From different traditions, research in the field of sociology of cultural taste and consumption has argued that contemporary societies are symbolically stratified through cultural engagement. These theoretical frameworks differ mainly in their explanations of the mechanisms that shape the relationship between culture and social stratification. Motivated by concepts from Pierre Bourdieu, Richard A. Peterson, and other key scholars, this thesis is focused on addressing the relationship between music consumption and social stratification. Due to its peculiar characteristics, music provides a good illustration of how people, through cultural engagement, draw boundaries that symbolically differentiate social groups. Although literature in the area has made great progress, there are still theoretical and empirical gaps. It is possible to find some passionate views which deny the relevance of some operationalisations and methods over others (Wuggenig, 2007; Chan, 2010a). From a comparative point of view it is questioned whether different dimensions of cultural practices can deliver consistent results (Peterson, 2005; Purhonen, Gronow and Rahkonen, 2011; Yaish and Katz-Gerro, 2012). Research which focuses on comparisons between societies frequently lacks detailed theoretical conceptualisations regarding how cultural items are distributed in different social settings (Katz-Gerro, 2011; Purhonen and Wright, 2013). Other important gap in the literature is the lack of understanding about how technologies act as an element of social distinction (López-Sintas, Cebollada, Filimon and Gharhaman, 2014). The main objective of this research is therefore to review how research has defined and studied the relationship between culture and society across several perspectives and to offer new insights which significantly contribute to the advancement of knowledge of the sociology of cultural taste and consumption. This is motivation for the development of four research articles which use several quantitative methods to analyse survey data from Austria, England, Chile, Finland, Israel and Serbia. This thesis shows that musical engagement, regardless of how and where it is measured, remains socially stratified. Age is the primary stratifying factor for musical engagement, highlighting the distinction between popular music preferred by the younger age cohorts, and the classical or traditional music of the older. Both are reinforced by educational level and social class. Individuals displaying broader musical preferences are more likely to be in advantageous positions. This concurs with arguments about omnivorism as a manifestation of cultural homology in the classic Bourdieusian sense (Lizardo and Skiles, 2012). Thanks to the innovative analysis of available data and the use of more specific cultural indicators it is possible to elaborate research questions to address the study of musical engagement and its place in society, integrating research methods, theory of practices, local and global contexts, and technologies as salient analytical dimensions.

The thesis makes a contribution to the debate on the relationship between cultural consumption, cultural taste preferences and class. This field is well researched, but there is no consensus on the relationship between these variables. That cultural consumption is patterned by social status in society is one of the most fundamental insights of cultural sociology. Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction: A social criticism of the taste assessment (1984) is a central work in the field. Over time, however, Bourdieu's vision has come to be questioned by various empirical findings. The questioning comes, among other findings, from Peterson's (2005) coinage of the cultural omnivore. Defining the cultural omnivore is an increased range of cultural preferences and a will to mix hierarchical cultural preference boundaries. The purpose of the thesis was to fill some of the gaps described by earlier research and seek out how the relations take shape in a Swedish student context. The questions the essay sought to answer were; how does the relationship looks between cultural consumption and class among Swedish students; how does the cultural omnivore reason about his or her wide taste preference; is distinctions among cultural omnivores present and how does it look? Through Exploratory sequential mixed-method, 10 interviews were conducted to later develop a survey that sought to generate some of the results that emerged in the interviews. The result shows that distinction seems to prevail in how cultural products are consumed rather than what is consumed. No clear links between cultural capital and consumption patterns were demonstrated in the results of the survey. The interviews however showed a strong link between cultural capital and how something is consumed, understood and appreciated. / Denna uppsats gör ett inlägg i debatten om relationen mellan kulturell konsumtion, kulturella smakpreferenser och klass. Det aktuella fältet är väl beforskat, men det råder ingen konsensus kring relationen mellan dessa variabler. Att kulturell konsumtion är mönstrat av social ställning i samhället är en av de mest grundläggande insikterna i kultursociologi. Pierre Bourdieus Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste (1984) är ett centralt verk inom fältet. Med tiden har dock Bourdieus bild kommit att ifrågasättas av olika empiriska fynd. Ifrågasättandet kommer från bland annat Petersons (2005) myntande av den kulturella allätaren (the cultural omnivore). Vad som definierar den kulturella allätaren är en ökad bredd av kulturella preferenser och en vilja att blanda hierarkiska kulturella genregränser. Syftet var att fylla några av de luckor som beskrivits av annan forskning och söka hur det ser ut i en svensk studentkontext. Frågeställningarna uppsatsen sökte besvara var; hur ser relationen ut mellan kulturell konsumtion och klass bland svenska studenter; hur resonerar den kulturella allätaren kring sin breda smakpreferens; är särskiljning (distinction) bland kulturella allätare närvarande och hur ser den i så fall ut? Genom Exploratory sequential mixed-method genomfördes 10 intervjuer för att sedan utveckla en enkät som sökte generalisera några av de resultat som framkommit i intervjuerna. Resultatet pekar på att särskiljning främst tycks råda i hur man konsumerar kulturella produkter snarare än vad man konsumerar. Inga tydliga kopplingar mellan kulturellt kapital och konsumtionsmönster påvisades i enkäten. Intervjuerna påvisade dock en stark koppling mellan kulturellt kapital och hur något konsumeras, förstås och tas in.