Arts Participation as Social Capital in the United States,
1982-2002: Signs of Decline
Working Paper #33, Spring 2004
Paul DiMaggio and Toqir Mukhtar ABSTRACT We
analyzed Surveys of Public Participation in the Arts for 1982,
1992, and 2002 to see if trends in U.S. arts attendance are
consistent with the perception of many sociologists of culture
that the role of the arts as cultural capital is in decline. From
a Bourdieuian perspective, a dramatic deflation in the value of
the arts as cultural capital (the “meltdown scenario”) would
manifest itself in (1) large declines in high-culture arts
participation rates (2) especially among the youngest cohorts that
(3) are not evident in participation in middlebrow activities and
(4) are concentrated among groups for whom cultural capital is
most important, i.e. (4a) highly educated people and (4b) women.)
Results are mixed. Trend data are not consistent with the
meltdown scenario, but do suggest change in the position of
different arts genres within cultural capital and ongoing
attrition in the audience for many of the arts. Consistent with
the decline perspective, younger cohorts attendance rates have
fallen for most high-culture performing-arts attendance
activities. (Because college attendance increased in the 1960s,
the decline is not visible in the middle cohorts until one
disaggregates by education level.) In contrast to the decline
perspective, however, declines are as bad or worse for several
middlebrow cultural activities; attendance rates for art museums
and jazz concerts have increased; and rates have declined more
slowly for women and college graduates than for others. Two
changes are evident: first, greater elite and general interest in
the visual arts and jazz and less in classical music, ballet, and
theatre (trends consistent with Peterson’s “omnivore theory,”
aspects of postmodern theory, and the notion that the content of
cultural capital evolves over time); and, second, gradual decline
among almost all age/gender/education groups in rates of
attendance at live cultural events broadly defined, probably
reflecting greater competition from at-home entertainment options
and changes in population composition and family structure.
A version of this paper can be found in
Poetics, Volume 32, Issue 2, 169-194, April 2004). The paper
is available online at
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0304422X
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