Jongeren en cultuur. Een verklaring voor verschillen in deelname aan elitaire en populaire cultuur

Samenvatting

Youth and culture. An explanation of differences in highbrow and popular cultural participation. Summary: This paper examines whether theories explaining adult participation in highbrow culture can be useful in examining the participation of youth in highbrow as well as popular culture. Three approaches are considered useful: cultural participation as the processing of information, as a means to distinguish oneself from others and, finally, as a way to spend time and money. Using data collected in 1998 we find that although the presented theories are useful in explaining cultural participation of youth, they differ in the extent to which they explain differences between the participation in highbrow and lowbrow culture. The capacity to process information affects the participation in highbrow as well as lowbrow culture. Distinction seems to be related to highbrow culture and time and money is only of interest to youth when it comes to popular cultural participation.