Social Distribution of Consuming Patterns (A Study of Artistic Tastes in Tehran)

In contemporary societies, Socio-cultural transformations with theoretical developments in sociology have been dealt with consumption as an important topic of sociological research. However, it seems that consumption of cultural and artistic goods and productions, due to their generality and more accessibility, has more importance for study of social distinctions and cultural changes. Cultural goods and productions are considered to be the basic elements of cultural system. Therefore, these goods and productions, in part, can determine and represent some aspects of general cultural tendencies and cultural changes. In addition, increasing expansion of mass media has facilitated access to cultural products. As a result, people allocate more time to their leisure activities related to these goods and productions. It seems that the realm of cultural consumption is the realm which is free from economic determination. Therefore, investigation on consumption patterns in the realm of artistic and cultural goods and productions is a suitable and useful way for studying and identifying social and cultural changes and their probable directions.
This article presents distribution of artistic tastes among various Tehranian social groups and citizens. Theoretically, the article is based on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and postmodern theorists such as Scott Lash and John Urry. Bourdieu argues that taste differences among people are derived from their social position. In other words, there are certain types of direct relationship between social position and artistic tastes. Taste is the outcome of structures’ reflection in individual’s habitudes. Postmodern theories emphasize actor’s free choices. Postmodern theorists believe that consuming choices are free from structural factors and individual’s class position.
The main hypothesis of this research is that “artistic tastes of individuals in a society are subjected to their social status, and then, is arranged according to class hierarchy atmosphere”.
Methodologically, this is a survey research in which multistage cluster sampling has been used for selection of subjects. The data have been collected through questionnaire among 410 citizens of Tehran between ages of 15 to 45.
According to the findings of this research, there are no significant relations between artistic tastes and such variables as age, gender, ethnicity and job. One of the most important outcomes of this matter is instability between high culture and popular culture boundaries. Furthermore, the boundaries between real, fantasy, news, and amusement would disappear. This is true, especially in cultural consumption models. Findings of this research show that there is some kind of mixture and eclecticism in consuming patterns of artistic and cultural commodities. This mixture is a witness to rejecting of cylindrical social entity of cultural tastes and structural affinity. Therefore, the postmodern ideas about polarization of everyday activities can be confirmed. But, we don’t think that this mixture is derived from postmodern tendencies. We argue that this is caused by the fact that – as Bourdieu puts it – existing fields in Iran’s social space are not autonomous, but their internal rules impose them by another field, that is, power. This leads to discordance and lack of harmony in individual’s actions in general, and in patterns of cultural consumptions in particular. But, this is only an assumption and its confirmation or rejection requires more researches and profound reflections.