Page 100 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

The omnivore thesis 91

ones that were being brought together in ways that might have been seen as
contradictory, and that such forms were associated with specific social groups,
investigation of such an idea is on the face of it perfectly possible. There was an
idea then that as part of cultural change the middle class was associated with
the bringing together in often contradictory ways forms of culture that had
previously been separated or associated with different groups. Most import-
antly, it was suggested that the boundaries between high and popular culture
were being breached by the way in which sectors of the middle class were
consuming both in ways that were new.
A significant paradox is that at the same time as this idea had gained
some currency in some of the discussions around postmodernism, research
was actually proceeding and being published that can be seen as examining
some of these processes. This was the work that falls under the rubric of the
omnivore thesis, which I introduced very briefly in an earlier chapter of this
book. In my view this is therefore a significant intervention in the debate
about cultural fragmentation in the broad sense and one of the reasons for
my focus on it in this chapter stems from this view. However, there is another
reason behind this analysis, as the idea and the research that has been carried
out on it combine some of the key social and cultural processes that
have been my focus in this book. Thus, as I will consider in this chapter the
process of fragmentation and recombination of cultural forms that is
involved in the omnivore thesis can be seen to involve processes of belong-
ing, distinguishing and individualizing that have been key themes of my
analysis. I will return to this theme during the course of my discussion in this
chapter.
My analysis will proceed in the following way. First, I discuss in some
detail the omnivore idea and the evidence for it. This will involve consider-
ation of the context for the idea and the relationship between the idea of the
omnivore and the univore that is an important part of the thesis. After charac-
terizing the thesis I will consider initially the broader implications of the thesis
in terms of what it means in terms of processes of social exclusion and distinc-
tion. This will lead me to discussion of the development of the omnivore thesis
and how research that has been carried out to consider the thesis has led to
revision of its claims. I will look at this through the following themes. First,
there is the way that the thesis has been applied and investigated in societies
other than the USA (where it originated). Second, I will consider how the
thesis has been examined in a range of areas of cultural taste. Third, I will have
more to say on the nature of the processes of distinction that are part of the
omnivore thesis. Finally, I will consider the idea that the omnivore thesis can
help to characterize forms of everyday talk about culture that intertwine pro-
cesses of belonging, distinguishing and individualizing in important ways. I
should say that for economy of exposition I adopt a similar approach in this
chapter to that in other parts of the book. This means that I will often use a key
study to exemplify an approach or important point rather than seeking to
review all the studies that make the point. I have adopted this stance to make
this discussion as ‘punchy’ as possible and to seek to illuminate as clearly as I
can the key themes of my analysis.