine progressively more precisely
specified versions of the thesis and, using data from a survey of cultural practice in Britain, apply
different operationalizations in order to estimate the prevalence of cultural hostility. I show
that: expressed dislikes are probably not the primary indicator of meaningful social boundaries;
evidence for overt generalized cultural hostility is relatively weak; even the best indicators ofhostility suggest limited antagonism; class differences are evident, but more because cultural
omnivorousness has become a principle of good taste than as an expression of condescension or
resentment. Indications of cultural hostility can be found, but they operate in a restricted manner,
revolving around axes not only of class but also generation and gender. I conclude that a strong
cultural hostility thesis is not readily applicable to contemporary Britain.
Keywordscultural capital, cultural classification, cultural hostility, cultural omnivorousness dislikes, social
class, social divisions, taste, United Kingdom
Introduction: The Cultural Hostility Thesis
Tastes (i.e. manifested preferences) are the practical affirmation of an inevitable difference.
It is no accident that, when they have to be justified, they are asserted purely negatively, by
the refusal of other tastes. In matters of taste, more than anywhere else, all determination is
negation; and tastes are perhaps first and foremost distastes, disgust provoked by horror or
visceral intolerance (sick-making) of the tastes of others. De gustibus non est disputandum:
not because tous les gouts sont dans la nature, but because each taste feels itself to be
Article
Corresponding author:
Alan Warde, University of Manchester, UK.
Email: alan.warde@manchester.ac.uk
Cultural Sociology
5(3) 341366
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342 Cultural Sociology 5(3)
natural and so it almost is, being a habitus which amounts to rejecting others as unnatural
and therefore vicious. Aesthetic intolerance can be terribly violent. Aversion to different life-
styles is perhaps one of the strongest barriers between the classes; class endogamy is evidence
of this (Bourdieu, 1984: 56).
Pierre Bourdieus observation is intuitively plausible and sociologically appealing.
Everyday conversations include strongly expressed admissions of detestation of goods
and behaviours of forms of dress, the foods of other nations, the dietary habits of other
classes, manners and morals. Other social scientists have endorsed the claim. For exam-
ple, Mary Douglas (1996: 81, 104) suggested that Consumption behaviour is continu-
ously and pervasively inspired by cultural hostility, concluding that Shopping is an
agonistic struggle to define not what one is, but what one is not. There is here a strong
thesis that powerfully held aversions define the most significant boundaries between
antagonistic social groups. However, neither author developed the idea substantively ormethodologically. Their claims were extrapolations from a few exemplary incidents used
to illustrate their general theoretical positions on the cultural origins of social divisions.
Yet the thesis is relevant to a wide range of contemporary sociological concerns, includ-
ing the coherence of cultural preferences, the relationship between lifestyle and identity,
the association of social divisions and cultural taste, the capacity for cultural judgments
to perpetrate and perpetuate social divisions, the current influence of class in relation to
other divisions, sub-cultural formation and the pertinence of cultural omnivorousness. If
we are interested in social classification, and to the extent that we believe cultural taste
to be central, understanding dislikes is a potentially powerful avenue. Most sociologistswould share with Bourdieu a suspicion that judgments about cultural items can conceal
evaluations of the people who espouse them. First, dislikes potentially pinpoint group
hostility and division. Second, they suggest a technique for sociologists more effectively
to identify pertinent boundaries. Finally, they promise to reveal cultural taste as a power-
ful force for discrimination, discoverable in phenomena which sociologists rarely access.
Neither Bourdieu nor Douglas attempted a systematic empirical corroboration of their
claims. True, Bourdieus (1984) use of structural oppositions and of multiple correspon-
dence analysis implicitly draw upon a model of mutually opposed preferences.
Nevertheless little empirical research has critically evaluated the thesis and few havesought explicitly to prove the importance of dislikes. Two exceptions are Bryson (1996)
and Wilk (1997) whose innovative contributions on matters of distaste have, disappoint-
ingly, received little subsequent attention.
Rick Wilk (1997:175) claimed that distastes, aversions, and dislikes are much more
socially diagnostic than positive desires. He made a strong, abstract and plausible case for
the predominant importance of aversions and avoidances and showed that they matter
empirically with respect to both music and food in Belize. In partial critique of Bourdieu
(1997: 184), who, he asserted, was overwhelmingly concerned with patterns of liking, he
urged: The key point is that taste and distaste do not form simple complementary pairs;
taste cannot be seen simply as the inversion, opposite, or mirror of distaste in forming
social boundaries. Wilk continued by saying that in Belize people were not enthused
about their likes, which were fairly uniform; it was rare that anyone would pick an unusual
favourite. Hence, he found few clear relationships between specific tastes and any of my
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social, income, class or ethnic variables (Wilk 1997: 187). It was only through greater
diversity that richer people of higher social classes were distinguished by their likes. But
distastes were more distinctive and were associated with socio-demographic position. He
noted as typical, that while liking Country and Western music was fairly widespread
across all groups, dislikes were concentrated. For example, dislike of classical music washighly concentrated among poorer groups. Consequently, he examined a range of cultural
items in terms of both how much they were liked and disliked. On this basis he identified
four contrasting bundles of symbolic cultural items, which he described, not entirely
transparently, as orthodox, conservative, enclavist and heterodox. Acknowledging that
Belize is more heterogeneous and less hierarchical than France in tastes, he found it dif-
ficult to corroborate his thesis because there has been almost no systematic empirical
work on distastes and dislikes in developed countries (Wilk 1997:191). He concluded
that at this point more empirical research on the relationships between tastes and dis-
tastes, passions and aversions is urgently needed (Wilk 1997: 193).Bethany Bryson (1996) examined the musical dislikes of the American population.
Partly inspired by the debate about the cultural omnivore (cited by Peterson, 1992 and
2005), she was concerned to understand the extent and pattern of cultural tolerance in the
USA. She analyzed reported dislikes of 18 musical genres in the US General Social
Survey of 1993. She showed that people of higher status had broader tastes: highly edu-
cated people in the United States are more musically tolerant, but not indiscriminately
so (Bryson 1996: 895). Such people exhibited a patterned tolerance, with a greater
dislike of those genres preferred by the least educated (namely rap, heavy metal, country
and gospel). Their antagonism, she concluded, was not towards ethnic minorities buttowards the working class, a reordering of group boundaries which trades race for class.
She thus attributed to them what she called multicultural capital, which was effective
as a form of cultural capital, its corollary being greater civic and political tolerance. She
also noted that for the educated, exclusion of low-status music genres is stronger than
identification with high-status genres (Bryson 1996: 894). Reflecting on her results she
noted that the variance explained in the number of musical genres disliked by her regres-
sion model was modest and mused that this was almost certainly because dislikes could
not be entirely explained by their potential to highlight significant social boundaries. She
therefore called for more cross national research (Bryson 1996: 896). Overall she suc-ceeded in showing that dislikes are selective and meaningful; that the middle class have
fewer dislikes but still their main dislikes are for predominantly working class genres;
that tolerance is itself a principle of cultural selection; and that there is a process of sym-
bolic boundary marking involved. Taste is a form of symbolic message. However, her
account dealt solely with musical genres in the US and, as she acknowledged, research
on other fields and in other countries was required.
Neither Brysons nor Wilks calls for more research have been answered. This is dis-
appointing because both appeared to uncover a general significance in dislikes as a key
qualification to the cultural omnivore thesis and a supreme indicator of symbolic bound-
aries, respectively. Hence, a highly pertinent and powerful thesis about the social role of
taste has languished. The strong thesis might run as follows. People exhibit (very) strong
and meaningful cultural dislikes, which are apparent in many situations, including when
shopping and while assessing the lifestyles of others. These dislikes help form, and allow
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344 Cultural Sociology 5(3)
self and others to draw, meaningful (and recognizable) social boundaries. The meaning
may arise from the nature of the items themselves, or from their association with people
and groups with different levels of status. Boundaries drawn upon dislikes will be more
meaningful or decisive than those formed from positive preferences. Patterns of dislikes
will be socially differentiated, particularly by class, but also by ethnic (and perhapsother) affiliations. Social differentiation may find its expression in a number of ways, for
example, through the extent of dislikes, or the disliking of particular items, perhaps inter-
preted in terms of their legitimacy. Finally, the dislike of cultural products entails dislik-
ing, or thinking badly of, other people who do like them, it being the dislike of items to
which other opposing groups are particularly attached that serves to mark such boundar-
ies. As Bryson (1996: 885) put it, individuals use cultural taste to reinforce symbolic
boundaries between themselves and categories of people they dislike, which is perhaps
the most powerful definition of cultural hostility. In this form the thesis proposes that the
passing of negative judgements upon aesthetic preferences for cultural can discloseantagonistic social groups aligned on opposite sides of a symbolic boundary. As such it
concerns products rather than practices, judgments of value rather than simple empirical
associations, and aesthetic rather than moral standards, all in relation to relevant social
divisions.
Matters of taste have been, and probably still are, mostly considered by sociologists
in relation to social class, as with the authors considered above. However, their under-
standings of the effect of class differ. For Bourdieu, the upper middle and the working
classes are equally mutually opposed to each other, disliking those activities and traits
which the other class embraces. If not entirely explicitly, because he paid it limited atten-tion, Bourdieu suggested that the working class especially dislikes legitimate items asso-
ciated with the dominant classes. For Bryson, influenced by the omnivore debate, the
middle class is generally tolerant of working class culture, but retains a number of sym-
bolically marked aversions. Wilk observed class differences also, and that the middle
class has fewer aversions hence his neat hypothesis that upward social mobility is more
a process of eliminating dislikes than acquiring new likes. However, in the context of
Belize at least, ethnicity was more important. National and ethnic, and perhaps genera-
tional and gender divisions also, are candidates for significant boundary demarcations
based upon dislikes.
Examining Dislikes
To progress the debate, this paper first of all presents another comparative case, describ-
ing patterns of dislike as revealed in a study of the UK which collected relevant data on
the cultural tastes of the population. Conducted in 2003, the study comprised focus-
group discussions, a national survey, face-to-face household interviews with some of the
survey respondents and also some personal interviews with members of the British elite.1
The qualitative components of the research design threw up some examples relevant
to the cultural hostility thesis. Aesthetic revulsion was expressed in negative sentiments
about cultural products. For example, Reality TV brought a Chief Executive Officer of a
major multinational corporation to say, Ill walk out of the room if my son has got Big
Brother on or any of these bloody things where they vote for people who then get kicked
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off. I literally you know, walk out of the room and go read a book or get away from it, I
cant handle it, right. I hate them, right with a vengeance. But expressions of dislike
were usually mild, measured and qualified judgments of a kind consistent with the aes-
thetic disinterestedness said to characterise the dominant cultural groups, and some-
times even apologetic. For instance, a senior university manager said I cant stand soapsand things, I mean I can see their function, and indeed my daughter says theyre
absolutely crucial, theyre important socially and I totally accept that.
As Bourdieu insisted, because aesthetic disinterest often masks social interest it is
difficult empirically to confirm that the reason for an expressed dislike is its association
with another social group. Interviews and focus groups proved ineffective instruments
for uncovering such connections. People typically do not attribute their distaste for an
item to their dislike of the sort of person who does like it. The closest approximation
came from a 48 year old female university graduate who, in an interview, said, I hate
that kind of hip hop stuff, I really hate it. When asked why by the interviewer, shecontinued:
Im embarrassed to tell you! I really, really hate it because I really hate those guys in those
baseball hats because I really hate baseball hats and if I could have something in Room 101,2
that would be the top of my list, I would ban them from the world. I hate those baseball caps so
as soon as those guys come on and theyve got them, they look as though theyre actually
thinking of putting one on Im totally appalled by the whole thing.
Her alienation is expressed with respect to the clothing of artists rather than the music or
people who like the music. People may dislike items on purely aesthetic and perhaps
autobiographical grounds without any necessary consequence for the marking of social
boundaries.
However, sometimes boundaries were drawn in a way that suggested group antago-
nism. Tastes may differentiate both within and between groups. According to Bourdieu
(1996), struggles for succession within the cultural field operate on the basis of attempts
by a rising fraction to find new cultural forms and items which they can establish as
legitimate in a challenge to current orthodoxy. Dislikes will often therefore mark sym-
bolic boundaries within the dominant class. One focus group discussion threw up a vivid
instance of the same effect within the working class. Asked for examples of bad taste,a group of skilled manual workers in South Wales nominated Mushes, who were
described as wearing shell suits, dodgy trainers, 15 years old with kids, big gold
chains round their necks, massive earrings, lots of gold, bleached blond hair.
Mush is the Welsh term for Chav, a currently maligned section of the working class.
The most memorable instance ofbetween-group demarcation occurred when a young
skilled working class focus group discussed the theatre:
Wayne: Yeah there is too much judging you [referring to the moderator] are saying
what kind of people would go to the theatre? and we would, like not throughany fault of anybodys, but if we went to the theatre and watched them walking
out wed be judging them as geeks.
Kev: And theyd be judging us.
Wayne: Yeah, like, Look at the piss-heads.
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Kate: Yes, theyd be judging.
Moderator: Whats your definition of a geek, just roughly?
Wayne: Just somebody who doesnt know how to have any fun.
Steve: Doesnt seem to have fun like. Just does boring things.
Kev: Doesnt like a laugh.Daz: Just someone whos opposite to us.
Wayne: Probably somebody whos quite happy in themselves but wed call them a geek
and theyd call us piss-heads or a bum or something.
These were, however, exceptional instances of direct and explicit association between
consumption and social status, a couple of instances revealed by more than a hundred
hours of recorded discussion. Note also that the first example is as much about embodied
appearance as it is about cultural products, while the latter concerns an imagined cultural
event, theatre-going, rather than an aesthetic judgment.
At the outset, then, we cannot assume, as Bourdieu and Douglas suggested, that all
dislikes are motivated by cultural hostility or that they necessarily have a social basis.
Probably some are, and others not. Manifestly, cultural hostility does occur, but a key
issue, as raised by Wilk and Bryson, is itsprevalence. I therefore explore systematically,
using survey data, the evidence for the strong cultural hostility thesis, asking whether
expressed dislikes of specific cultural products generally symbolise antagonism between
social groups. Data and methods are described in section 3. I then successively opera-
tionalize alternative versions of the cultural hostility thesis regarding clustering, volume,
structure and specificity of dislikes. Section 4 describes the rather nuanced and complex
dislikes of the British population. Section 5 asks whether dislikes are strongly structuredsocially whether some groups have more dislikes than other, and whether social groups
defined by socio-demographic characteristics differ in their negative tastes. Section 6
classifies some cultural items in terms of their legitimacy in order to explore whether
reciprocal hostility operated around items which Bourdieusian theory would identify as
particularly strategic. Section 7 re-sorts the same items in respect of the degree to which
they are controversial within the whole population, searching in a different manner for
items with specific significance in marking social boundaries.
Data and Method
This paper focuses on responses to a selection of questions in a national random sample
survey of the UK in 2003 about respondents cultural tastes.3 Some questions intention-
ally tapped both likes and dislikes regarding particular artists, works and genres.4 The
survey covered in some detail various domains across and beyond the fine arts so was not
restricted, as were Bryson and Wilk, to material on music and food, allowing a broader
estimation of how much dislikes reveal.
Some of the questions about taste preferences asked about dislikes in ways which did
not require a positive response, respondents being able to register indifference or lack offamiliarity with items. These questions, 40 in all, had three different formats. The first
invited people to rank genres of music and books on a scale of 1 to 7. The second asked
if a named painter or musical work was known and liked or disliked. In the third, the
respondent was asked whether s/he would make a point of listening to a named TV
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programme or watching a film by a particular director. Respondents were not forced to
record any dislikes among their answers to these 40 questions. The responses coded to
indicate dislikes were as follows:
1) book genres: score on 6 or 7 on a seven point scale from like to dislike for sevengenres of writing
2) music genres: score on 6 or 7 on a seven point scale from like to dislike for eight
genres of music
named musical works; have listened to and did not like eight pieces of music
3) named artists: have seen works by seven painters, which were disliked
4) national TV: would not make a point of watching four specific programmes
5) film directors: would not make a point of watching the work of six film
directors.
Thus genres, works and producers were addressed. For the sake of clarity, because
responses to questions about genre differ systematically from the other two, I refer to
the second and third as products and use the term cultural items when referring to
all three.
For purposes of statistical analysis, the independent variables employed were age,
gender, region, household type, population density and income (quartiles). Also included
is self-identified ethnic group, which owing to relatively small sample size was catego-
rised as White-English, White-Celtic (Irish, Scottish or Welsh), White-Other and not-
White. Education comprises five levels: no qualifications; GCSE (school examination atage 16); A-level (school examination at age 18); technical college and professional quali-
fications; and university degree. An earlier analysis using Multiple Correspondence
Analysis (see Le Roux et al., 2008) determined, at least with respect to cultural participa-
tion and taste, that the clearest class boundaries lay between the professional-executive
class (NS-SeC 13, i.e. excluding lower managerial workers), an intermediate class
(NS-SeC 48), and a working class (NS-SeC 912) comprising lower technical and
lower supervisory workers, semi-routine workers and routine workers.5
The Pattern of Dislikes
The range of dislikes
Table 1 lists responses to the 40 questions posed about dislikes. The items range from
the very common to the comparatively rare.6
Column A indicates the percentage of
people who recognized a given item. Column B shows the percentage who disliked it,
column C the percentage positively disposed towards it. Column D is the difference
between B and C.
Only two products were disliked by more than half the respondents (Table1, columnB): 58 % said that they would definitely not make a point of watching the Queens
Christmas broadcast and 51% would not watch general election coverage. A number of
products were disliked by less than 10% of the population. Some of these are arcane
items; if people do not know of them they are unlikely to record dislike. These include
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Table 1. Knowledge, likes and dislikes of 40 cultural items
A B C B-C
Know % Dislike % Like %
Film directors
Spielberg 95 12 44 -32Hitchcock 95 24 34 -10Bergman 57 26 7 +19Campion 17 8 2 +6Almodvar 8 3 3 0Rathnam 6 4 1 +3
Musical works
Chicago 92 17 65 -48
Four Seasons 80 6 56-
50Oops 77 39 26 +13Wonderwall 74 14 47 -33Stan 65 18 31 -13Mahler Symphony No.5 47 6 19 -13Kind of Blue 30 3 13 -10Einstein on the Beach 17 3 3 0
TV programmes
World Cup 99 34 44 -10Grand National 97 47 26 +21
General Election 98 51 24+
27Queens ChristmasBroadcast
98 58 17 +41
Artists
Van Gogh 81 14 67 -53Lowry 68 13 55 -42Turner 57 7 50 -43Picasso 77 28 49 -21Warhol 55 34 21 +13Kahlo 6 2 4 -2Emin 21 18 3 +15
Musical genresClassical 100 33 29 +4Rock 96 38 27 +11Country and Western 99 35 25 +10Urban 95 43 18 +25Modern jazz 99 48 12 +36World 97 48 12 +36Electronic 93 58 11 +47Heavy Metal 97 67 11 +56
Literary genres
Biography 99 23 39 -16Detective, thrillers 98 27 30 -3Romance 99 45 21 +24Self Help 99 49 16 +33Science Fiction 99 61 14 +47Modern Literature 97 42 14 +28Religious 99 66 9 +57
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the painting of Frida Kahlo (2 per cent dislike), films of Pedro Almodvar (2 per cent),
Phillip Glasss Einstein on the Beach (3 per cent), Miles Daviss Kind of Blue (3 per
cent), films of Mani Rathnam (4 per cent), and Mahlers Fifth Symphony (6 per cent).
However, Vivaldis The Four Seasons (6 per cent) and the painting of J.S.Turner (7 per
cent) were also very little disliked despite being widely known, suggesting that they areparticularly inoffensive. Many more dislikes of genres were recorded: religious books
(66 per cent), science fiction (61 per cent) and self-help (49 per cent) among literature,
and among musical genres heavy metal (67 per cent disliked), electronic (58 per cent),
modern jazz and world music (48 per cent each) and urban (43 per cent). Note that one
reason for this difference between named product and genre was that very few respond-
ents failed to recognise the genres whereas, for example, since only 8 % of respondents
had heard of Almodvar, no more than that proportion could express dislike. Clearly,
Britons are not shy about expressing dislike of cultural items.
Patterns of dislikes
In order to discover whether there were any strong patterns to the dislikes a Principal
Components Analysis of the 40 items was conducted (See Table 2). If the items on the
scale had fallen into a small number of mutually exclusive groups we might conclude
that there were some widely shared combinations of dislikes which might form the
boundaries between hostile parties. However, 13 factors had an Eigenvalue greater than
1 and together they explained only 51 % of the variance. The most powerful explained a
mere 5.3 % of the variance. This result could be the effect of the heterogeneity of theitems included in the analysis.7 However, most components were primarily characterized
by dislike of items restricted to a particular category TV, film, visual art and reading.
The implication is that some people are averse to complete fields of activity and probably
do not engage in the practice. Occasionally, a factor gave some inkling of class hostility,
between middle class fractions and between middle and working classes. The third factor
drew together dislike of biographies and modern literature, classical music, and the gen-
eral election broadcast on TV with a liking for the modern art of Emin and Warhol and
for modern jazz. Such a pattern might be thought to fit a rebellious or youthful section of
the middle class hostile to older, established and traditional middle class preferences.The fifth factor exhibited a dislike of Oops, country and western music, the Queens
Christmas broadcast and Eminems Stan, and also showed, at a slightly lower level of
significance, likings for reading biographies and for Mahler. This might represent middle
class rejection of lower-class tastes. Overall, however, the patterns do nothing to cor-
roborate a claim that distastes cluster clearly around recognizable symbolic boundaries.
The Structure of Dislikes
Volume of dislikesWe would anticipate that some people will have more dislikes than others. The omnivo-
rousness thesis, invoked by Bryson for instance, suggests that people of higher socio-
economic status, and with more education and income, will tend to have a wider range of
likes and, as a corollary, a smaller range of dislikes. Omnivores are said to be more
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350 Cultural Sociology 5(3)
Table 2. Patterns of dislikes. Principal components analysis (Varimax with Kaiser Normalization).Components with Eigenvalue greater than 1. Indicating items loading at .30 or greater
Components
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Activity
Queens Christmasbroadcast
.50
General election .50 .31
Grand National .75
World Cup .69
Bergman .33
Hitchcock .59Spielberg .47
Campion .70
Rathnam .69
Almodvar .65
Wonderwall .63
Oops .58
Stan .40
Chicago .44 .40
Four Seasons .70
Symphony no 5 .52
Kind of blue .66
Einstein .74
Religious books .61
Science-fiction .47 .50
Self-help books .60
Romances .63
Modern literature .40
Thrillers, .36 .55
Biographies .50 .38Heavy metal .41 .62
Electronic dance .66
World music .64
Modern jazz .31 .31
Urban, R&B .71
Rock, inc Indie .40 .50
Country and Western .50 -.29 .33
Classical music .47
Warhol -.39 .36
Picasso .76
Emin -.68
Van Gogh .67
Lowry .66
Turner .68
Kahlo .40 .34
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Warde 351
tolerant than the middle class of earlier periods who would have rejected popular cultural
forms associated with lower social classes. However, most explorations of the omnivore
thesis have had to rely on information about what people like, rather than what they dis-
like (Bryson, 1996, is the exception). And since likes and dislikes are not necessarily
socially symmetrical it remained possible that omnivores have both more dislikes as wellas more likes.
A simple additive scale of all 40 items was created to calculate variation in the volume
of individual dislikes. Again, the heterogeneity of the items means that the scale should
be treated cautiously.8 One person had not a single dislike. The maximum number of
dislikes was 33. There was a normal distribution of scores. The mean number of dislikes
was 15, the median 16. The lowest quartile scored 11 or less; the highest quartile 20 or
more. Note that, in response to the same set of items, people recorded more dislikes than
likes; the mean number of likes was nine compared with 15 dislikes.
Cross-tabulation of respondents scores on this scale with some socio-demographicvariables showed that:
1) the higher the social class, the fewer dislikes were expressed;
2) men had fewer dislikes than women;
3) the group self-identifying as non-white had fewer dislikes than any white group;
4) the more education a respondent had, the more likely they were to have few
dislikes;
5) and the young had fewer dislikes than the elderly.
In order to explore these relationships more closely we applied Poisson regression analy-
sis to log scores on the scale.9 Much less variance in the volume of aversions could be
explained statistically than for equivalent scales for cultural participation or likes (see
Gayo-Cal and Warde, 2009). The overall power of the explanation was weak, implying
that the extent of aversions is only lightly grounded in social group memberships of any
sort. The model showed a significant effect for higher education. Those with a university
degree have fewer dislikes than the rest; those with A-level or technical qualifications
have fewer than the less qualified, but significance level is only .10. Age was insignifi-
cant, as was class, income and population density. There were weak relationships withregion, people living outside London having more dislikes, an effect statistically signifi-
cant for the north and south of England and Scotland. Other effects reducing dislikes,
significant at the .10 level, included belonging to the highest income quartile and being
a man. The most significant relationship was that the least privileged ethnic groups, those
identifying themselves as other than white, have significantlyfewerdislikes than others.
This might just possibly be the phenomenon of cultural goodwill, described by Bourdieu
(1984: 318372) as characteristic of the petit bourgeois in France, but perhaps more
likely shows some commitment to the values of multiculturalism. However, it is also an
artefact of the survey instrument. The questions asked, for reasons of space, did not tar-
get in detail particular ethnic minority cultural traditions and presumably, therefore,
items about which members felt most strongly. The Other group recognised signifi-
cantly fewer products and since recognition is a pre-condition for expressing dislike,
this, rather than tolerance per se, probably explains their answers. The tolerance of the
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352 Cultural Sociology 5(3)
Table 3. Factors influencing respondents volume of expressed dislikes: Poisson regressioncoefficients
(Constant) B
EducationGCSE, CSE, O-level, NVQ/SVQ level 1 or 2 -.032RSA/OCR Higher Diploma, City and Guilds Full T -.065*GCE A-level, Scottish Higher Grades, ONC -.051University/ CNAA Bachelor Degr., Master Deg/ PhD/ D.Phil -.097***Other qualifications -.134*
Age
Age .003Age squared .005
Region
North .093**Midlands .059Southern England .081*Wales .124**Scotland .129**Northern Ireland .076
Type of household
Single person household .019Unrelated adults household -.067*Couple dependent children -.020Couple non-dependent children .078*Lone parent dependent children -.061Lone parent non-dependent children .048Multi-family .064
Social class
Professional-executive -.004Intermediate .024Never worked -.057
Sex
Male -.032*Ethnic origin
White-other British/Irish -.036White-other -.045Other origin -.208***
Population density
1.68/7.92 -.0307.93/25.26 .03325.27/41.26 .02541.27/185.22 .010
Income
2nd quartile -.030
3rd quartile-
.012High quartile -.048Number of cases 1564
a Dependent Variable: scale of participationBaseline categories: level of education: no education qualifications; region: London; type of household:couple no children; social class: working class; sex: female; ethnic origin: white-English; population density:0/1.67; income: low quartile.* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001
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Warde 353
educated (expressed as fewer dislikes, without prejudice to the question of whether they
nevertheless despise some exceptionally symbolically significant items) is probably bet-
ter attributed to an omnivorous orientation, an openness to diversity.10 On balance, Wilks
findings about dislikes being more strongly associated with social position than likes are
probably not valid for the UK.
Social distribution of specific dislikes
So far, the analysis of dislikes has provided little support for the cultural hostility thesis.
However, it is essential to examine whether effective cultural hostility occurs in more
contextually specific locations. Despite the absence of strong overall patterns in relation
to volume of dislikes, the thesis might still be valid if cultural hostility were expressed
primarily in relation to a limited number of items of exceptional symbolic significance.
This section therefore examines the distribution of dislikes among specific social groups,examining three socio-demographic factors, class, gender and cohort.
Table 4 shows the distribution of distastes across classes. There are very few items
which a majority of any class dislikes, five in the professional-executive class and nine
in the working class. Note that many items exhibit no class marking whatsoever. There
is no general class hostility reflected by distastes. Nevertheless, some cultural items dis-
criminate between classes, marking class boundaries and therefore potentially perform-
ing a function of social classification. There are a number of items which the professionals
and executives dislike much less than the working class the General Election broad-
cast, modern literature, biographies, modern jazz, rock music and classical music. Theseitems are mostly genres of music and literature. There are three widely recognized items
which the professional-executive class dislike more country and western music, and
the art of Warhol and Emin. They also dislike other more rare items the films of
Campion, Rathman and Almodovar, and Mahlers 5th symphony and GlasssEinstein on
the Beach. While these items are more widely distributed across fields they are, with the
exception of country and western music, specific products rather than genres. Thus, the
professional-executive class, consistent with the omnivore thesis, rarely condemns entire
genres, tending to find in most some redeeming items (Warde et al, 2007). Nevertheless,
class differences do concentrate on particular items.There are fewer differences by gender than by class (see Table 5). There are no sig-
nificant differences regarding film directors, musical works or artists, and only one for
musical genres, women disliking heavy metal much more than do men. However, three
of the TV programmes are more disliked by women, the two sports events and general
election coverage. Women also dislike science fiction writing more. Only two forms are
more disliked by men than women self-help books and, by a huge proportion, romantic
fiction. It is, however, worth speculating whether, and in what sense, these indicate cul-
tural hostility. There is little doubt that, in Britain in the 21 st century, football, horse rac-
ing, heavy metal and science fiction are coded masculine, and that romantic fiction is
coded feminine. A small number of items thus correspond with gender boundaries.
However, whether womens dislike of heavy metal, or mens of romantic novels, is best
understood as hostility to the other sex is debatable. It would be even less likely that such
a claim could be advanced in relation to general election broadcasts or self-help books.
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354 Cultural Sociology 5(3)
Table 4. Taste (dislikes). Mean levels (percentages) of expressed dislike for 40 items and bysocial classes: professional-executive, intermediate and working class
Activity Mean Professional-executive intermediate working Sig.
Queens Christmas broadcast 58.3 57 56 61General election 50.6 34 48 61 ***Grand National 47.4 49 46 47Football World Cup 34.3 34 30 38 *Bergman 26.3 30 31 22 **Hitchcock 24.1 25 25 24Spielberg 12.4 11 13 12Campion 7.7 11 8 5 **Rathnam 3.6 5 3 2 ***Almodvar 3.3 5 4 1Wonderwall 13.8 13 13 15Oops 39.1 43 38 39Stan 17.8 19 16 18Chicago 17 14 19 18Four Seasons 6.1 7 7 5Mahler, Symphony no 5 6.1 9 7 4 *Kind of Blue 3.3 4 2 4Einstein on the Beach 2.7 5 1 2 *Religious books 66.4 67 65 69 *Science-fiction, fantasy andhorror
60.8 60 63 61
Self-help books 49.3 49 47 52Romances 45.1 50 41 46 *Modern literature 42.2 27 37 53 ***Thrillers, who-dunnits anddetective stories
27.2 20 26 32 ***
Biographies andautobiographies
23.2 11 18 33 ***
Heavy metal 66.9 62 64 72 **Electronic dance music,including techno and house
57.9 66 58 55 **
World music, includingReggae and Bhangra
48.3 44 53 49 *
Modern jazz 48.1 37 47 54 ***Urban, including Hip Hopand R&B
42.8 42 45 43 *
Rock, including Indie 37.5 32 35 42 *Country and Western 35.3 42 35 31 **Classical music, includingOpera
33.3 19 30 42 ***
Warhol 34.1 41 37 30 ***Picasso 27.9 25 33 27 ***Emin 17.8 32 23 7 ***Van Gogh 14.2 12 15 16 ***
Lowry 12.9 17 13 11Turner 6.7 9 6 6Kahlo 1.8 2 1
N= 1520 361 449 71023.1 % 28.7 % 45.4 %
Chi-Square: *** < 0.001, ** < 0.01, * < 0.05
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Warde 355
Table 6 records responses by three age cohorts. Compared to the average, the under-
40s exhibit substantially greater dislike of four items watching the Queens Christmas
broadcast, Oops, country and western music and classical music. They show much less
dislike of science-fiction, of four genres of contemporary music and the paintings of
Table 5. Taste (dislikes). Mean levels of disliking (percentages) of 40 items, and for men andwomen
Items Mean Men Women Sig.
Queens Christmas broadcast 58.3 60 57General election 50.6 44 56 ***Grand National 47.4 40 54 ***Football World Cup 34.3 16 50 ***Bergman 26.3 29 24Hitchcock 24.1 19 28 ***Spielberg 12.4 10 15 **Campion 7.7 10 6 *Rathnam 3.6 5 3 *Almodvar 3.3 3 4Wonderwall 13.8 13 14
Oops 39.1 42 37Stan 17.8 16 19Chicago 17 17 17Four Seasons 6.1 7 5Mahler, Symphony no 5 6.1 5 7Kind of Blue 3.3 4 3Einstein 2.7 4 2Religious books 66.4 69 65Science-fiction, fantasy, horror 60.8 49 70 ***Self-help books 49.3 54 45 ***Romances 45.1 71 23 ***
Modern literature 42.2 45 40 *Thrillers, detective stories 27.2 25 29Biographies and autobiographies 23.2 25 22Heavy metal 66.9 59 74 ***Electronic dance music, includingtechno and house
57.9 58 58
World music, inc. Reggae and Bhangra 48.3 45 51 *Modern jazz 48.1 45 51 *Urban, inc. Hip Hop and R&B 42.8 45 41Rock, including Indie 37.5 34 40 **Country and Western 35.3 34 36Classical music, including Opera 33.3 32 35Warhol 34.1 36 33Picasso 27.9 28 28Emin 17.8 17 18Van Gogh 14.2 14 15Lowry 12.9 14 13Turner 6.7 5 8 *Kahlo 1.8 1 2
N= 1564 713 85145.6% 54.4%
Chi-Square: *** < 0.001, ** < 0.01, * < 0.05
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356 Cultural Sociology 5(3)
Warhol and Picasso. For almost all of these items the over-60s register a significant
and opposite taste. The differences between cohorts are substantial, although again there
are items for which age makes no difference i.e. most of the painters, most of the film
makers, most genres of literature and most of the classical music products. Music in
Table 6. Taste (dislikes). Mean levels of disliking (percentages) of 40 items for three cohorts:aged 18-39, 40-60 and 61+
Activity Mean 18-39 40-60 61+ Sig.
Queens Christmas broadcast 58.3 69 61 38 ***General election 50.6 56 53 39 ***Grand National 47.4 54 48 37 ***Football World Cup 34.3 30 36 38 *Bergman 26.3 24 32 24 **Hitchcock 24.1 30 23 17 ***Spielberg 12.4 6 11 25 ***Campion 7.7 9 8 6Rathnam 3.6 4 4 3Almodvar 3.3 4 3 3Wonderwall 13.8 14 18 7 ***
Oops 39.1 53 40 17 ***Stan 17.8 20 22 7 ***Chicago 17 17 21 11 **Four Seasons 6.1 7 6 5Symphony no 5 6.1 5 7 7Kind of Blue 3.3 4 3 3Einstein 2.7 3 2 3Religious books 66.4 70 65 63 *Science-fiction, fantasy and horror 60.8 46 63 81 ***Self-help books 49.3 45 45 62 ***Romances 45.1 44 44 49
Modern literature 42.2 36 42 52 ***Thrillers, who-dunnits and detective stories 27.2 22 28 33 **Biographies and autobiographies 23.2 21 23 27Heavy metal 66.9 58 64 86 ***Electronic dance music, including technoand house
57.9 41 68 69 ***
World music, including Reggae and Bhangra 48.3 36 44 74 ***Modern jazz 48.1 44 49 53 *Urban, including Hip Hop and R&B 42.8 20 49 68 ***Rock, including Indie 37.5 25 32 65 ***Country and Western 35.3 53 30 17 ***Classical music, including Opera 33.3 47 29 19 ***Warhol 34.1 18 42 47 ***Picasso 27.9 15 32 41 ***Emin 17.8 16 19 18Van Gogh 14.2 14 14 14Lowry 12.9 11 16 11 *Turner 6.7 9 6 3 **Kahlo 1.8 2 1 3
N= 1563 590 588 38537.7% 37.7% 24.6%
Chi-Square: *** < 0.001, ** < 0.01, * < 0.05
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Table 7. Taste (likes). Mean levels of liking 40 items and genres. Persons with degrees and noqualifications as a percentage of those who express positive preference
Activity Mean Those withdegrees as a %of all who likethe activity (b)
Those with noqualifications as a %of all who like theactivity (c)
Ratio(b/c)
LegitimateKahlo 3.8 59 1.6 36.87Almodvar 2.6 73.2 4.9 14.93Warhol 21.8 42.5 8.5 5Modern literature 13.5 45 11.8 3.81Campion 2.2 54.3 14.3 3.79Emin 2.9 56.5 15.2 3.71Einstein 3.3 43.4 15.1 2.87
Symphony no 5 19.3 41.1 15.9 2.58Kind of Blue 12.7 40.7 16.1 2.52Heavy metal 10.8 29.6 11.8 2.50Rock, including Indie 26.7 32.8 14.8 2.21Stan 31.1 26.4 13 2.03Wonderwall 46.6 27.5 13.7 2.01
CommonScience-fiction, fantasy andhorror
14.4 28 14.2 1.97
Urban, including Hip Hopand R&B
18.8 23.8 12.2 1.95
Picasso 48.8 33.1 17 1.94
Four Seasons 55.7 32.8 18.8 1.74Biographies and autobiographies 38.6 28.2 17.2 1.63Van Gogh 67.3 29.3 20.1 1.45Turner 50.5 32 22.4 1.42Self-help books 16.2 26.9 19.4 1.38Classical music, including Opera 29 33.9 25.3 1.33General election 24.3 32.5 26.2 1.24World music, including Reggaeand Bhangra
12 27.5 22.8 1.20
Electronic dance music,including techno and house
10.9 21.2 18.2 1.16
Modern jazz 12 27.1 23.9 1.13Lowry 54.5 26.5 25.5 1.03Rathnam 0.6 10 10 1
UnauthorisedReligious books 8.5 26.5 27.3 0.97Thrillers, who-dunnits anddetective stories
29.7 24.8 26.7 0.92
Chicago 64.7 24.4 27.9 0.87Oops 26.4 20.5 22.2 0.92Football World Cup 44.4 21.4 26 0.82Spielberg 43.5 16.7 26.7 0.62Bergman 6.7 24 41.3 0.58
Romances 20.5 17.1 30.2 0.56Grand National 25.6 19.3 38 0.50Hitchcock 33.8 17.6 35.6 0.49Queens Christmas broadcast 16.9 16.3 39.8 0.40Country and Western 25.3 12.6 47.9 0.26
N= 1564 366 41923.4% 26.8%
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358 Cultural Sociology 5(3)
particular separates out generations, as do tastes in television. Analysts of generational
conflict have often alighted on cultural preferences as central, so this may be some cor-
roborating indication of cultural hostility.
That patterns of association are often non-existent and in most instances relativelyweak is not yet sufficient to dismiss the cultural hostility thesis. Though not explicitly
proposed by advocates of the thesis, cultural hostility could be a central social mecha-
nism even if only a small number of items, of high symbolic significance, were strategi-
cally marked. Bryson postulated this about heavy metal music and middle class distaste
for white working class musical genres in the US. Indeed, on reflection, it would be
surprising if every item performed a significant symbolic and classificatory function. To
identify such critical markers entails isolating items about which opposed groups have
strongly contrary feelings. In the next two sections I devise alternative techniques to
examine the reciprocal relationship between likes and dislikes.
Legitimacy and Class
A contested relationship to legitimate, or high, culture has been central to sociological
analysis of taste. The notion of legitimate culture was critical for Bourdieu because it is
Legitimate Common Unauthorised
Kahlo Science-fiction, fantasy and horror Religious books
Almodvar Urban, including Hip Hop and R&B Thrillers, who-dunnits,
detective stories
Warhol Picasso Oops
Modern literature Four Seasons Chicago
Campion Biographies and autobiographies Football World Cup
Emin Van Gogh Spielberg
Einstein on the Beach Turner Bergman
Symphony no 5 Self-help books Romances
Kind of blue Classical music, including Opera Grand National
Heavy metal General election Hitchcock
Rock World music, Reggae and Bhangra Queens Christmas
broadcast
Stan Electronic dance music, techno
and house
Country and Western
Wonderwall Modern jazz
Lowry
Rathnam
Figure 1. Controversy, legitimacy and classItems in bold are significantly more disliked by the professional-executive class than the working classItems in bold italics are significantly more disliked by the working class than the professional-executive class
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Warde 359
the fount of cultural capital, capital arising from sharing in taste communities accredited
by cultural institutions, foremost among them universities. A bowdlerized version of his
position, nevertheless fairly widely canvassed, anticipates that those attached to a domi-
nant culture, a dominant class, will like legitimate and dislike vulgar items, while the
working class, having a taste for the necessary, will explicitly dislike, or perhaps beindifferent to, the legitimate and favour the vulgar. In this scenario reciprocal hostility is
expressed directly across a social boundary the dominant class dislikes what the work-
ing class likes, and vice versa. Schematically, however, four possible conditions are con-
sistent with the basic premise that legitimate items cause social division: the dominant
group like the legitimate and dislike the unauthorized (condescension); the dominant
group like the legitimate but also like the unauthorized (omnivorousness); the subordi-
nate group likes the unauthorized and dislikes the legitimate (resentment); the subordi-
nate group likes the unauthorized, but is indifferent to, the legitimate (accommodation).11
The first and third conditions are ones which might generate overt antagonism, produc-ing or structuring cultural hostility.
In order to explore the relational properties of likes and dislikes the 40 items were re-
sorted hierarchically in terms of their legitimacy. I reason that it is those items dispropor-
tionately preferred by people with greatest exposure to educational institutions which
have greatest legitimacy. This is a conventional understanding of legitimacy based on the
positive preferences of the custodians of cultural taste. Table 7 describes differences
between graduates and the unqualified with respect to the items that they say they like. It
emphasizes the meaning of the items, expressing the views of the most and least edu-
cated as a ratio relative to the opinions of the whole sample.12
Items can thus be placedon a continuum of legitimacy based upon the relative preferences of people with univer-
sity degrees when compared with those without any educational qualifications a prac-
ticable and defensible way of constructing a measure of legitimacy (see further, Gayo-Cal
and Warde, 2009).13 So, for example, Table 7 column D shows that liking classical music
or biographies were not marked as highly legitimate in 2004, irrespective of their status
thirty years earlier. For convenience of discussion, I have partitioned items into three
groups.Legitimate items are those which are more than twice as often preferred by grad-
uates. Those which are unauthorisedare less likely to be liked by graduates than the
unqualified. Those which are common are the remainder.To estimate the role of class, consider Figure 1, which identifies items, ranked in
terms of their legitimacy, which are disproportionately disliked by the professional-exec-
utive and the working classes. The working class expresses more dislikes. They also
register more dislikes of legitimate items than do the professional-executive class of
unauthorised ones. If dislike by a subordinate group of those legitimate items which are
liked by a dominant group indicates class resentment, then there is more resentment than
condescension. Working class members may be drawing boundaries between themselves
and others by attributing preferences14 for example for classical music and modern
literature to people who, without warrant, claim superior status. This pattern may
indeed represent cultural hostility. However, half of the disputed items are from popular
music. We might guess that this is some measure of the existence of class boundaries
among younger people. The only unauthorised item disliked by the professional-execu-
tive class, country and western music, might be interpreted as a marker of a reviled taste,
although actually only 11 % more of the professional-executive class dislike it than do
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360 Cultural Sociology 5(3)
the working class. All the other legitimate items disliked by the professionals are ones
known to only a small minority and apparently reflect internal divisions or competition
within the professional-executive class. Thus the evidence for class condescension is
weak and, consequently, that for the prevalence of an omnivorous orientation among the
professional-executive class commensurately stronger.
Culture and controversy
The previous section implies that reciprocal class antagonism along an axis of legitimacy
is not great. Indeed, most controversy occurs over items within the legitimate category.
One might therefore be tempted to conclude that taste has little significant impact on
social relations. However, a final redoubt for the cultural hostility thesis remains. Perhaps
a more complicated pattern of reciprocal antagonisms exists. According to Wilk, likes and
dislikes are not necessarily symmetrical. Knowing what an individual in Belize liked didnot effectively predict what they would dislike. It was only from a joint pattern of both
likes and dislikes, asymmetrically ordered, that Wilk could identify social boundaries.
Orthodox Contested Non-Contentious Stigmatised
GT 15% like GT 15% like LT 15% like LT 15% like
LT 25% dislike GT 25% dislike LT 25% dislike GT 25% dislike
MANY LIKE MANY LIKE FEW LIKE FEW LIKE
Few Dislike Many Dislike Few Dislike Many Dislike
Turner Picasso Kahlo Modern literature
Van Gogh World Cup Kind of Blue Bergman
Lowry Who Dunnits Einstein on the Beach Modern jazz
Four Seasons Classical Almodvar World
Chicago Rock Campion Science FictionWonderwall Country and Western Rathnam Electronic
Spielberg Oops Emin Heavy Metal
Mahler 5th Grand National Religious
Stan Romance
Biography Warhol
Hitchcock Urban
General Election
Self Help
Queens Broadcast
Figure 2. Controversy and legitimacy. Items classified by type and extent of controversyLegitimate items in bold.
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Warde 361
Finally, therefore, I examine the proposition that dislikes are symbolically significant
when they refer to items to which a potentially opposed group, not necessarily a class, is
very attached. To do this items are sorted, after the fashion of Wilk (1997), in terms of
their capacity to arouse controversy. I classify items in terms of the proportions of the
population who like and dislike them (see Figure 2). Some items are liked by many anddisliked by few. I call these orthodox items, an example being the painting of Turner.
Second, some items are liked by many people and also disliked by many. These I call
contesteditems, ones which seem to induce both positive and negative sentiments in large
degree. Examples include rock music, classical music, Picassos painting, and the Queens
Christmas broadcast. Contested items have the greatest capacity to represent symbolic
hostility between substantial sections of the population. Third, some items are liked by
few people, and equally disliked by few, ones we might call non-contentious, examples
being the paintings of Kahlo and Kind of Blue. Finally, there are items which few like and
many dislike. These I callstigmatiseditems, and among them are modern literature, mod-ern jazz and religious literature. The classification of items can be seen in Figure 2.
It might be expected that the items most germane to the cultural hostility thesis would
belong to the contested and the stigmatized categories. These are ones where a substan-
tial number of respondents have pronounced negatively upon an item, providing oppor-
tunity to define social boundaries through cultural rejection. By contrast, since few
dislike the orthodox or the non-contentious items, their capacity to arouse or mark social
antagonism is limited.
Figure 2 shows that few legitimate items, represented in bold type, are contested.
Rock music and the art of Warhol are the only two of the 13 items dividing large sections
Orthodox Contested Non-Contentious Stigmatised
Turner Picasso Kahlo Modern literature
Van Gogh World Cup Kind of Blue Bergman
Lowry Who Dunnits Einstein on the Beach Modern jazz
Four Seasons Classical Almodvar World
Chicago Rock Campion Science FictionWonderwall Country and Western Rathnam Electronic
Spielberg Oops Emin Heavy Metal
Mahler 5th Grand National Religious books
Stan Romances
Biography Warhol
Hitchcock Urban
General Election
Self Help
Queens Broadcast
Figure 3. Controversy and the unauthorised. Items classified by type and extent of controversyBold italics for unauthorised items
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362 Cultural Sociology 5(3)
of the population to be coded as legitimate. Neither was significant in understanding
class differences. Two other legitimate items are widely disliked, examples of stigma-
tized taste modern literature and heavy metal. The former did appear symbolically
significant in relation to class, but the latter is coded as a preference of male graduates,
apparently without class baggage. Generally, it is difficult to interpret the significance ofmost items, for each category except the non-contentious, has heterogeneous component
elements. Ironically, greatest controversy over legitimate items occurs among the soci-
etally non-contentious, a matter of internal, within-class dispute among those most com-
mitted to high culture.
Figure 3 offers further clarification about the symbolic significance of particular items
and why they happen to be more or less controversial. The most controversial items,
those in the contested category, are actually unauthorized ones; seven of the 11 items that
are leastlegitimate divide the population most sharply. There is no simple interpretation,
for the items are heterogeneous, but they probably reflect several different lines of socialcleavage. Controversy over whether to read romances or watch the world cup reflects
gender differences. The three television programmes probably reflect generational dif-
ferences. So probably does the liking for country and western, though we know that it is
also coded by class. The stigmatized items which we hypothesized might arouse mutual
hostility seem to capture a difference between those with religious interests and the
rest, a division rarely considered in most studies of cultural taste.
Thus, finally, we find some stronger evidence of cultural hostility, but mostly revolv-
ing around non-legitimate items, and structured not by a single, but by multiple social
cleavages. This gives some support to the general thesis of Wilk, who charted cross-cutting patterns of likes and dislikes which marked social divisions. However, given how
difficult it has proved to track down the social significance of dislikes we might pause
before agreeing that dislikes are a superior diagnostic tool upon which future research
should concentrate. We might pause even longer before agreeing with Bourdieu that all
determination is negative.
Conclusions
This paper has demonstrated that people have a wide range of dislikes. More dislikesthan likes are reported. Respondents proved more likely to register dislike of genres than
of specific products. There were no strong overall patterns to dislikes. Nevertheless,
some categories of person had more dislikes than others. People with degrees had the
fewest dislikes, giving some support to the omnivorousness thesis. Those identifying as
non-white also had fewer dislikes, perhaps suggesting commitment to multi-culturalism.
Living in London also increases tolerance. But in general the patterns were statistically
weak.
Dislikes are associated with social divisions. Two sorts of class mechanism operate.
The most powerful makes distinctions within classes. The instances are mostly within the
professional-executive class where certain, usually rare and consecrated, items are sub-
ject to contested evaluation. These may represent struggles for control of the cultural
field among different fractions of the dominant class: they may even be minor evidence
of the existence of an avant-garde fraction, interested in relatively arcane cultural
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Warde 363
products and inclined to express dislike of legitimate but orthodox items, as with the
paintings of Lowry and Turner. The second mechanism distinguishes the professional
from the working class. A few items are significantly differently valued, the most telling
ones, which might perhaps denote inter-class hostility, being watching the general elec-
tion, classical music, Country and Western, serious literature, and the work of contro-versial artists. To the extent that these are objects of mutual and reciprocal antagonism,
they are putative sources of hostility, of condescension and resentment. However, evi-
dence for intense class hostility is sparse.
While class matters, other divisions are probably equally important. Dislikes are dif-
ferentially distributed by gender and generation as well as by class. However, symbolic
items are still rather few and they are not the same for each social category. It therefore
seems that dislikes are not as crucial, strategic and telling in Britain in 2003 as was
thought by Bourdieu or Douglas. Dislikes, certainly if they are to play an important part
in the process of social classification, should be strongly correlated to social position. Ingeneral, they are not. Moreover, the majority of distastes are not socially marked. Many
cultural products are valued more or less equally by all, thus not a source of social dis-
crimination. This is revealing, since it was initially anticipated that items included in the
questionnaire would reveal social distinctions. If cultural hostility means one group dis-
paraging another through their distaste for a broad set of cultural products, then it is not
very prevalent in the UK. Dislikes are not, in themselves, evidence of intense or wide-
spread hostility between social groups or categories. If Douglas was referring to general
processes of social classification she appears to have exaggerated the role of socially
structured dislikes.However, cultural hostility may yet be more complicated and more contextual.
Potentially a small number of symbolically very significant items could provide a nexus
of hostility. Controversial items were identified by considering simultaneously the juxta-
position of likes and dislikes across various social boundaries. Modifying Wilks termi-
nology, four groups of items were distinguished the orthodox, the contested, the
non-contentious and the stigmatized. Some items are more likely sources of controversy
than others and some engage much larger proportions of the population than others. The
expectation that disagreement over legitimate items organizes boundaries, particularly
boundaries of class, was not well supported. In Britain, legitimacy is not as significant asin Bourdieus France. Re-examination of legitimate and unauthorized items with refer-
ence to the differential dislikes of the professional and the working classes, and men and
women, identified some likely candidate items for expressing class and gender hostility,
but these tend to revolve around unauthorized rather than legitimate items.
To sum up, no doubt dislikes sometimes signify cultural hostility. Dislikes do parallel
social divisions; class, gender and generational boundaries are marked in some instances.
However, expressed dislikes are not such powerful indicators of meaningful social
boundaries that they should be preferred over others as an analytic tool or practical guide
for social classification. Dislikes do not obviously play the same pronounced role in
Britain as in Belize. Even when considered in tandem with likes they are not highly sym-
bolic markers of lines of social cleavage. The situation is more as described by Bryson
for the USA, where a small, though not insignificant, role is played by aversions which
belie universal tolerance of diversity of cultural taste. One reason that they are not
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364 Cultural Sociology 5(3)
currently strongly marked is probably because cultural omnivorousness, an openness to
diversity, has become a principal principle of good taste (Fridman and Ollivier, 2004;
Ollivier, 2008). Consequently, middle class expression of distaste for, or condescension
towards, the aesthetic preferences of others is muted.
Finally, the current evidence cannot dispel all suspicion that there exists a subterra-nean basis of deep cultural hostility. Perhaps the limited and heterogeneous items consid-
ered above are inadequate to the task; future research might usefully consider a larger
and wider range. Alternatively, it may be less judgments of taste focused on aesthetic
products, like painting and film, than embodied characteristics, possessions or cultural
practice that incite cultural hostility. Indeed, quantitative methods general may not be
best fitted because context often matters greatly. Certainly qualitative evidence from the
same study threw up a few instances of vehement rejection of symbolically-loaded prod-
ucts, though such judgments rarely led to condemnation, implicit or explicit, of other
social groups. Tastes differ, but with very little indication of condescension, and only alittle more of resentment. Moreover, few items are class or gender specific, as a compel-
ling sociological account might require. Thus the survey results imply rejection of a
strong cultural hostility thesis in respect of expressions of taste in contemporary Britain.
Acknowledgements
This paper draws on data produced by the research team for the ESRC project Cultural Capital and
Social Exclusion: A Critical Investigation (Award no R000239801). The team comprised Tony
Bennett (Principal Applicant), Mike Savage, Elizabeth Silva, Alan Warde (Co-Applicants), David
Wright and Modesto Gayo-Cal (Research Fellows). The applicants were jointly responsible for thedesign of the national survey and the focus groups and household interviews that generated the
quantitative and qualitative date for the project. Elizabeth Silva, assisted by David Wright, coordi-
nated the analyses of the qualitative data from the focus groups and household interviews. Mike
Savage and Alan Warde, assisted by Modesto Gayo-Cal, co-ordinated the analyses of the quantita-
tive data produced by the survey. Tony Bennett was responsible for the overall coordination of the
project. I am particularly indebted to Modesto Gayo-Cal for having prepared the principal compo-
nent and regression analyses included in this paper. I am grateful also for comments on the paper
from Modesto, Tony Bennett, Mike Savage, Elizabeth Silva and David Wright. They do not neces-
sarily share the interpretations offered in this paper.
Notes
1. The focus groups, totalling 25, comprised between two and eight participants per group,
involving a total of 143 participants, including 74 women and 69 men. The groups were
conducted in six areas in the UK in 2003. Household interviews were conducted with 30
respondents from the survey and 14 of their partners in 2005. Interviews were conducted with
11 members of the British elite members of parliament, senior civil servants, landowners
and corporate executives.
2. Room 101 is the place to which, in a popular TV show, participants banish despised objects.
3. The main survey was administered to a stratified, clustered sample from 111 postcode sectors
and achieved a response rate of 52 % with a final sample of 1564 respondents aged 18 plus.
Data was collected between November 2003 and March 2004 by the National Centre for
Social Research. See Thomson (2004) for the technical report.
4. The questionnaire aimed to include a range of items for each of several domains which earlier
accounts had identified as definitive elements of high and popular culture, some mainstream
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Warde 365
majority tastes and some specialised products associated with sub-cultures and the avant-garde.
Choice of items drew on focus group discussions and the advice of a panel of a dozen sociolo-
gists and arts professionals in order to obtain a coverage which was not biased towards particu-
lar social groups or interest constituencies. Selection was guided by common sense, previous
survey questions and earlier scholarly studies to compile a broad spread of cultural products andpractices which were symbolically significant and amenable to social interpretation.
5. For NS-SeC classification, see Pevalin and Rose, 2003.
6. The 40 items are necessarily highly selective and thus potentially open to criticism. (One
referee viewed the array as too general, another thought some of them too obscure.) Since
the survey was required to capture data relevant to many additional theoretical questions, the
materials available may be sub-optimal for the current specific objective. Arguably, never-
theless, they are fit for purpose, covering several different fields music, painting, cinema,
television and literature and varying in their popularity and accessibility. Although some
problems arise in interpretation of the statistical analysis because very few people like some
of the items, it would be theoretically perverse to exclude rare items.7. For instance, the types of question were not identical; it is a moot point whether ranking
heavy metal as 6 on a scale of 17 is an equivalent expression of dislike as saying that one
would not make a point of watching the Queens Christmas broadcast.
8. Because genres were much more readily disliked than were named items this might have
somewhat reduced the reliability of constructing a scale which includes both. While certainly
dislikes of genres much augmented scores on this scale, other exercises on products and gen-
res separately provided even less interpretable solutions.
9. This is a procedure or type of regression recommended for count data as a dependent vari-
able, that is, integers with no negative values. This method implies using a Poisson distribu-
tion and the log (natural logarithm) as the link function (Gujarati, 2003).10. That omnivorousness is not the explanation for the small number of aversions among the non-
white ethnic category is suggested by the fact that they also reported many fewer likes.
11. Further possibilities include that the dominant group likes legitimate items and is indifferent
to all else, and that the subordinate groups likes very few legitimate or unauthorized items
(univorousness). It is not possible that the subordinate group should like both legitimate and
unauthorised items for then they would be indistinguishable from omnivores.
12. So, 225 respondents reported liking science fiction books. 102 of the 366 with degrees (28 per
cent) expressed a liking, as did 59 of the 419 without qualifications (14.2 per cent). I.e. of all
who liked science fiction 28 % held degrees, while 14.2% had no qualifications, a ratio of 1.97.
(It follows that 58 per cent of those liking science fiction had intermediate qualifications.)13. Although this procedure does not circumvent all objections, it escapes circularity (insofar as a
respondents qualifications are not subsequently introduced to explain preferences for legiti-
mate items) and also avoids simply using personal prejudices or out-of-date understandings
about the prestige of cultural items.
14. Recall that legitimacy is defined by likes.
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Alan Warde is Professor of Sociology in the School of Social Sciences at the University ofManchester. His research interests include the sociologies of consumption, culture and stratifica-
tion. Recent publications include Culture, Class, Distinction (Routledge, 2009), written with Tony
Bennett, Mike Savage, Elizabeth Silva, Modesto Gayo-Cal and David Wright, and Cultural
Analysis and the Legacy of Bourdieu: settling accounts and developing alternatives, (Routledge,
2010), co-edited with Elizabeth Silva.
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