Elites don’t listen only to opera. Indeed, as the sociologist Paul DiMaggio has observed, they actually have a wider range of tastes than just the highbrow. One of the reasons for this, DiMaggio proposes, is that upper-class people have larger and more diverse social networks, necessitating “broad repertoires of taste.”50 They are exposed to more things and need to connect with all different kinds of people. Other researchers have found similarly, observing not only that high-status people are “omnivorous” when it comes to cultural consumption51 but also that this group has become more
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