ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the patterning of cultural life2 across seven fields – music, reading, visual arts, television, film, sport and eating out.3 We take a broad overview, partly to introduce issues addressed in greater detail in the later chapters. We examine how far cultural activities are distinguished from, or associated with, each other. We consider how far there are systematic homologies between different cultural fields. We also explore how far systematic cultural cleavages might be associated with the operation of cultural capital. In addressing these concerns, this introductory analysis also serves as an overture to the arguments that we return to, and finesse, as the book progresses. Rather than a divide between high and popular culture, we find a primary cleavage between those who appear culturally active and engaged in a wide range of activities, and those who seem relatively detached with a more limited range of cultural interests and activities. We demonstrate that this overlaps with class and educational inequalities.We also bring out the significance of age and gender for the structuring of cultural life.
