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Is cultural taste Europeanized with respect to shared cultural values mediated by the mass media? Why is classical music appreciated over other types of music? Are there cultural snobs and who are they? Several questions are posed and answered in the course of the book in order to deepen the understanding on the mechanisms that affect cultural consumption. The cultural consumption patterns are examined within several cultural domains, which include e.g. cultural participation, artistic activities and reading and TV watching habits. The consumers of culture are found to follow several taste strategies that involve aspects of quality and quantity of consumption, and they are referred to as highbrow oriented consumer, omnivorous consumer and heavy-user of cultural consumption. The book provides a broad view on the academic discussion on taste as well as an extensive amount of empirical information on the consumption of total 57 cultural items in 15 European Union member countries. This book should be especially useful to professionals in leisure and culture industries as well as academics and students within sociology, marketing and the arts.

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Taru Lindblom, D.Sc. (Econ. and Bus.Adm), studied Economic Sociology at Turku School of Economics, Turku, Finland. Post doctoral researcher at University of Turku, Finland.

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