This article analyses the relationship between class structure and cultural consumption in modern societies. It deals with contemporary approaches to the relationship between culture and social class in the context of the sociology of culture, media studies, cultural studies and stratification studies. The article rejects the assumption that cultural preferences and practices are increasingly less likely to be structured along class lines. The authors argue that class differences still have clear cultural dimensions despite the empirically proven lessening distinction played by elite culture, and the ubiquity of popular culture. Strategies of symbolic distinction are therefore not disappearing but merely changing, yet at the same time they remain specific to the local environment. This article argues that although the relationship between social status and cultural practices and taste is complex and decoding strategies are not a simple function of an economically understood position within society, one can still find clearly defined class-cultural formations with the help of a historically specific understanding of cultural capital, even in societies where taxonomic boundaries between classes are weak (e.g. Slovenia). The authors illustrate their arguments with selected data from the Culture and Class empirical study conducted with the help of a questionnaire administered to 820 residents of Ljubljana and Maribor, the two biggest cities in Slovenia.
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