The Omnivore Debate: An Article Review

van Eijk, Koen and John Lievens. 2008. “Cultural Omnivorousness as a Combination of Highbrow, Pop, and Folk Elements: The Relation Between Taste Patterns and Attitudes Concerning Social Integration.” Poetics 36. 217-242.

While most scholars acknowledge the elusiveness that the term “culture” invokes, perhaps even more tenuous is the understanding of preferential taste of particular aspects of culture (i.e., taste in music, art, etc.). Certainly if it were easy enough to ask a group of people, “What do you like? And why do you like it?” there would be little—or at least, far less—debate on the subject; however, this is, of course, not the case. As Bennett, et al. (2009) emphasize in Culture, Class, Distinction, individuals have a difficult time explaining why they like or dislike something, often falling back on familiar responses such as, “It’s just not for me” and “Don’t ask me to explain” (67-68).
Along this vein of thought runs a debate so muddled that it is almost too easy to become lost in the mires of densely thick hypotheses and terminologies; I am, of course, referring to the debate of the culture omnivore. On the most basic level, the culture omnivore is a member of society whom indiscriminately devours a variety of music, art forms, mass media, and more; however, for this brief overview we will focus on the musical omnivore, one whose palate seems insatiable for a wide breadth of genres, from pop to classical to opera to folk. As positively open-minded as this seems, the omnivore debate revolves around the notion of upper class, highbrow snobbery being abandoned in favor of the ever-inclusive attitude, or, put bluntly, it is no longer in vogue to be a musical snob.
Inasmuch, Koen van Eijk and John Lievens delve into the omnivore debate head-on. The combination of van Eijk’s background in cultural studies as an associate professor in the Department of Art and Culture Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands, and Lievens’s, an associate professor at the Department of Sociology of Ghent University in Belgium, experience in cultural studies and research methods proves advantageous to this collaborative study; indeed, their previous research on the subject of the cultural omnivore as well as cultural consumption is made clear in text as well as in their extensive reference page, as both authors’ previous writings on the subject are cited in this piece. It is this that, rather than enhancing the reading, detracts from it overall.
Contrary to what one would expect, the authors’ well-versed familiarity with their subject weakens the text by eliminating most, if not all, accessibility to outsiders with fresh or new perspectives. Van Eijk and Lievens are so comfortable with their study that they assume anyone reading their work is actually already a cultural scholar. Without the context of their previous works as well as that of other scholar’s works, one would easily be lost in the density of the text. I find this to be incredibly unfortunate as it is nigh impossible to share the contents of this article with friends, family, or colleagues who have no prior knowledge of the cultural omnivore debate or van Eijk’s and Lievens’s previous works, and thus this knowledge will likely remain confined to a particular group of scholars. However, accessibility of information is not van Eijk’s and Lievens’s purpose in writing this piece. Rather, the duo’s intention is to “move the discussion about the cultural omnivore ahead” by differentiating different types of omnivores and by estimating “taste patterns...and attitudes concerning social integration” (2008: 218). The two scholars attempt to accomplish this by first breaking up taste patterns (what one likes or prefers) into three separate “cultural schemes” or culture-oriented categories: highbrow, pop, and folk, and, as such, an individual can then be defined as a culture omnivore when his or her taste pattern includes interests from more than one culture scheme (218). With the culture omnivore operationalized, van Eijk and Lievens move to discern the role that omnivorous cultural consumption plays in social integration and the maintenance of social networks. The authors focus on six attitudes related to social integration to infer the social implications that result from individuals falling into one or many combinations of the aforementioned culture schemes. The six attitudes are explained in full on page 225, but in short are listed as: utilitarian individualism, solidarity, social disorientation, social isolation, expressive individualism, and communitarianism.
To be sure, van Eijk and Lievens believe that by focusing on the people’s attitudes of others and society based on taste pattern and culture scheme categorization, they can better explore the different social implications that result from being a specific type of omnivore (i.e., one who likes pop-highbrow rather than highbrow-folk, etc.). They describe this quite aptly as on page 219 as follows: “different ways of being a cultural omnivore are expected to have different social implications, or reflect different attitudes”. Moreover, with the attitudes defined, the two authors go on to describe culture schemes. These are categorized as highbrow, folk, and pop, or high culture scheme, trivial scheme, and excitement scheme respectively (219) and are further defined as follows:
Highbrow: philosophy of ”perfection,” contemplative, cognitive mode of restrained and concentrated enjoyment, cultivated (221).
Folk: the harmony milieu; adhering to tradition, striving for harmony, keen to avoid eccentricity; outside world as dangerous, and must find hiding place (222).
Pop: entertainment milieu is all about fun; ego-centric; people attempt to adapt the world to their own personal needs rather than trying to conform to a pre-given set of norms and values; narcissism, spontaneity, stimulation, anti-conventionalism; little concern for perfection or safety. (223)

With these definitions as guidelines for use and application of the cultural schemes, the study is set and the results can only be interpreted as far as their defined boundaries allow. Even van Eijk and Lievens admit that this is a “limited operationalization” (239).
Other societies whose folk music does not succumb to anti-eccentricism or fear of the outside world as being dangerous, cannot possibly fit within this model, and this point is made even more blatant when the authors finally reveal that their study is isolated to Flanders (a Dutch-speaking part of northern Belgium) (227) and popular Flemish music and chansons are definitive categories in their survey data. Already, many countries are excluded from participating in this study’s application, and any readers following van Eijk’s and Lievens writings up until now will be surprised to find that these results are isolated to Flanders (it’s not mentioned until half-way through the article).
Van Eijk and Lievens, however, do attempt to reconcile their study’s limitations by encouraging further studies of combinations of cultural schemes as they are “more informative than studying isolated effects of involvement in highbrow, folk, or pop culture” and admitting that “one might be disappointed that we did not explain anything in this study” (240), for I can undeniably say I am a bit disappointed.
In conclusion, the two scholars finish with a criticism that at the very least this proves that we must study cultural tastes in terms of actual patterns and that prevailing dichotomies like highbrow-lowbrow or omnivore-univore do not suffice if we want to understand what kind of people exist (241). I appreciated this affirmation, as Peterson and Kern manage to avoid dichotomizing their categories of snobbishness and omnivorousness in their accessible article by describing the antithetical relationship between the two. Their description is less a model made up of mutually exclusive categories and more a scale in which individuals fall along the path existing between the Snob and the Omnivore. In this respect, one may be more or less snobbish than another while still being relatively open to a mix of musical genres. Understanding the dissonant relationship between exclusivity and inclusivity lays the foundation to better understand the cultural shift in highbrow taste.

Additional References
Bennett, Tony, Mike Savage, Elizabeth Silva, Alan Warde, Modesto Gayo-Cal, and David Wright. 2009. Culture, Class, Distinction. NY: Routledge.

Peterson, Richard A. and Roger M. Kern. 1996. “Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore.” American Sociolgical Review 61.