ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ‘middle space of lifestyles’ as revealed through the analysis of the Australian Cultural Fields survey results. It does so in part by drawing on recent scholarship from the field of middlebrow studies, bringing such work into dialogue with the sociology of art and culture. Bourdieu addresses la culture moyenne, usually translated as ‘middlebrow culture’, in a number of works focused on cultural production or cultural consumption, the latter especially in Distinction in his analyses of petit-bourgeois cultural dispositions. Despite these leads, cultural sociology has focused on the relations between ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ or ‘popular’ cultural profiles rather than the middle space of lifestyles; and where the middlebrow has been acknowledged there has been little attention to the history of the term or its specific configurations. This chapter examines the particular structures of cultural preferences and practices within the middle space and its relation to social class and other socio-demographic variables. It defines a distinct middlebrow zone within the broader middle space of lifestyles.
