The multiplicity of highbrow culture: Taste boundaries among the new upper middle class
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The goal ofthis chapter is to question this observed eclecticism - or 'omnivorousness', in \nthe expression popularized by R.A. Peterson - in light of the results of a study I conducted in \nQuebec (Canada) on art lovers and cultural consumers among the upper middle class.2 One \nof the principal objectives of this inquiry was precisely to study the relation between professional \nand cultural worlds: In what ways does professional status determine one's cultural \nsphere? And up to what point do these two worlds cohere? Another equally important objective \nwas to establish for this population the criteria considered relevant in matters of taste: \nIs the long-standing high/low distinction the most determining factor in the expression of \ntaste, or do other classificatory schemes play a more significant role? This led to an exploration \nof a double complexity: that of the cultural uni verse of the elite, which is actually far more heterogeneous than one may assume a prfori; and that of the multiplicity of syrnbolic \n01arkers that underlie the process of taste legitinùzation. In this chapter, I first turn to this \nquestion of eclecticism and omnivorousness among the new elite classes. Next, 1 prescnt the \nprincipal variations from the cultural universe of the study's sample with regard to participants' \naffiliations with different professional spheres. Making a connection between taste and \nsocial status leads to an analysis of two difficulties that arise from this effort. The first relates \nto the intcrference surrounding the true social status of participants, given the complexity \noftheir occupational and lifc trajectories; the second concerns the bhtrring ofhigh/low distinction, \nbased on the abundance of classificatory schemes used by the participants to define \nand justify their preferences for certain cultural 'items' inside their repertoires of taste. The \nanalysis of this double complexity ultimately allows revealing the multiple meanings assumed \nby cultural eclecticism today.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".