ABSTRACT
Unlike other chapters in this volume, which take up a position of examining network structure on music performing communities, here the chapter diverts away somewhat from this approach and investigates music consumption of everyday people. While retaining a network focused approach, this chapter seeks to determine how resources embedded in networks (social capital) facilitate and constrain music behaviour. We do this by examining how social networks impact upon cultural omnivorousness (Peterson 1992). Cultural omnivorousness continues to attract our attention. In 2005 Richard Peterson published an article in Poetics reviewing the considerable literature showing the emergence of the cultural omnivore, since its discovery in 1992 (Peterson and Simkus 1992). It is now generally acknowledged that a shift has occurred in cultural consumption patterns of the middle and upper classes, essentially from Bourdieu’s (1984) theoretical position. Where once the tastes and preferences of these groups were based around ridged rules of exclusion (Bourdieu 1984), now they are said to be structured on an openness to appreciate a variety of culture from the high and popular genres (Bennett et al. 2010). Even those scholars most aligned with Bourdieu, therefore by definition subtly positioned against the apparent omnivore-univore framework (as proposed by Peterson and Kern 1996) concede that findings suggest a growing omnivorous nature of consumption among those highest in social positions, but this does not rule out distinction through culture, just an alternative mechanism (Warde et al. 2008; Warde and Gayo-Cal 2009; Bennett et al. 2010; Savage and Gayo-Cal 2011). The omnivorousness literature now spans much of Europe, Australia, North America and countries in South America and the Middle East (Alderson et al. 2007; Torche 2007; Van Rees et al. 1999; Van Eijck 2000; 2001). These studies have established that omnivorousness is related to high status (Chan and Goldthorpe 2005; 2007); class and education (Peterson and Simkus 1992; Peterson and Kern 1996; Sintas and Alvarez 2002, 2004; Chan and Goldthorpe 2007; Tampubolon 2008; Bryson 1996; Erickson 1996; Van Eijck 1999); gender and age (Erickson 1996; Van Eijck 2001; Sintas and Alvarez 2002; Warde and Gayo-Cal 2009; Widdop and Cutts 2013; Stichele and Laermans 2006; Van Eijck 2000); and place (Widdop and Cutts; 2012).
