Omnivore Vs The Univore

Cultural tastes differ from person to person, however, it has been the aim of many sociologists to try and identify a pattern or trend between cultural tastes means of social stratification, such as class. Cultural tastes can span a wide range of different activities and products, such as art, literature, and dance. However, music is most suited for the purposes of this essay as it has been widely studied and allows us to see a wide range of contrasting alternatives in the context of class (Peterson & Kern, 1996). In addition to this, the notion of different social classes and what is meant by a social class will be lightly discussed to give some background understanding of what is referred to in this essay. However, the focus of this essay …show more content…
This theory originates from the Peterson and Simkies analysis of a survey on musical tastes than was carried out between the years of 1982 and 1992 (Peterson & Kern, 1996). It sets out to show that Omnivores are high status groups which participate in a diverse range of leisure activities (in this context listen to a range of musical genres), whereas, univores are lower status groups that only participate in one or a few leisure activities (Peterson, 2015). Therefore, suggesting that lower classes have more limited cultural tastes, whilst higher classes have more diverse cultural tastes. Moreover, this would suggest a blending of class tastes as higher classes would consume some of the same culture (music) as lower classes in order to have a more diverse and omnivorous set of tastes. This may be difficult to conceptualise due to the presumption of higher class people being ‘snobs’, however, only 3 out of 11,321 people surveyed in 1992 were found to be ‘true’ snobs (not liking any form of middle or low brow music) (Peterson & Kern, 1996). Furthermore, they found that the people considered highbrow consumed 1.74 out of 5 lowbrow genres in 1982, but in 1992 this rose to 2.23/5 lowbrow genres. This suggests evidence for a growing trend in omniverousness. Although, there is a possibility of it being just a period effect rather than a greater trend, which would limit its effect as a valid theory (Peterson & Kern, 1996). But, overall, this theory does provide good evidence for a trend towards an omnivore and univore method of consumption. Therefore, showing that the cultural tastes of those in different social classes differs by the range of their cultural