Poetics 32 (2004) 105127 www.elsevier.

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A network approach to the puzzle of womens cultural participation

Danielle Kane*
Department of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6299, USA

Abstract This exploratory paper examines the interpenetration of gender and social networks in predicting cultural consumption. The analyses use original data collected by the author on 421 students, American and foreign, at an elite university. In general, network density is associated with participation in solidarity-producing activities and heterogeneity is associated with increased high culture participation. However, network variables, especially network diversity, emerge as much better predictors of womens cultural participation than of mens. I conclude by suggesting that women may use cultural participation to draw symbolic boundaries against men as well as against women from other network structures. # 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.

1. Introduction According to Bourdieu (1984), distinction is a key organizing principle of human relations; dominant groups seek to maintain and legitimate their privilege by distinguishing themselves from lower-status groups. In democratic and capitalist societies, the boundaries are symbolic but have causal force; access to higher social and professional circles is granted or restricted according to an individuals cultural capital, or knowledge of the culture and mores of the dominant class. A main focus of Bourdieus work is how cultural consumption practices reect and uphold these boundaries. An important critique of Bourdieus work is that he paid insucient attention to social connections (Erickson, 1996). Although individuals distinguish themselves from others based on group membership (usually social classes for Bourdieu), he did not address the role of personal networks, even though these networks are an
* Correspondence to: Department of Sociology, 113 McNeil, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6299, USA. E-mail address: dkane@ssc.upenn.edu (D. Kane). 0304-422X/$ - see front matter # 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V. doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2004.02.003

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important source of cultural resources (Erickson, 1996). A social network approach can explore how the properties of a group aect members cultural resources and shifts attention to the dynamics of symbolic boundary formation. Focusing on dynamics could improve our ability to test Bourdieus theory outside its original context. Currently these applications can become stymied by questions of the importance of high culture per se for Bourdieus theory (e.g., Holt, 1997; Lamont and Lareau, 1988). An understanding of dynamics, even if developed in the context of understanding high culture participation, could be generalized to examine stratication based on any cultural content and could lead to new questions about the symbolic boundary formation process. Some work has begun to explore links between social network characteristics and cultural preferences (Relish, 1997; Erickson, 1996). Although in its early stages and relying on proxy network indicators, this work has shown promising connections between networks and culture that heighten the desire for conceptual renement and greater precision in measuring network characteristics. In this exploratory paper, I will use a social network approach to explore the relatively well-established, yet poorly understood puzzle of womens cultural participation. As distinct from dominated racial and class subgroups (Hall, 1992; Lamont and Lareau, 1988; Horowitz, 1983; Hebdige, 1979) women appear to assign more legitimacy to high culture and consume greater levels than do men, the dominant group (Bryson, 1996; DiMaggio and Mohr, 1983; DiMaggio, 1982; Bihagen and Katz-Gerro, 2000); this trend was even noted occasionally by Bourdieu himself (1984, p.108). Yet some work suggests that women actually receive less return than men on their greater high culture investment (Robinson and Garnier, 1985). Therefore, women may be less able to transform cultural capital into economic capital, and womens greater participation cannot be traced to class alone. How, then, do women use culture to draw symbolic boundaries? A social network approach could demonstrate its usefulness to our understanding of symbolic boundaries by giving new insight into the gendered dynamics of cultural participation. To demonstrate the utility of a network approach we must rst establish whether calculated network measures are associated with patterns in cultural participation. We can then consider whether these measures can shed light on womens greater cultural participation.

2. Networks and cultural participation Linking networks with cultural participation requires a consideration of the possible mechanisms that would underlie this linkage. Research on networks and culture thus far has focused on network heterogeneity (Erickson, 1996; Relish, 1997). This paper attempts to provide a more comprehensive picture of network eects on cultural participation by building on the heterogeneity research as well as outlining the role of network density. Network heterogeneity measures the diversity of persons in a respondents network; it implies integration into several spheres of society and is considered

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advantageous for information-gathering (Marsden, 1987: 124). Sociologists of culture have linked network heterogeneity to cultural omnivorousness, (Peterson and Simkus, 1992; Relish, 1997; Erickson, 1996), or the consumption of a wide variety of culture, both high and popular. This initial evidence for an eect of networks on culture heightens the desire for greater precision in examining this linkage. Culture-network studies are limited by a lack of calculated network heterogeneity scores, relying instead on proxy measures.1 Moreover, to my knowledge, no attention has been given to the relationship between network density and cultural consumption. Finally, Ericksons (1996) operationalization of cultural consumption has been challenged for its focus on sheer acquaintance with cultural genres. Something so easily acquired precludes acquaintance as a form of capital. What allows entrance into the social circles of cultural elites is not simple recognition of specic restaurants, sports stars, or books, but the ability to sustain detailed conversations that are predicated upon the ability to enjoy (i.e. decode) dicult. . .cultural objects (Holt, 1997: 106). A more rigorous test will therefore examine network eects on actual participation rather than cultural familiarity. In sum, a useful theory of networks and culture that can inform our understanding of symbolic boundaries will use direct, calculated measures of heterogeneity and density on cultural participation. 2.1. Heterogeneity Heterogeneity has been valued in the business environment for channeling professionally strategic information to those in diverse networks (Granovetter, 1973; Campbell et al., 1986). The implication of this nding is that heterogeneity increases exposure to less-readily accessible information; dierent types of people tap into a greater number and variety of networks and act as conduits of information from sources otherwise removed from ego (Granovetter, 1973). In our case, we are interested in exposure to cultural information, and high culture is generally less visible and less accessible than popular culture. For instance, the majority of television and radio stations broadcast popular culture material and very little high culture programming. Like the Christmas music and displays that become ubiquitous in December in the United States, popular culture may feel virtually unavoidable. By contrast, one usually must make an eort to consume high cultureseek out programming on publicly-sponsored broadcasting or nd live performances. This lower visibility and accessibility suggests three reasons why we might expect high heterogeneity to be associated with increased high culture participation. First, a network with a substantial amount of heterogeneity in its members has increased
1 Because the GSS Network Module and the Culture Module do not appear in the same survey, Relish (1997) relied on proxy measures of networks (number of association memberships, type of community residence, and geographic mobility). Ericksons work has perhaps been the most systematic and detailed in her study of networks and culture: respondents indicated whether they knew someone in dierent categories of occupations and whether their contact was a close friend or relative.

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odds of including a member tapped into another network that circulates high culture knowledge, who might then serve as a conduit of this taste to ego (Mark, 2003). Because homophily in friendship ties results both from the prior attributes that attracted ego to alter and from alters inuence in their continued association (Kandel, 1978), a friendship tie based on some other form of homophily may develop into shared participation in high culture activities if one person has a taste for high culture. Second, the ability to sustain relationships with diverse others may indicate an ability to appreciate culture that is not immediately accessible. In other words, while individuals in groups of similar others can derive comfort from a shared (and perhaps unspoken) understanding, associating with dierent others assumes that at least in some matters this understanding and its attendant comfort will not be present. That this is true may be indexed by the high degree of, for instance, racial homogeneity in the vast majority of close relationships (Marsden, 1987). Sustaining social ties with dierent others is probably facilitated by a willingness to take a dierent perspective from ones own and by a tolerance for sometimes not understanding or feeling understood. In short, a willingness to make an extra eort in social relationships may indicate a willingness to make an extra eort in appreciating culture. Alternatively, the necessity of making an eort in social relationships in diverse networks may inculcate the willingness or even desire for culture that is not immediately decodable. (That is, the network structure may have a direct eect on personality rather than act solely as an indicator of an underlying personal orientation.) By contrast, a desire for easy, automatic communication with others that requires little eort and is more typical of a network in which all members are the same would seem to mitigate against a taste for high culture, which often entails highly symbolic modes of communication that are not so eortlessly enjoyed as popular culture. Finally, both high culture participation and diverse networks may indicate an underlying desire for a cosmopolitan identity, since both high culture and diverse networks are associated with high status people (Bourdieu, 1984; Goldstein and Warren, 2000; Campbell et al., 1986). These three heterogeneity mechanismsincreasing odds of exposure, inculcating the expectation of or even the desire for challenging cultural material, and indicating a desire for a cosmopolitan identityhave dierent implications for both network theory and the sociology of culture. Nonetheless, in all of these accounts, we would expect network heterogeneity to be associated with high culture participation. 2.2. Density Despite the intense interest in density in the network literature (e.g., Fischer, 1982; Wellman, 1979; Kadushin, 1982; Haynie, 2001), to my knowledge no work has examined the links between network density and cultural participation. In the network literature, density is associated with higher pressure to conform to group expectations but also with high social support and solidarity (e.g., Burt, 1992; Fischer, 1982). Common to these potential disadvantages and advantages of a dense network is an expectation of intense social engagement. Just as the habit of making

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an eort in social relations may translate into the habit of making an eort to decode high culture, we might expect that individuals accustomed to intense social engagement might also seek out a commensurate level of social intensity in their leisure activities. Intensity in social relations often revolves around the problems and benets associated with social solidarity. Interaction ritual (IR) theory, a strand of Durkheimian theory, oers some indication of what types of cultural activities would be likely to generate feelings of solidarity. According to IR theory, three elements are needed for a ritual or event to produce high levels of solidarity: (1) the physical assembly of a group of people; (2) their common focus of attention and mutual awareness of it; and (3) a common emotional mood (Collins, 1988). We would therefore expect the eect of density to vary with the number of solidarity requirements met by cultural activities. Cultural activities dier in the extent to which they fulll these requirements. Attending a sports event or a dance or musical performance, for instance, generally lls all of the solidarity requirements and would therefore seem to generate greater solidarity than visiting an art museum, where there is little common focus of attention or shared mood (as visitors look at dierent works of art) and where any physical assembly is temporary (as visitors move from room to room on their own). We would therefore expect higher density to be associated with attending a sports event or performance than with visiting an art museum. Network density, therefore, has the added ability to generate specic predictions and can explain variations in participation among cultural activities, even among dierent high culture activities, a topic that has received little attention from sociologists of culture. 2.3. Gender While Bourdieu (1984) conceived of symbolic boundary formation as a process engaged in by the dominant class, subsequent work has addressed the ways in which non-dominant classes also draw symbolic boundaries. For instance, Lamont (2000) found that black workers distinguished themselves from white workers who seem motivated by middle class egotism. Waters (2001) has examined the ways in which West Indian immigrants use symbolic boundaries to distinguish themselves from African Americans. While boundary formation in the workplace based on gender has been discussed at least implicitly (for a review, see Lamont and Molnar, 2002), womens use of culture in symbolic boundary formation has been relatively unexplored. Lamont (1992, 2000) is well-known for some of the most nuanced work on symbolic boundary formation, but her work has focused on men. Bourdieu remarked on womens greater proclivity for artistic pursuits (1984: 105, 108) but directed little theoretical attention to this phenomenon. He himself appeared ambivalent about ` the role of gender vis-a-vis class. At times he writes of gender as a social division within a class (1984:107); elsewhere he conceives of gender as a stratifying mechanism that creates classes (Swartz, 1997, p. 155). (For a feminist critique of Bourdieus approach to gender, see McCall, 1992).

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In explaining the greater, more coherent high culture participation of adolescent girls, DiMaggio (1982, p. 198) writes that high cultural involvement may have been part of an identity kit that academically successful, high status girls, but not similar boys, possessed. This suggests that cultural participation circulates through the networks of upper-class girls but not boys. Because status is conveyed by a social network (Fuchs, 2001; White, 1992), and because DiMaggio (1982) links status to cultural involvement for girls, we would expect to nd a stronger connection between network characteristics and cultural participation for females than for males. To sum up, following the lead of research that ties proxy indicators of network heterogeneity to cultural omnivorousness, I posit a connection between network characteristics and specic forms of cultural consumption. I suggest that high heterogeneity will be related to greater high culture participation and that high density will be associated with activities that produce high group solidarity. Based on DiMaggios argument that cultural participation plays a key role in girls but not boys identity kits, I suggest that women may draw symbolic boundaries dierently from men and that womens networks will be especially likely to circulate cultural activities as a form of cultural capital. For this reason, I expect to nd more evidence of network eects on womens cultural participation than on mens.

3. Data and variables 3.1. Data Because data including network and cultural measures are unavailable, original data were collected for this paper. In Bourdieus theory the education system plays a key role in elite students accumulation of cultural capital, so the university seemed to be a prime setting for exploring whether network dynamics are related to this accumulation. This paper reports data on 421 incoming undergraduate and graduate students at an elite university, part of a larger longitudinal study of networks and culture. As an inducement to participate, each student received $5 and a chance to win $1000 in a rae. Surveys were distributed at required orientation and welcome programs for graduate students and in the undergraduate dormitory with the largest freshmen population. Ninety percent of entering graduate students who attended the required orientation or welcome program and 60 percent of incoming freshmen in the targeted dormitory completed the survey. Students completed a background questionnaire, a battery of items from the World Values Survey (Inglehart and Baker, 2000), items from the General Social Survey(GSS) 1993 Culture Module, and a network survey. Students completed these materials within two weeks of their arrival, and many respondents had arrived only days before taking the survey. (Results on networks and cultural participation therefore are based on the year previous to enrollment at this university.)

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3.2. Network instrument There has been little consistency in the network measures used by sociologists of culture. Network variables have been represented in some quantitative studies by proxy indicators, such as geographic mobility since age 16, number of associations to which respondent claims membership, and the type of community in which the respondent resides (Relish, 1997). Erickson (1996) used the most developed measure of network heterogeneity but did not examine ties among alters. To my knowledge no study has examined the eects of density on cultural participation. To improve precision, I used an instrument similar to those used in large, network-oriented datasets such as the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health and the General Social Survey (GSS) Network Module. The network survey in this study asked students to list up to six alters and to complete a prole for each name listed, including the alters gender, race, religion, nationality, and source of tie (From where do you know this person?). A network matrix allowed the respondent to indicate whether each alter knew the other alters listed. Network research thus far has often emphasized friendship ties, perhaps at the expense of other types of network ties that are salient for respondents. The GSS Module, for instance, asked respondents to list people with whom they discussed important matters, a strategy which could be expected to elicit reasonably strong ties, with prominent representation of kin among those cited (Marsden, 1987). The over-representation of strong ties in discussion networks may be particular to the United States. For instance, the GSS (discussion network) name generator used in an urban Chinese sample elicited networks that included intimates and nonintimates, including co-workers (Ruan, 1998). This study sought to capture a broader group of types of ties and to make networks comparable across respondents cultural/national backgrounds. To that end, each respondent was asked to list up to two people in three specic categories: (1) people with whom they studied or worked; (2) people with whom they spent leisure time; and (3) people with whom they discussed important matters. 3.3. Dependent variables The 1993 GSS Culture Module acted as the model for the questions on this section of the survey. Respondents were given a list of activities and asked if they participated in each within the last 12 months (that is, for the year preceding their arrival at this university; for foreign students this usually means that participation took place in their home countries). The list and question wording were based on the GSS Culture Module. High culture activities included: visiting an art museum or gallery, playing a musical instrument, attending a classical music performance (Western or non-Western), and attending a ballet or other classical dance performance. Other cultural activities included: going to movies, attending a sports event, and reading a popular magazine. I predicted that network heterogeneity would be associated with increased participation in high culture activities. I also predicted that high density would be

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positively associated with participation in a high-solidarity-producing activity and would be negatively related to low-solidarity-producing activities. Based on IR theory, we would predict that high density would be positively related to sports event attendance, as well as attending dance and classical music performances. These cultural activities provide a physical assembly of people with a common focus of attention and an awareness of that common focus, which in turn leads to a shared emotional tone. In the case of sports events, there are also symbols of membership that are enacted through team mascots and team colors. By the same token, density should be negatively related to novel-reading, magazine-reading, and museum attendance, all activities that tend to be pursued in a more solitary way and generally do not fulll IR solidarity-generating criteria. Musical instruments can be played alone or in a group, so I make no predictions regarding this activity. Because heterogeneity can increase odds of exposure to lessaccessible high-culture activities, inculcate a preference for challenging cultural material, or indicate a desire for a cosmopolitan identity, I expected that networks high in heterogeneity would be associated with increased high culture participation. Finally, I predicted that because of the intense nature of dense networks, the positive eects of heterogeneity on high culture participation would be amplied for respondents in dense networks. Table 1 lists the frequencies for participation in all cultural activities. Consistent with ndings for the GSS 1993 Culture Module sample, popular culture activities garnered the most support (Marsden and Swingle, 1994). Rates of participation for this sample were far higher than for the GSS Culture Module sample for all cultural activities. Ninety-eight percent of this sample had gone to a movie in the past 12 months as compared to 70 percent in the GSS sample. Seventy-one percent of this sample had attended a sporting event during the past year as compared to 54 percent of the GSS sample. The sample for this study was nearly twice as likely to have participated in highculture activities: 79 percent visited a museum as compared to 41 percent of the GSS
Table 1 Percentage participation in popular and high culture activities during the past 12 months Activity High culture Visiting Museum Playing instrument Attending dance performance Reading great literature Other cultural activities Going to movie Reading popular magazine Attending sports event
a b

Percentage of sample participating 79% (414) 46% (414) 36% (413) 82% (413) 98% (413) 92% (414) 71% (414)

Percentage of GSS culture module sample participatinga 41% (1593) 23% (1590) 20% (1593) NAb 70% (1594) NAb 54% (1594)

Numbers are cited in Marsden and Swingle, 1994. Respondents in the GSS sample were not asked these items (Davis et al., 2000).

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sample; 46 percent had played a musical instrument as compared to the 23 percent of the GSS sample; and 36 percent of this sample had attended a dance performance, as compared to 20 percent of the GSS sample. Consistent with the cultural omnivore hypothesis, a comparison of the rates of participation from the nationally representative GSS sample and this sample, which is skewed toward higher education levels, indicates that higher education is related to greater participation in all types of cultural activities. Table 2 shows cultural participation by gender. Womens participation is generally higher than mens. Consistently higher rates of cultural participation (usually high culture participation) generally connote a symbolic boundary.
Table 2 Gender dierences in cultural participation during last 12 months Male mean N=209a High Culture Visiting museum Playing Instrument Attending classical concert Attending Ballet Reading a Novel Other cultural activities Going to movie Reading popular magazine Attending sports event
a

Female mean N=203 0.79 0.48 0.44 0.45 0.85 (0.03) (0.04) (0.03) (0.04) (0.02)

Dierence

0.79 0.44 0.31 0.27 0.80

(0.03) (0.03) (0.03) (0.03) (0.03)

0.00 0.04 0.13 0.18 0.05 0.01 0.07 0.10

0.97 (0.01) 0.88 (0.02) 0.76 (0.30)

0.98 (0.01) 0.95 (0.02) 0.66 (0.03)

N=208 for Movie Attendance. Standard errors in parentheses.

Table 3 Descriptive statistics for control variables and network variablesb N Fathers educationa Proportion in academic program Proportion female Proportion of urban residence Proportion graduate student Proportion U.S. citizen Mean network density Mean network racial diversity Mean network relig. diversity Mean network gender diversity 403 405 412 409 414 414 385 393 362 398 Descriptive stat.c 3.41 (0.80) 0.60 0.48 0.51 0.47 0.51 0.67 (0.29) 0.20 (0.26) 0.37 (0.31) 0.71 (0.32)

a Fathers education is measured on a scale from 1 to 4.1=07 years, 2=812 years, 3=1316 years, and 4=>16 years. b The category of Other includes students from: South America (3% of the total); the Middle East and North Africa (1% of the total); Sub-Saharan Africa (1% of the total); and Carribbean (<1% of the total). c Numbers in parentheses are standard deviations.

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Moreover, attending a sports event, an activity traditionally associated with a male identity, is the only activity for which women have a lower rate of participation. 3.4. Independent variables Network density measures the proportion of possible ties in a respondents network that are actually present. The average density for the sample was 0.67 (see Table 3). The mean for this sample is close to the 0.61 found by Marsden (1987) for the GSS Network Module sample, which is higher than the 0.44 reported by Fischer for his regional sample (1982). (Like Marsden (1987) and distinct from Fischer (1982), I include networks of size 2, which Marsden found to increase average density.) Fig. 1 reveals that the density distribution for the sample is skewed left, with about 29 percent of the cases having perfectly dense networks. The density distribution is similar to that found for the GSS Module (Marsden, 1987). 3.5. Heterogeneity Because all information in the alters proles were nominal characteristics, heterogeneity was measured using the index of qualitative variation (IQV) (Agresti and Agresti, 1977, p. 208), following Marsdens example (1987). The IQV provides an intuitive metric for measuring diversity among qualitative variables. A standardized version of the diversity index is I 1 p2 =1 1=k Network heterogeneity was calculated for race/ethnicity, religion, gender, and nationality. Nationality heterogeneity measures had no systematic eect on cultural consumption and are omitted from the analyses.

Fig. 1. Network density histogram.

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Ethnicity and race of alters were classied into nine categories of descent: Asian, African, European, Hispanic, and Other. In Fig. 2, scaling on the left axis applies to homogeneous cases, while the scale on the right applies to all other cases. (Two scales were used to illustrate better the shape of the distribution of the non-homogeneous cases.) Fig. 2 reveals that racial heterogeneity is skewed right, with about 59 percent of the cases having completely homogeneous networks with respect to race/ethnicity. This is a much lower gure than that found in the GSS Module, where about 92 percent of respondents networks are perfectly homogeneous (Marsden, 1987:125). The average racial heterogeneity was 0.19, as compared to the mean of 0.05 for the GSS (Marsden, 1987:126). The greater racial heterogeneity may result from the greater auence of the sample, since a positive relationship has been found between SES and heterogeneity (e.g., Goldstein and Warren, 2000; Campbell, 1986). Within the sample, however, there was only a weak, nonsignicant correlation between racial heterogeneity and fathers education. Moreover, the broader range of ties elicited in this sample could increase the likelihood of racially or ethnically diverse alters, as compared with the discussion networks examined in the GSS which drew heavily on kinship as a source of ties (a nding consistent with prior research, according to Marsden). The prevalence of kin-based ties is related to decreased race/ ethnic heterogeneity (Marsden, 1987). Descriptions of the religious preferences of alters were grouped into six categories: Agnostic/Atheist, Catholic, Protestant, Islamic, Jewish, and Other. The average religious heterogeneity score was 0.37, and the distribution is skewed right. About 36 percent of the cases report networks that are completely homogeneous with respect to religion (Fig. 3). Consistent with the pattern in the GSS Network Module, there was a higher degree of gender heterogeneity in this sample than of any other type. The mean gender heterogeneity in this sample was 0.71, roughly equivalent to the 0.68 mean found in the GSS (Marsden, 1987). The data for this sample are more sharply skewed, however. While for the GSS sample 37 percent of the respondents had

Fig. 2. Network ethnic heterogeneity histogram.

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networks where the index of qualitative variation was 0.90 or greater (Marsden, 1987), for this sample, about 56 percent had networks of 0.90 or greater. Whereas 22 percent of GSS respondents had networks of only one sex, only 13 percent of this sample had gender-homogeneous networks (Fig. 4). Racial heterogeneity has a signicant correlation of 0.31 with religious heterogeneity, suggesting that although the two are related, each measure taps a distinct aspect of network heterogeneity. Gender heterogeneity is not correlated with racial or religious heterogeneity. Interestingly, no measure of heterogeneity has a signicant correlation with density, suggesting that these two network characteristics do refer to autonomous phenomena. (For Correlation Matrix, see Appendix A.)2 It is also possible, however, that this lack of correlation is related to the nature of this sample: perhaps young elites are suciently cosmopolitan to have a great deal of heterogeneity in the types of people they know, regardless of how close-knit the group is. The interrelation of density and heterogeneity, therefore, would be a fruitful topic for further research. Socioeconomic status can be challenging to measure for an international sample, as there is no common metric for comparing income and occupation. This paper uses fathers level of education as proxy for socioeconomic status. Respondents came from well-educated families; the mean category for fathers level of education was 1316 years (at least some college), and more than half of the sample (55 percent) reported that their fathers had more than 16 years of education. Since experience in the education system is central to Bourdieus argument, I include a variable measuring the amount of time spent in the education system: Because the sample is

Fig. 3. Network religious heterogeneity histogram. A network size variable had no signicant eects and was omitted from the models in the interests of space. The networks reported here were much larger than those reported in the GSS Network Module. Whereas nearly a quarter of the respondents for the GSS had networks of size 0 or 1, less than 2 percent of this sample had networks of that size. Less than 6 percent of the GSS sample had networks of size 6 or more, while half (51 percent) of this sample had networks of size 6. (Respondents could enter only up to six alters.) The mean network size of the GSS sample was 3; for this sample the mean was 5.
2

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drawn from a university population, the two categories are undergraduate and graduate. Forty-seven percent of the sample were graduate students. Finally, I adopt Ericksons (1996) native-born variable by creating a dummy for U.S. residence. Fifty-one percent of the sample were American citizens. Recent research that has attempted to rene and apply Bourdieus theory has identied new factors that can be used to explain cultural participation and stratication. Some research has suggested that Bourdieus ndings in Distinction were particular to Paris; more generally, urban residents may be unique in their cultural preferences (e.g., Lamont, 1992; Crane, 1992). Fifty-one percent of the respondents described their home residence as urban. (The referent category was rural and suburban residence.) Other research has raised the importance of variation in cultural participation by subgroup. Unfortunately, the data did not have sucient intra-region variation on race to use this as an independent variable. Forty-eight percent of the sample was female. 3.6. Statistical models For the seven cultural activities, respondents were asked if they had participated at least once during the last year. The dependent variables are dichotomous, so I use logistic regression models to analyze the role of network variables and control variables in predicting cultural participation. The rate of movie-going was so high (98 percent of the sample had gone to a movie in a theater in the past twelve months) that models could not be t, so this variable was dropped from the analyses. In order to examine the potential for dierent dynamics that may govern womens cultural participation, I use separate models for men and for women to test the eects of density and diversity.3

Fig. 4. Network gender heterogeneity histogram.

3 In order to check for any potential bias resulting from missing data, a mean substitution procedure with missing data dummies was employed. Missing data had a signicant eect on having played an instrument for certain model specications, so ndings for this variable should be interpreted with caution. Because the missing data dummies in general were not signicant and given that the mean substitution procedure is known to articially reduce standard errors (Allison, 2000), only cases with complete data are used in the following models.

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Table 4 Logistic regression coecients of cultural activities on network characteristicsa Sporting event Network density Network racial heterogeneity Network religious heterogeneity Network gender heterogeneity Intercept N Pseudo R square 1.11 0.31 0.62 0.01 0.94 324 0.29 (0.52)* (0.64) (0.51) (0.45) Museum (0.52)* (0.58) (0.50) (0.42) Instrument 0.32 0.76 0.82 00.05 0.85 324 0.08 (0.42) (0.48) (0.42)* (0.36) Dance perfomance 0.31 (0.45) 1.15 (0.50)* 0.39 (0.44) 0.91 (0.43)* 2.32** 323 0.12 Popular magazine 1.54 0.10 1.45 0.29 1.28 324 0.08 (0.77)* (0.88) (0.85)y (0.64) Great literature 0.41 (0.56) 1.53 (0.79)* 0.36 (0.57) 0.68 (0.46) 2.03* 324 0.14 Class. music performance 0.45 0.63 0.20 0.08 1.19 323 0.09 (0.44) (0.51) (0.44) (0.39) D. Kane / Poetics 32 (2004) 105127

1.12 0.31 0.79 0.37 0.83 324 0.06

Notes: ***< 0.001, **<0.01, *<0.05, y <0.1. a Standard errors in parentheses. All models control for academic program, gender, fathers education level, urban residence, world region, and level at the university (graduate or undergraduate). Results for control variables are reported in Appendix B.

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4. Results and discussion Models were t for each of the seven cultural activities using logistic regression. Control variables generally were not signicant in these models; possibly the variables outlined in the culture literature as important may not be the best predictors for a student sample. For this reason and for ease of interpretation, the following tables present only the coecients of the network characteristics. Tables of coecients for control variables can be found in Appendix B. The ndings reported in Table 4 provide consistent support for the hypothesized link between network characteristics and cultural participation. Six of seven cultural activities were signicantly predicted by at least one network measure. 4.1. Density Those with perfectly dense networks were three times more likely than those from sparse networks to have attended a sports event in the past year. Moreover, there was a negative relationship between network density and art museum attendance: students from dense networks were only a third as likely as students from sparse networks to have visited a museum in the past 12 months. These ndings are consistent with the predictions of IR theory. Sports events fulll all of the solidarity-producing criteria outlined in IR theory: a physical assembly of people, common focus of attention and mutual awareness of it, and a shared emotional tone. While art museums bring visitors into contact with one another, there is no physical assembly of the same group of people for any duration. Visitors move through the rooms of a museum or gallery as they look at dierent works of art with neither common focus of attention nor common emotional mood. In addition, those in perfectly dense networks were more than four and a half times more likely than those in sparse networks to have read a popular magazine in the last 12 months. I suggested earlier that popular music performances were likely to generate a high degree of solidarity, and it is possible that popular magazines allow readers to participate vicariously in the high solidarity-producing popular entertainment industry. Moreover, articles in popular magazines may be shared with and discussed among social networks, heightening the aspect of group participation. Why is there no density eect on attending a classical music or dance performance? These performances do feature the physical assembly of a stable group of people with a common focus of attention and common mood (Collins, 1988). This emotional tone tends to be notably more subdued than at sports events, however. While audience members might become emotionally involved with a symphony, the etiquette of attending these performance precludes the sort of emotional outbursts associated with attending sports events. From another perspective we might say that at high culture performances emotional engagement is expected to be experienced as (and contained within) an individual, while sports events (and popular music performances) allow this engagement to be experienced as a group.

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Table 5 Logistic regression coecients of cultural activities on network characteristics: mena Sporting event Network density Network racial heterogeneity Network religious heterogeneity Network gender heterogeneity Intercept N Pseudo R square 1.34 1.52 0.62 0.86 0.99 167 0.27 (0.73)y (1.15) (0.90) (0.73) Museum (0.66) (0.89) (0.79) (0.59) Instrument 0.14 0.36 1.00 0.08 1.28 166 0.08 (0.55) (0.74) (0.65) (0.52) Dance performance 0.04 1.22 0.13 0.69 2.15 166 0.06 (0.62) (0.84) (0.74) (0.66) Popular magazine 1.17 0.95 1.74 0.44 2.60 166 0.09 (0.93) (1.29) (1.17) (0.81) Great literature 1.53 1.65 0.10 0.57 1.44 166 0.16 (0.75) (1.37) (0.92) (0.55) Class. music performance 0.52 1.12 0.85 0.31 2.17 166 0.16 (0.62) (0.88) (0.75) (0.58)

0.43 0.09 0.01 0.44 0.36 167 0.04

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Notes: ***<0.001 ** <0.01*<0.05 y<0.1. a Standard errors in parentheses. All models control for academic program, gender, fathers education level, urban residence, world region, and level at the university (graduate or undergraduate). Results for control variables are reported in Appendix B.

Table 6 Logistic regression coecients of cultural activities on network characteristics: womena Sporting Event Network density Network racial heterogeneity Network religious heterogeneity Network gender heterogeneity Intercept N Pseudo R square 1.16 0.44 0.92 0.74 0.05 158 0.36 (.82) (0.87) (0.68) (0.64) Museum (0.90)* (0.87) (0.71) (0.64) Instrument 0.64 0.97 0.79 0.08 0.64 158 0.09 (0.68) (0.70) (0.58) (0.54) Dance Performance 0.91 1.55 0.80 1.10 1.65 157 0.13 (0.70) (0.72) (0.59) (0.59)y Popular Magazine 3.09 0.65 2.18 0.98 0.60 157 0.16 (1.57) (1.47) (1.45) (1.37) Great Literature 1.78 1.08 0.52 0.35 4.22 158 0.14 (1.03) y (1.08) (0.80) (0.75) Class. Music Performance 0.61 0.31 0.99 0.32 1.10 157 0.10 (0.68) (0.71) (0.60)y (0.57)

2.37 0.36 1.67 0.14 2.18 158 0.16

Notes: ***<0.001, **<0.01, * <0.05, y<0.1. a Standard errors in parentheses. All models control for academic program, gender, fathers education level, urban residence, world region, and level at the university (graduate or undergraduate). Results for control variables are reported in Appendix B.

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4.2. Heterogeneity As predicted, high heterogeneity was associated with increased high culture participation. Those with racially heterogeneous networks were about three times more likely than those with homogeneous networks to have attended a classical dance performance and were more than four and a half times as likely to have read a novel considered to be great literature. Students with networks high in religious heterogeneity were nearly two and a half times more likely to have played an instrument in the past 12 months; there was also a modest eect of religious heterogeneity on attending a classical dance performance. Overall, however, heterogeneity always had a positive eect on cultural participation, usually of a sizeable magnitude. Notably, where heterogeneity eects were strongest (namely for playing an instrument, attending a dance performance, and reading great literature), density was not related to cultural participation. Conversely, where density had an eect (sports, museum attendance, and reading a popular magazine), heterogeneity was unrelated. Signicantly, network patterns cut across the standard categorization of cultural activities (such as those used in the GSS Culture Module). Density measures cut across the highbrowlowbrow distinction by predicting both sports and art museum attendance. Heterogeneity measures predicted the passive activities of novel-reading and ballet attendance as well as the active participation in music, namely the playing of a musical instrument. The undermining of conventional dichotomies used to categorize cultural participation suggests that social networks may give rise to their own set of symbolic boundaries that recongure patterns of cultural participation. 4.3. Gender Based on past research (DiMaggio, 1982) I hypothesized that dierent dynamics may govern womens cultural participation. Tables 5 and 6 examine network eects on mens and womens cultural participation, respectively, and reveal that there are many more network predictors of womens participation than there are of mens. Notably, network predictors are associated with activities that had the largest gender dierences in rates of participation (classical music performance, classical dance performance, reading a magazine, and attending a sports event). For men, there are only two, somewhat surprising, network eects: density increases sports attendanceas predictedbut also novel-reading. This latter nding is an anomaly that is dicult to explain. For women, network eects are consistent with predictions. Density decreases high culture participation: density actually decreases novel-reading (although this eect is signicant only at the 0.1 level) as well as museum attendance. On the other hand, density increases the likelihood of having read a popular magazine. Overall, for women, density is associated with decreased high culture participation. By contrast, diversity was always associated with increased high culture participation for women, and the eect was often sizeable. Women in networks high in religious heterogeneity were ve times more likely to have visited a museum than were women in homogeneous networks; high-

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diversity women were more than two and a half times as likely to have gone to a classical music concert. Women with networks high in racial diversity were almost ve times more likely than women in homogeneous networks to have attended a classical dance performance. Finally, gender heterogeneity gains some signicance (at the .1 level) in the models for women: women with networks high in gender diversity were three times more likely to have gone to a classical dance performance than were women with homogeneous networks. Tables 46 suggest some ways in which gender and networks may interpenetrate in symbolic boundary formation. Erickson (1996) argues that the non-class-based sports interest is one of the most important cultural activities for coordinating work relations, and she speculates that women may be at a disadvantage relative to men in this cultural regime. The ndings from this paper are consistent with Ericksons speculation. Sports were the only activity where mens participation was higher. More precisely, men in high-density networks have the greatest advantage because this capital circulates in their networks and leads to greater sports attendance, increasing further accumulation of this capital. Moreover, Table 6 reveals more information about gender dierences in participation in high culture. With network predictors we see that it is not simply women as a category who participate more in high culture, but specically high diversity women and low density women. This suggests that women may be using culture to draw symbolic boundaries not only against men but also against women with dierent network structures. How can one symbolically exclude a person with a particular network structure? Some research has suggested that network structures give rise to particular personality structures and moral outlooks (Burt, 1998; Kane, 2003); negative reactions against certain personalities or moral views may reect dierent underlying network structures. Bryson (1996) has already demonstrated a link between political/social tolerance and musical preferences; future work should explore the degree to which there is a coherent syndrome of attitudes and preferences that can be associated with women in high-diversity, low-density networks. While the nature of the sample limits generalization, the ndings here suggest that incorporating calculated network measures into analyses of cultural consumption should enrich our understanding of symbolic boundary formation.

5. Conclusion Sociologists of culture made an important advance in connecting network structure to content when they included proxy measures of heterogeneity in studies of cultural knowledge and preferences. This study found an explicit link between calculated density and heterogeneity measures and participation in cultural activities. Network characteristics were signicantly related to every measure of cultural participation. As predicted, network density was positively associated with the highest solidarityproducing activity, sports event attendance, and was negatively associated with visiting museums or art galleries.

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Network heterogeneity increased the likelihood of participation for every high culture activity with which it was associated. Interestingly, religious heterogeneity had an eect on some cultural activities while racial heterogeneity produced eects on others. Future research should explore dierent forms of heterogeneity and why they appear to have dierent eects on cultural participation. Previous research has found that women are more likely than men to engage in cultural activities, especially high culture activities, which suggests that women may use culture to draw symbolic boundaries against men. Women in this study generally had higher rates of participation than men in high culture activities. Attending sports eventsthe activity most associated with menwas the sole activity in which women had a lower rate of participation. There was much more evidence for network eects on womens participation than on mens, and the pattern of these eects provides a more nuanced understanding of gender dierences in cultural participation. While formerly women as a group were considered to exhibit a stronger interest in high culture than were men, the ndings in this paper reveal that it is specically women with networks high in diversity and women with networks low in density who are the most likely to engage in high culture activities. This renement suggests that women may draw boundaries not only against men but also against women of other network structures.

Acknowledgements I thank Randall Collins, Paul DiMaggio, Grace Kao, Diana Crane, and Shawn Bauldry. This research was supported by a generous grant from the University of Pennsylvania Department of Sociology Otto and Gertrude Pollack Grant for Summer Research and by a Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation.

Appendix A. Correlation matrix of network characteristics

Density Density Racial het. Gender Het. Relig. Het. 1.00 0.04 0.04 0.01 Racial het. 1.00 0.05 0.31*** Gender het. Relig. het.

1.00 0.05

1.00

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Appendix B. Regression Results for Control Variables Table B-1 Regression coecients of cultural participation on control variablesa
Control variable Academic prog. Fathers ed. Graduate student Female US Urban residence Sporting event .05 0.02 0.86 0.89 1.11 0.52 (0.31) (0.17) (0.34)** (0.31)*** (0.39)*** (0.34) Museum 0.07 0.23 0.08 0.12 0.27 0.05 (0.29) (0.16) (0.35) (0.29) (0.39) (0.34) Instrument 0.33 0.10 0.41 0.12 0.25 0.30 (0.25) (0.15) (0.29) (0.25) (0.32) (0.28) Dance performance 0.19 0.02 0.14 0.84 0.11 0.21 (0.26) (0.15) (0.31) (0.26)*** (0.34) (0.30) Popular magazine 0.29 0.05 0.59 0.50 0.45 0.06 (0.46) (0.27) (0.56) (0.47) (0.59) (0.51) Great literature 0.42 0.40 0.50 0.05 0.15 0.40 (0.33) (0.22)y (0.39) (0.34) (0.46) (0.40) Class. music Performance 0.20 0.04 0.15 0.56 0.49 0.52 (0.26) (0.15) (0.30) (0.26)* (0.34) (0.29)y

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Notes: ***<0.001, **<0.01, *<0.05, y< 0.1. a Standard errors in parentheses.

Table B-2 Regression coecients of cultural participation on control variables: mena

Control variable Academic prog. Fathers ed. Graduate student US Urban residence
a

Sporting event 0.26 0.09 0.06 2.11 0.58 (0.44) (0.23) (0.50) (0.71)*** (0.52)

Museum 0.22 0.28 0.32 0.19 0.25 (0.40) (0.22) (0.52) (0.58) (0.49)

Instrument 0.44 0.19 0.23 0.01 0.21 (0.33) (0.20) (0.42) (0.48) (0.40)

Dance performance 0.01 0.06 0.63 0.23 0.35 (0.37) (0.21) (0.48) (0.57) (0.46)

Popular magazine 0.61 0.05 0.20 0.18 0.68 (0.56) (0.33) (0.71) (0.79) (0.64)

Great literature 0.46 0.54 0.16 10.01 0.52 (0.47 (0.29)y (0.55) (0.71) (0.57)

Class. music performance 0.34 0.18 0.85 0.39 10.10 (0.38) (0.21) (0.47)y (0.58) (0.46)*

Notes: ***<0.001, **<0.01, *<0.05, y< 0.1. Standard errors in parentheses.

Table B-3 Regression coecients of cultural participation on control variables: womena

Control variable Academic prog. Fathers ed. Graduate student US Urban residence Sporting event 0.20 0.05 1.54 0.73 0.42 (0.46) (0.28) (0.47)*** (0.50) (0.48) Museum (0.47) (0.27) (0.51) (0.53) (0.49) Instrument 0.21 0.00 0.57 0.46 0.38 (0.38) (0.23) (0.42) (0.45) (0.40) Dance performance 0.48 0.09 0.20 0.08 0.06 (0.40) (0.24) (0.43) (0.46) (0.41) Popular magazine 0.15 0.29 1.47 1.98 1.42 (0.80) (0.49) (1.07) (1.09)y (1.00) Great Literature 0.60 0.34 1.29 0.48 0.23 (0.52) (0.35) (0.59)* (0.62) (0.58) Class music performance 0.13 0.28 0.51 1.14 0.13 (0.39) (0.23) (0.44) (0.47) (0.41)

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0.08 0.07 0.59 00.21 0.46

Notes: ***<0.001, **<0.01, *<0.05, y< 0.1. a Standard errors in parentheses.

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