ABSTRACT
Focusing on the Australian Cultural Fields survey data and household interviews relating to the Australian music field, this chapter develops three main lines of argument. First, we consider the light thrown on the historical dynamics of cultural capital formation by the relations between age, education and class, on the one hand, and the temporal coding of the survey items relating to the music field (particularly musical works, composers and performers) on the other. Second, we show how looking at the relations between genre preferences and indicators of varying degrees of participation in different kinds of musical events lends a sharper edge to the relations between musical preferences and practices of distinction than is allowed for by the cultural omnivore and cultural eclecticism theses. Third, we consider the respects in which the evidence of our interviews with survey participants reveals not a singular form of eclecticism but a diversity of eclectic tastes shaped by the position that the interviewees occupy in relation to different musical times.
