Tag Archives | Distinction

From Metallica to Mozart: Mapping the Cultural Hierarchy of Lifestyle Activities

Mads Meier Jæger, Mikkel Haderup Larsen

Sociological Science April 12, 2024
10.15195/v11.a15


Theories of cultural stratification argue that a widely shared cultural hierarchy legitimizes status differences and inequality. Yet, we know little about this hierarchy empirically. To address this limitation, we collected survey data in Denmark and asked respondents to rate the implied social rank of 60 activities, genres, and objects belonging to six lifestyle domains (music, food, performing arts, leisure, sport, and literature). We use ratings of social rank to infer about the cultural hierarchy, arguing that higher ratings imply higher perceived status. First, respondents link activities often considered highbrow (e.g., opera, caviar, and golf) with higher social rank than activities often considered lowbrow (e.g., heavy metal, nuggets, and boxing), suggesting that a cultural hierarchy exists. Second, ratings of implied social rank differ little by respondents’ objective and subjective socioeconomic position, suggesting that the cultural hierarchy is widely shared. Third, respondents bundle the 60 activities in a perceived highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow lifestyle, suggesting that “brows” are salient in distinguishing lifestyles. Overall, our results support the idea that a cultural hierarchy exists.
Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Mads Meier Jæger: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: mmj@soc.ku.dk

Mikkel Haderup Larsen: Department of Sociology, University of Copenhagen
E-mail: mhl@soc.ku.dk

Acknowledgements: We have presented earlier versions of this article at the 2023 ECSR conference in Prague, the RC28 Spring Meeting in Paris, the 2023 CEPDISC Conference in Aarhus, and at seminars at the University of Utrecht, University of Copenhagen, the Danish National Centre for Social Research, the Rockwool Foundation, and the European Commission. We thank participants at these events for constructive comments. The research presented in this article was funded by the Carlsberg Foundation (grant number CF21-325) and the Rockwool Foundation (grant number 934121, “Lifestyle Discrimination and Inequality”).

Supplemental Material

Replication Package: All data used are publicly available at https://osf.io/y9hiq/ and https://osf.io/kaqi5/. A replication package with R code is available at https://osf.io/j5wxu/

  • Citation: Jæger, Mads Meier, and Mikkel Haderup Larsen. 2024. “From Metallica to Mozart: Mapping the Cultural Hierarchy of Lifestyle Activities.” Sociological Science 11: 413-438.
  • Received: November 21, 2023
  • Accepted: March 4, 2024
  • Editors: Arnout van de Rijt, Stephen Vaisey
  • DOI: 10.15195/v11.a15


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