• Korean Association of Arts Management
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• no.52
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• pp.5-37
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• 2019

Despite a copious volume of work on the relationship between social class and cultural consumption, scholars have paid scant attention to the increasingly apparent observation that a vast majority of the population exhibits indifference toward fine arts regardless of one's socio-economic status. Much of the prior literature on cultural consumption has treated the public's indifference to fine arts not as a distinct analytical category that deserves an explanation of its own, but simply as the opposite of "likes" or the act of consumption, let alone being disentangled from the concept of "dislikes" in taste-formation and consumption behavior. In this paper, we suggest that the seemingly increasing trend toward indifference to fine arts, especially among those who are part of the well-educated and economically well-off, merits close scholarly attention on its own term. As an initial step toward this endeavor, we explore the factors behind indifference toward fine arts among Korean middle-class, using the ground theory method. Our interview findings reveal that much of indifference toward fine arts is attributable to the lack of tastes in fine arts and artistic competence. Our results suggest that research drawing on Bourdieu's theory and Peterson's omnivore hypothesis needs to be further revised through an in-depth investigation of the institutional and societal contexts where art education takes place in Korea. We discuss the implications of our findings for policy-making in the cultural and artistic sphere.