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This article first examines the role of the concept of generation in Pierre Bourdieu's work. It shows that Bourdieu's usage of the concept of generation varied throughout his œuvre and that Bourdieu seldom if ever used the concept in the same sense as Karl Mannheim and many subsequent sociologists who have understood generation as a potential source of identity and political mobilization. However, and second, the article argues that Bourdieu's sociology does have much to offer for the sociological study of generations, but only if we stop concentrating on those rare passages in which he explicitly used the word 'generation'. We should focus instead on his more general approach to the genesis of social groupings, classification struggles and the difficult relationships of representation. The application and extension of Bourdieu's ideas demonstrated here can provide a welcome antidote to so-called generationalism – a simplified and exaggerated picture of generations, which dates back to early 20th-century European intellectuals and which can still be found in today's popular discourses as well as in academic studies.

Cultural resources and assets inherited from one's family of origin can be an important source of social inequality. In Finland, research on the intergenerational transmission of cultural capital is very limited. To fill this gap, we ask whether there is an association between the cultural capital of parents and that of their children in Finland and, if so, how significant it is. We useda two-fold operationalization of cultural capital for respondents and their parents comprising educational attainment (institutionalized cultural capital) and interestedness or participation in highbrow culture (embodied cultural capital). Our multinomial logistic regression analysis of nationally representative survey data from 2007 (N=1,279) showed close links between respondents' cultural capital and that of their parents. Respondents' educational attainment was strongly influenced by their parents' education level but not their cultural interestedness; in contrast, respondents' cultural participation was influenced by both their parents' education and cultural interestedness.

Drawing on two projects which develop the methodological model of Bourdieu's Distinction in the UK and Finland, this paper explores the issues raised by the use of multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and mixed methods in comparative work on cultural tastes. By identifying the problems in the construction of two comparable yet nationally relevant research instruments, the paper considers the importance of the similarities and differences in the meaning of items in different national spaces for Bourdieu-inspired comparative analysis. The paper also reports on the evident similarities between the two constructed spaces and draws on the dialogue between quantitative and qualitative methods enabled by MCA in examining what different positions in social space appear to mean in these countries. It concludes by suggesting that, whilst Bourdieu's model provides a robust set of methods for exploring relations between taste and class within nations, when used appropriately, it can also provide particular insight for the comparison of national fields.

Over the last 10–15 years, Western societies have faced two interrelated social changes: the digitalization of media and the increase in socio-political polarization. While their relationship is causally reciprocal, population-level empirical studies focusing on over-time change remain scarce. We adopt the temporal perspective on the socio-political stratification of media usage in the context of Finland, one of the so-called Nordic media welfare states. We ask whether the ways in which media usage is socially stratified has changed from 2007 to 2018 and whether there is political polarization of media consumption. We draw on two nationally representative comparative surveys, collected in 2007 ( N = 1388) and 2018 ( N = 1425), and show that the main media usage patterns—the wide, the narrow, and the Internet-focused media repertoires—differ both in terms of their sociodemographic and political profiles and that the opposition between the wide and the narrow repertoires becomes increasingly polarized. ; publishedVersion ; Peer reviewed

Over the last 10–15 years, Western societies have faced two interrelated social changes: the digitalization of media and the increase in socio-political polarization. While their relationship is causally reciprocal, population-level empirical studies focusing on over-time change remain scarce. We adopt the temporal perspective on the socio-political stratification of media usage in the context of Finland, one of the so-called Nordic media welfare states. We ask whether the ways in which media usage is socially stratified has changed from 2007 to 2018 and whether there is political polarization of media consumption. We draw on two nationally representative comparative surveys, collected in 2007 ( N = 1388) and 2018 ( N = 1425), and show that the main media usage patterns—the wide, the narrow, and the Internet-focused media repertoires—differ both in terms of their sociodemographic and political profiles and that the opposition between the wide and the narrow repertoires becomes increasingly polarized.

Music and literature are analysed in terms of liking different cultural genres following a three-step analytical strategy. First, the distributions of likes/dislikes of different music and literary genres are examined. Second, we examined how the genres are interrelated. Third, we investigated how interrelating genres condensed into different taste patterns can be explained by five background variables: gender, age, education, income and residential area. In addition, there is a short analysis of the connections among taste patterns across the two cultural areas. The results suggest clear social differentiation in tastes, both in music and in literature, in Finland. Age and especially gender proved to be at least as important as education in explaining musical and literary taste patterns in general and highbrow tastes in particular. Three major correlations representing 'highbrow', 'popular folk' and 'popular action' tastes across the two cultural areas were found, indicating clear homologies between musical and literary taste.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of figures -- List of tables -- List of boxes -- Preface and acknowledgements -- 1 Introduction: newspapers and the study of changing cultural hierarchies -- Prologue: the day that sealed the status of rock as art? -- The themes of this book -- Aims and definitions -- Why study cultural change through newspapers? -- Cultural stratification: beyond the consumption/production divide -- Data and the comparative setting -- Approach and methods -- Outline of the book -- Part I: The shift in cultural legitimacy -- 2 The transformation: on the rise of popular culture and the decline of classical highbrow arts -- Introduction -- The opening up of legitimate culture: theoretical perspectives -- Comparative dimensions and expectations -- Towards increased heterogeneity? The persistent dominance of the most established arts -- Transformations inside the established arts: literature and music -- The decline of classical highbrow arts -- Conclusion -- 3 Both legitimization and popularization: how evaluations of pop-rockand classical music have become increasingly similar -- Introduction -- The concepts of legitimization and popularization -- An aesthetic dimension in the articles published in culture sections -- Legitimization and popularization: quantitative approach -- Legitimization of pop-rock -- Popularization of classical music -- The tension between artistic quality and commercial success in aesthetic evaluations -- Conclusion -- Part II: Dimensions of the transformation -- 4 Globalization: on the tension between national andinternational culture -- Introduction -- Perspectives on the globalization of culture -- Cultural globalization: quantitative approach -- Cultural globalization: qualitative approach -- Conclusion

Key debates of contemporary cultural sociology – the rise of the 'cultural omnivore', the fate of classical 'highbrow' culture, the popularization, commercialization and globalization of culture – deal with temporal changes. Yet, systematic research about these processes is scarce due to the lack of suitable longitudinal data. This book explores these questions through the lens of a crucial institution of cultural mediation – the culture sections in quality European newspapers – from 1960 to 2010. Starting from the framework of cultural stratification and employing systematic content analysis both quantitative and qualitative of more than 13,000 newspaper articles, Enter Culture, Exit Arts? presents a synthetic yet empirically rich and detailed account of cultural transformation in Europe over the last five decades. It shows how classifications and hierarchies of culture have changed in course of the process towards increased cultural heterogeneity. Furthermore, it conceptualizes the key trends of rising popular culture and declining highbrow arts as two simultaneous processes: the one of legitimization of popular culture and the other of popularization of traditional legitimate culture, both important for the loosening of the boundary between 'highbrow' and 'popular'. Through careful comparative analysis and illustrative snapshots into the specific socio-historical contexts in which the newspapers and their representations of culture are embedded – in Finland, France, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the UK – the book reveals the key patterns and diversity of European variations in the transformation of cultural hierarchies since the 1960s. The book is a collective endeavour of a large-scale international research project active between 2013 and 2018.