Cultural omnivorousness as a combination of highbrow, pop, and folk elements: The relation between taste patterns and attitudes concerning social integration

This article attempts to move the discussion about the cultural omnivore ahead in two ways. Firstly, different types of omnivores will be discerned. To this end, we use a well-known division of the cultural field into three distinct cultural schemes: highbrow, pop, and folk. Seeing omnivorousness as an engagement in elements from at least two of these schemes, we can logically identify a number of combinatorial taste patterns and thereby distinguish between different types of cultural omnivores. Secondly, the relations between different types of omnivorousness and attitudes concerning social integration are estimated. We focus on the question whether these attitudes are related to breadth of taste, to characteristics of the specific schemes constituting a taste pattern, or to both. The results indicate that participating in a specific scheme is generally more strongly related to social integration than breadth of taste, although relations with participation in a specific scheme may depend on whether or not one participates in other schemes as well.