Page 106 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

The omnivore thesis 97

wearing Converse trainers and Prime Minister Tony Blair proclaimed his rock
and roll past. This leads Peterson and Kern (1996) to the general conclusion
that: ‘As highbrow snobbishness fits the needs of the earlier entrepreneurial
upper-middle class, there also seems to be an elective affinity between today’s
new business-administrative class and omnivorousness’ (p. 906).
In his earlier statements of the omnivore/univore thesis, Peterson tended
to focus on the omnivore and the explanation for the trend towards the pre-
sence of omnivores in the dominant sections of society. This meant that there
was relative neglect of the univores. This aspect of culture was addressed by
Bryson (1997).
Bryson’s consideration of univores is built on an earlier discussion where
she examined taste through the important idea that as well as considering
what forms people say that they like, attention should be paid to what they say
that they dislike (Bryson 1996). This is important, as it potentially adds a finer
grain to some of the discussions that focus on what people say they like.
Thus in this study, Bryson shows that while there is an increased tolerance
of the type that Peterson demonstrates through the omnivore thesis, there
are limits as there are forms of culture that will not be tolerated. Thus, as she
summarizes:
I find that highly educated people in the United States are more music-
ally tolerant, but not indiscriminately so. I provide evidence of class-
based exclusion in that the genres most disliked by tolerant people are
those most appreciated by people with the lowest levels of education.
(Bryson 1996: 895)
Again this study was based on musical taste and the four most disliked
genres were rap, heavy metal, country and gospel music. These were forms that
are ‘most strongly associated with low education’ (p. 895). In continuity with
this discussion, Bryson examined dislikes further. Her argument is that what
she found confirms the idea of the univore initially discussed by Peterson.
Thus she argues that:
Lower status cultures are more likely than high status cultures to be
defined around race, ethnicity, religious conservatism and geographic
region. Musical dislikes are significantly more likely to be patterned
around these identities at lower levels of education than they are other-
wise.
(Bryson 1997: 149)
While these findings are significant, Bryson argues that much more
needed to be done to refine the understandings that had initially been
theorized in the omnivore/univore thesis.

The omnivore thesis: wider applications and development
of explanations
As Peterson and Anand (2004) show, the omnivore thesis has been subject to
further investigation in a number of ways and in different countries. This has
led to some refinement of the thesis as well as further examination of the