„WSZYSCY LUDZIE SĄ RÓWNI, A JA NIE JESTEM SNOBEM…” O STRATEGIACH RÓŻNICOWANIA I OCENY W OBSZARZE MUZYKI
“ALL PEOPLE ARE EQUAL, AND I’M NOT A SNOB…”. ON STRATEGIES OF DIFFERENTIATION AND HIERARCHIZATION IN THE FIELD OF MUSIC

Summary/Abstract: The article aims to show how music can be used in the process of establishingsymbolic boundaries — how people draw dividing lines based on musical taste, andwhat criteria they use. The analyses presented in the text are based on a qualitativestudy conducted in 2021 with respondents representing five different social andoccupational categories. From the statements of the interviewees, three criteriaemerge that contribute the most strongly to differentiation in Poles’ musicaltastes. These are: social origin; the level of education; and place of residence— with regional differences, the urban-rural divide, and split into eastern andwestern Poland. In addition, based on the empirical material, four types of strategyfor evaluating and prioritizing musical tastes were distinguished: value-adding;egalitarian; ambivalent; and neutral. In the group covered by the study, the mostpopular strategy proved to be ambivalent (that is, combining valuing elementswith beliefs about the non-hierarchical nature of the cultural world within a singlenarrative), discerned in almost half of the respondents, and most often amongrepresentatives of cultural elites and middle- and lower-level white-collar workers.

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