Out of tune: How people understand social exclusion at concerts

Previous work has studied the exclusive nature of legitimate cultural contexts, such as art museums and classical concerts. I offer a more comprehensive view by considering social exclusion in cultural settings varying in terms of legitimacy and by studying how people differ in their understanding of social exclusion (that is, criteria used to draw social boundaries demarcating certain cultural settings as inappropriate for some people). I scrutinize the centrality of modes of consumption in these understandings of social exclusion. Using survey data representative for the Flemish population (n = 3144), I inductively analyse attitudes towards classical and pop/rock concerts. I uncover four understandings of social exclusion that are present with regard to both types of concerts. Theseu nderstandings differ (a) in whether they stem from an insiders’ or outsiders’ perspective and (b) in how they use modes of consumption as criteria for social exclusion. Additionally, I find that people’s understanding of social exclusion—i.e., which criteria people consider relevant for social exclusion—drives what cultural contexts they perceive as socially exclusive.

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