Consuming the nation. Domestic cultural consumption: its stratification and relation with nationalist attitudes

Abstract

This dissertation addressed people’s domestic versus foreign cultural consumption. In many countries, including the Netherlands which is the main focus of this dissertation, a large share of the cultural goods people consume originates from foreign cultures. However, in contrast with increasing economic interdependencies and growing flows of foreign imports, domestic music artists have become increasingly popular since the late 1980s in the Netherlands and other Western countries (Achterberg et al., 2011; Frith, 2004; Hitters and Van de Kamp, 2010; Wolther, 2008). Though research has examined the popularity of domestic culture at a macro level, it is largely unknown to what extent the distinction between domestic and foreign culture is a structuring dimension in individuals’ cultural consumption and which groups are more likely to consume domestic culture and why. Therefore, this dissertation studied the extent to which the music people listen to, the books people read and the films people watch originate from the country they live in or from abroad, i.e. to what extent people ‘consume the nation’. The distinction between domestic and foreign cultural goods is mainly assessed by the current residence of the artist. The aim of this dissertation was threefold: (1) to examine the extent to which the distinction between domestic and foreign cultural goods is a separate dimension of cultural consumption behaviour, (2) to study which groups are likely to consume domestic versus foreign cultural goods, and (3) to examine whether nationalist attitudes play a role in the choice for domestic versus foreign cultural consumption. The first main conclusion is that domestic versus foreign cultural consumption can be empirically distinguished from previously defined dimensions of cultural consumption such as people’s general cultural (dis-)engagement and high- and lowbrow (or emerging) consumption. Consequently, the distinction between domestic and foreign cultural goods seems to play a role in people’s cultural consumption patterns and seems a valuable subject for further research. Secondly, the current study has extended the focus of cultural consumption research by showing that domestic versus foreign cultural consumption is stratified by education and social class. Individuals’ educational level is negatively related to domestic versus foreign cultural consumption. Higher social classes (high- and low-grade professionals) are less likely to consume domestic versus foreign cultural goods than middle classes (routine non-manuals and lower service sales employees) and lower classes (skilled manual workers, and semi-unskilled manual workers). This social stratification cannot be fully explained by individuals’ nationalist attitudes or the (middle- or lowbrow) genre or language of the cultural goods. Finally, this dissertation showed that nationalist attitudes (i.e. chauvinism and cultural patriotism) are manifested in domestic versus foreign consumption and provides insights into nationalist behaviour in everyday life. Concluding, this study has indicated the relevance of domestic versus foreign cultural consumption on the micro level and has provided future studies with indications that the consumption of domestic versus foreign cultural goods might mark group boundaries both in terms of social position as well as in terms of nationalist attitudes.