Arts & culture memberships as contemporary gatekeepers of cultural goods: selection and symbolic production practices

Research on arts participation has shown convincingly how consumption patterns have developed from Bourdieusian class-based distinction (Bourdieu, 1984) to omnivorousness as a marker of boundaries (Peterson, 1992). As such, despite postmodern claims of individualisation, class or educational level-based forms of distinction have been continuously reforming and remain omnipresent in many Western societies. The above appears however somewhat contradictory to other literature who mark this period by a ‘decline of the snob’ and a broadened landscape of cultural objects and practices. As a result, some scholars argue that a combination of these two phenomena is possible, and identified it as a paradox of democracy and distinction (Johnston & Bauman, 2007) It appears that, by using a framework of authenticity, it is possible to signal democratisation, while these discourses in turn can be deployed for distinctive practices. This paper addresses the characteristics and selection practices of Dutch arts and culture memberships (cultuur-abonnementen). Some of these cultural organisations are exemplary of the paradox mentioned above. One the one hand, these memberships suggest a democratisation trend: economically accessible culture for everyone. On the other hand, their role as gatekeeper forces them to include specific, and thus exclude other forms of culture. Moreover, they attribute symbolic capital to the selected objects and practices. Through analysis of each organisation and conduction of qualitative in-depth interviews, findings suggest that that when organisations emphasize their role as gatekeeper, (offering the consumer the best selection from the economy of plenty) the more distinctive their practices. When memberships accentuate economic advantages, they appear more egalitarian.