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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN CULTURAL PARTICIPATION
Cultural
Participation
The perpetuation of middle-class
privilege in Dublin, Ireland
Kerry McCall Magan
Palgrave Studies in Cultural Participation
Series Editors
Andrew Miles
Department of Sociology
University of Manchester
Manchester, UK
Lisanne Gibson
Loughborough University
Loughborough, UK
This series will provide a platform for contributions to a newly defined
field of ‘participation studies’ (Miles and Gibson, forthcoming 2021).
Participation in cultural activities is a research subject within a number of
disciplines and fields, ranging from sociology to cultural studies, incorpo-
rating tourism, leisure heritage, museum, media, theatre, and cultural
policy, to business and management studies. This series will bring together
debates across these disciplines to consider the subject of cultural partici-
pation in all its dimensions.
The series brings together research on traditional cultural tastes and
practices with research on informal ‘everyday’ activities. In doing so it
broadens our understanding of cultural participation, focusing on par-
ticipation as a pluralistic concern, exploring the links between the cul-
tural, civic and social dimensions of participation, and reconsidering its
framing in time and space by political economy, material resource and
cultural governance.
Kerry McCall Magan
Cultural Participation
The perpetuation of middle-class
privilege in Dublin, Ireland
Kerry McCall Magan
Dublin, Ireland
ISSN 2661-8699 ISSN 2661-8702 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in Cultural Participation
ISBN 978-3-031-18754-4 ISBN 978-3-031-18755-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18755-1
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2022
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
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Preface
Cultural participation has been a long-standing area of enquiry in the

social sciences. Definitions of culture abound, and these are often used in
incomplete, over-expansive and sometimes slightly fuzzy ways. How
these designations arise, and the legitimacy and uses of these terms, is a
source of much debate and concern (Bennett, Frow & Emmison, 1999;
Bennett, Savage, Silva, Warde, Gayo-Cal & Wright, 2009; Miles &
Sullivan, 2010; Friedman, Savage, Hanquinet & Miles, 2015). Agreeing
what culture is, how to measure it, capture information on it, and who
makes or attends culture, are all difficult and problematic questions to
answer. When combined with identity, power and post-colonial processes
(as in the Irish circumstance) this can become an even more complex
endeavour.
Understanding the role arts and culture hold in society, is an impor-
tant research pursuit. In Ireland we have a dearth of research in this
area—particularly research that explores the importance of cultural par-
ticipation in forming social processes. Through qualitative interviews
with two different age cohorts (18–24 years and 45–54 years) in Dublin,
Ireland, in the summer of 2018, this research makes a contribution in
this area. It explores how privilege is perpetuated through cultural partici-
pation, and, following the work of Bourdieu (1984) in the area of cul-
tural capital, it demonstrates how an individual’s background is key in
forming cultural taste—creating a persistence and confidence regarding
v
vi Preface
cultural participation that is remarkably enduring. It highlights how cul-

tural capital is a dynamic, interactive and fluid concept that continues to
develop and is informed by ongoing cultural experience, education and
cultural opportunity. And finally, it shows how the concept of cultural
capital is still relevant today and emerging as neo-distinction in the Irish
social field.
In this way, this research recognises the value and significance of a
variety of cultural engagements—formal and non-formal—that exist
within and outside of state structures. In this way, this research develops
a more nuanced understanding of cultural participation in Ireland than
has been previously available. It helps to better inform our understanding
of Ireland’s status as a creative nation whilst also providing a deeper socio-
logical insight into the role culture holds in Irish society.
Dublin, Ireland Kerry McCall Magan

Contents
1 I ntroduction 1
2 Sociological Questions of Culture 11
3 I reland 39
4 Researching
Culture, Class and Distinction in Dublin,
Ireland 65
5 A Nation Highly Engaged 81
6 E
merging Cultural Capital105
7 Policy Implications and Recommendations119
I ndex139
vii
About the Author
Kerry McCall Magan is Country Director for the British Council in

Ireland. In this role, Kerry engages in strategic cultural relations activity
between Ireland and the UK in the areas of arts and culture, higher edu-
cation and youth development. Prior to this, Kerry’s career has included
senior roles in higher education, and the arts and cultural sectors in
Ireland. She has also been a member of the Expert Panel of Creative
Ireland; the Expert Committee of Culture 2025: a national cultural policy
for Ireland; a co-founder of the Arts Management Research Studies Stream
in the European Sociological Association; a co-founder of Cultural Policy
Observatory Ireland: an all-island research network (2015) and the Irish
Journal for Arts Management and Cultural Policy (2013). From 2010 to
2016, Kerry chaired the Research Committee of the National Campaign for
the Arts. Kerry holds a PhD (Goldsmiths, University of London); an MSc
(Glasgow Caledonian University), a Postgraduate Diploma (University
College, Dublin) and a BA Hons (Trinity College, Dublin).
Previous texts include a chapter on the reality of cultural work in Arts
and Cultural Management: Sense and Sensibilities in the State of the Field
(Ed. Constance Devereaux, 2018, Routledge: UK) and with Dr Maeve
Houlihan, The Artist as Cultural Entrepreneur (2016) in The Arts and
Business—Building a Common Ground for Understanding Current Society
(Eds., Peter Zackariasson & Elena Ravioli, Routledge: UK). In 2017,
ix
x About the Author
Kerry guest edited a special issue on Ireland of Cultural Trends 26(3) with
Dr Victoria Durrer, and in 2015, a special issue of the Irish Journal of Arts
Management and Cultural Policy [no.3, Mapping an Altered Landscape
Conference] with Pat Cooke.
This research was conducted while engaged as a doctoral student at
Goldsmiths University of London (2012–2019). It was a personal
research study and does not represent the view of my current or previous
employers.
1
Introduction
Throughout Irish history, arts and culture have had a complex relation-
ship with identity and the nation state. Irish culture has been heavily
influenced by the cheek-by-jowl relationship with our British neighbours
and also our proximity to Europe and the Western seaboard (Kiberd,
1996). The false starts and cautious beginnings of the Irish Free State in
1922, and the Republic in 1949, facilitated arts and culture as expres-
sions of social conservativism and protectionist policies often focussing
on traditional rural folk culture alongside myths and legends, limiting a
vision of a modern creative Ireland. Since then, arts and culture have
existed in a continual state of flux and crisis, lacking political attention
and subject to limited economic means (Kelly, 1989; Kennedy, 1990).
The last number of years have shown heightened political interest in
arts and culture. This has been welcomed by a cultural sector diminished
after years of funding cuts and public-sector reform. In initiatives such as
the Decade of Centenaries programme (2012–23), arts and culture have
featured significantly and politicians and policy makers have been at
pains to stress that arts and culture are “not an elegant add-on [but] the
essence of who we are as a still-young Republic with an ancient people”
(Department of the Taoiseach, 2016, para 7–8). In 2016, the subsequent
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

K. McCall Magan, Cultural Participation, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Participation,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18755-1_1
2 K. McCall Magan
launch of a cultural policy framework proposing a ten-year plan was wel-

comed (Department of the Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural, & Gaeltacht
Affairs [DAHRRGA], 2016). This was followed swiftly by the establish-
ment of Creative Ireland, an all-of-Government initiative, designed to
place creativity at the centre of public policy and which has just announced
another five-year strategy (Creative Ireland, 2022). Further positive indi-
cations are also apparent in increased funding for Arts Council of Ireland/
An Chomhairle Ealaíon, which now stands at 130 million euros (Arts
Council of Ireland, 2022) the extra supports for artists received as a result
of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Irish government continues to assert
“the importance of Irish culture, Irish art and Irish productions…” and
that this cannot be “overstated” (Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts,
Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, 2022).1 In April 2022, a pilot income
scheme for artists was announced which will provide 2000 participants
with a basic income of €325 a week for three years to allow them focus
on their creative practice. Received positively by the wider cultural sector,
these initiatives are possible signs of a strategic and genuine commitment
to a sector deeply in need of resourcing and strategic government support.
This research study on cultural participation and taste is set within this
context. It originated at a time when the cultural sector in Ireland was
experiencing a crisis of legitimacy and was required to demonstrate a
body of proof with which to make the case for the arts. As elsewhere, the
need to make value-for-money arguments in order to justify government
spending on arts and culture, led to an increased awareness of the need to
generate evidence with which to make a case for the arts (Holden, 2006;
Jowell, 2004; National Campaign for the Arts, 2013a, 2013b; O’Hagan,
2015; Reeves, 2002; Warwick Commission, 2015).
In the early 2000s, the Arts Council of Ireland, through its agency,
Arts Audiences, responded to this need for a body of proof with which to
make the case for arts and culture. They drew on the Target Group Index
(TGI) consumer surveys which had been conducted throughout the UK
and the island of Ireland by Kantar Media. This data, reported on in the
Arts Audience surveys (2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2012, 2013), captured arts
attendance and cultural participation as a nationally representative data
on formal and informal arts and cultural engagement in Ireland. It suc-
cessfully demonstrated the Irish nation as highly engaged in arts and cul-
ture, and that Ireland followed similar patterns of arts and cultural
1 Introduction 3
participation as elsewhere. Notably, that the better socio-economically

advantaged, and more highly educated in Irish society, are more likely to
attend formal arts events. They note a slight dominance of females, as
well as the plus 55 years, in attending highbrow arts activities such as
theatre, ballet, opera and gallery exhibitions. They also note the
18–25 years and 45–54 years cohorts as the most disengaged from formal
culture (Arts Audiences, 2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2012, 2013).
Recent Arts Council of Ireland reports have made more of an attempt
to gather diverse findings and go deeper into the role of arts in Irish life.
The reports, commissioned by the Arts Council of Ireland (2015a, 2015b,
2017), continue to draw on the TGI surveys but insert a broader range of
questions that intend to capture a more expansive range of cultural par-
ticipation in informal artistic and creative activities. While the earlier
TGI surveys, define arts attendance as any performance in a theatre;
plays; opera; ballet; contemporary dance; classical music concerts and
recitals; folk concerts; jazz concerts and performances; art galleries and
exhibitions (Arts Audiences, 2010a, p. 8); and cultural participation is
loosely defined as “artistic or creative activities, such as drawing, photog-
raphy etc” and infers a range of informal, domestic creative activities
(Arts Audiences, 2010a, p. 8). The later Arts Council of Ireland reports,
use a definition of cultural participation that becomes more clearly
defined as “hobbies and Interests” and includes “participation in dance
(set dancing; other Irish traditional/folk dancing; other dancing); partici-
pation in music (sing in a choir; other singing to an audience or rehears-
ing; play a musical instrument to an audience or rehearsing; play a musical
instrument for your own pleasure); participation in amateur drama (per-
forming or rehearsing in amateur drama)” (2015a, p. 17). While these
more exacting definitions of cultural participation are helpful, they con-
tinue to separate out formal arts (and therefore, most likely funded) cul-
ture from informal and more domestic pursuits.
As a result of this, this researcher began to question the assertions that
were being made in the Arts Audiences and Arts Council of Ireland sur-
veys, specifically with regard to the separation of highbrow arts from
informal culture. I became conscious of a certain politics of method at
play in extant thinking about arts and culture in Ireland—one which
highlighted a division, and polarisation, that reinforced and legitimated
funded arts and culture. The Arts Audiences and Arts Council of Ireland
4 K. McCall Magan
research reports may make a case for arts and culture and provide a much-
needed body of proof for evidential purposes. However, in doing so, they
capture a quantitative logic that does little to highlight the actual role of
arts and culture in Irish life. To underscore the essence of who we are as a
young Republic and to help aid our understanding of the importance of
arts and culture in Irish life, it would be necessary to move beyond a sta-
tistically-focussed data capture that reinforces hierarchical and historical
ways of thinking about, and ways of seeing, arts and culture (Berger, 1972).
As Gibson and Miles have commented (on English survey tools), exist-
ing methodological decisions are “loaded with assumptions about the
world in their design and in the process of their application” (Gibson &
Miles, 2016, p. 152). They present a certain outlook that equates an
accepted view of legitimated, highbrow culture with state-funded activi-
ties with all else deemed domestic or amateur. What manifests is an
implicit fine arts focus that carries mid-twentieth century, formulaic
thinking “about ‘arts and culture,’ which might be best represented as
‘ARTS (and culture)’” (Cooke & McCall, 2015, p. 6).
What does result is a refocus of organisational strategic priorities that
sets out to maximise arts audiences and expand the consumer base of
state-funded arts and culture (Arts Council of Ireland, 2014, 2016). The
embrace of formal, highbrow fine arts and the need to place “in the
frame” those who have previously “been out of the picture,” is specifically
targeted at those who have been labelled as non-attenders of legitimated
arts and cultural activities (National Economic & Social Forum [NESF],
2007, 2008, p. 1). This deficit approach to the maximisation of arts audi-
ences considers the non-users of state-funded arts and culture as requiring
conversion into users of state-funded initiatives (Stevenson, 2013). To
follow this line of thinking feeds into a certain perspective on cultural
value and cultural worth within the body politic (Gibson & Miles, 2016;
Miles & Sullivan, 2010). This has left some scholars to ask exactly “what
is a non-user” of culture? (Balling & Kann-Christensen, 2013, p. 74).
Therefore, this researcher began to wonder what role does arts and
culture actually hold in Irish society? If Ireland is a highly creative and
engaged nation, and at the core of who we are as a young Republic, as
polity asserts, what does this actually mean and what do people actually
do? How can this researcher get behind the linear logic of statistics and
1 Introduction 5
find out more about those who are deemed the least active cultural
attenders? If these are the 18–24 years and 45–54 years educated, middle
and upper classes of Irish society as the survey data shows (Arts Council
of Ireland, 2017), how might an individual’s background, education or
upbringing inform an individual’s cultural participation and taste? Do
these individuals share certain characteristics? Display certain tastes?
Hold shared perspectives? How do these manifest?
These very imprecise questions began a deeper sociological consider-
ation of cultural participation in the lives of the dominant class in Ireland.
Bourdieu, Key Cultural Thinker

Bourdieu has been a foundational reference for those interested in
researching the sociological nature of cultural participation. He was the
first scholar to bring empirical analysis to the social space of lifestyles with
a rigour that attempted to capture the logic of this space. His work, while
much critiqued, has endured as a key reference for those interested in
understanding the relationship of culture and society.
In his seminal text, Distinction (1984), Bourdieu demonstrates how
individuals are a dynamic expression of the volume and levels of capital
an individual holds, at any given moment in time. Using Factor Analysis,
a quantitative method and form of differential association, he demon-
strated how fundamental patterns of cultural choice informed an indi-
vidual’s background, education and capital profile (Gans, 1986). He then
used qualitative enquiry to illustrate the taste and cultural participation
profile of a smaller number of research participants. This mixed methods
approach, allowed him to plot the relationship between people of varying
tastes and levels of accumulated capital (economic, cultural, social).
Through this research approach, Bourdieu was able to establish a deeper
understanding of individual circumstance and relate this to broader
structures in society by understanding the role played by cultural educa-
tion, competence and taste in defining an individual’s social position. As
such, Bourdieu’s seminal text Distinction (1984), highlights cultural par-
ticipation and taste as an explanatory mechanism for inequality and
power dynamics in the social field.
6 K. McCall Magan
The use of Bourdieu’s (1984, 1986) cultural capital premise as a theo-

retical tool will therefore help surface sociological information on the cul-
tural taste and participation of Dublin’s upper and middle classes. Through
a carefully designed research enquiry, it will help explore how the domi-
nant class—the educated, urban upper and middle class, in an affluent
suburb of the nation’s capital, Dublin—exercise and manifest their cul-
tural capital as an embodied resource in the social field. It will provide the
opportunity for reflection on cultural competence and familiarity and
consider how these are handed down through generations. It will also con-
sider the role education plays in perpetuating inequalities in the social field.
It has been highlighted above that beyond the quantitative capture of
the Arts Audiences (2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2012, 2013) and Arts Council
of Ireland (2015a, 2015b, 2017) reports, arts and culture in Ireland
remains distinctly under-researched, particularly from a sociological per-
spective. This research set out to make a meaningful contribution in this
regard by exploring the role cultural participation and taste hold in social
processes in Dublin, Ireland. Through qualitative interviews with two
different age cohorts (18–24 years and 45–54 years) in the summer of
summer of 2018, this research highlights the perpetuation of privilege
through cultural participation. Following Bourdieu (1984), this research
finds that an individual’s background is key in forming cultural taste,
creating persistence and confidence regarding cultural participation that
is remarkably enduring. Also following Bourdieu (1984), this research
highlights that cultural capital is a dynamic, interactive and relational
expression of an individual’s taste. This means that the stocks of cultural
capital an individual holds at any given moment are not static but fluid,
developing and informed by ongoing cultural experience, education and
cultural opportunity (Bennett, Emmison & Frow, 1999; Bennett,
Savage, Silva, Warde, Gayo-Cal & Wright, 2009). This, then becomes a
contemporary and emergent cultural capital, particularly among the
Irish young, that is performed as neo-distinction in the Irish social field
(Friedman, Savage, Hanquinet & Miles, 2015). As a result, this research
highlights the importance of cultural participation and taste in forming
social processes whilst also recognising the value and significance of a
variety of cultural engagements that exist within and with-out state
structures. In this way, this research develops a more nuanced under-
standing of Irish cultural participation than has been previously available
1 Introduction 7
and begins to more fully inform our understanding of the role culture
holds in Irish society.
The first chapter traces the key theoretical contributions in western
discourses that explore the enduring relationship between cultural par-
ticipation, taste and the social stratification of society. This is followed by
a contextualising chapter on Ireland which attempts to trace the key
social, economic, cultural and political processes of this young nation.
Chapter 4 outlines how thematic analysis is used to research cultural par-
ticipation and taste in Dublin, in the summer of 2018. The following
chapter presents and reviews the data extracts from interviewees, and is
illustrative of the highly developed aesthetic sensibility and voracious cul-
tural interests of interviewees. Chapter 6 focuses on the cultural reflexiv-
ity that is apparent and shows that it is not so much what is engaged with
as to how cultural participation and taste occurs. The final chapter locates
the analysis of cultural capital in relation to public policy in Ireland and
notes that we need to move beyond arts audience research into a more
informed understanding of Irish cultural participation and taste in order
to better understand how arts and culture feed into the structuring of
Irish society.
Note
1. Dept of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, (5 April
2022). ‘Minister Catherine Martin speaking at the Basic Income for the
Arts Pilot Scheme Launch’, gov.ie.
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2
Sociological Questions of Culture
Culture
The term culture originated from the Latin cultus, meaning ‘care’, and the
French colere, meaning ‘to till’ and here is evidence of individuals using
their creative talents in artistic, cultural or creatively focussed ways since
humans first started wearing clothes, making tools and creating jewellery,
over 110 thousand years ago (Berger, 2000). In medieval times, the arti-
sans of medieval Europe as skilled craftsmen, used their creative talents
and intellectual capital in the provision of goods and artefacts for their
communities. The wandering minstrels and troubadours of the Middle
Ages performed songs, told stories and entertained their audience with
dramatic tales of mythical or distant places in exchange for food and
accommodation. In pre-Norman Britain, travelling professional poets
were known as Scops. Bards, in Gaelic culture, carefully crafted poems
and songs to reinforce the status and power of the ruling families of the
land who acted as their patrons. While in Ireland, a long tradition exists
of storytellers, known as Seanachaí, travelled widely telling tales of epic
battles and local folklore (Kelly, 1989).
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 11

K. McCall Magan, Cultural Participation, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Participation,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18755-1_2
12 K. McCall Magan
Structure
By the late eighteenth century, European Enlightenment concepts of cul-
ture emphasised self-cultivation and progress towards personal and cul-
tural maturity. German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), in his
concept of bildung, captured a person’s emergence from self-incurred
immaturity and our progress towards a more mature, more developed,
more refined self. Hume (1757), Montesquieu (1764) and Kant (1790)
each identified taste as originating in the inherent capacities of individu-
als and correlated good taste with good judgment, good morals and cel-
ebrated the mysterious transcendence of artistic practice—placing this in
direct contrast to the overtly positivist logic and discoverable discourses
of truth and science (O’Kelly, 2007).
By the end of the nineteenth century, Veblen’s landmark text, Theory of
the leisure class: An economic study in the evolution of institutions (1899),
highlighted how the leisure class define society’s standards of aesthetic
tastes, leisure pursuits and consumption tendencies and expose the hol-
lowness of many canons of taste, education, dress, and culture. His key
contribution was to foreground the enduring and hollow relationship of
high culture with the dominant class, noting that we seek honour and
status by striving to maintain social standing and esteem, masquerading
our taste through visible, conspicuous consumption. Veblen drew a dis-
tinct correlation between higher social strata and patterns of cultural
choice, thereby directly connecting class to taste (Trigg, 2001).
Similarly, social theorist, Gabriel Tarde in the Laws of Imitation (1903)
suggested that we respond to the lives of others with gestures and deci-
sions which shape our own. He notes how our needs may be satisfied by
acts of consumption and our psychological desires are driven by our social
milieu (Wright, 2015). While in The Tastemakers (1949), American
scholar, Russell Lynes (1949) gauged the social significance of taste in the
post-war era in America. His is a tongue-in-cheek tracing of taste disposi-
tions that relates art, architecture, fashion and other forms of material
culture, identifying these as a consumer good and in a pre-Bourdieusian
way, highlighted the distinct taste patterning among the Highbrow,
Lowbrow and Middlebrow of American society.
Herbert Gans (1986), though generally favouring a structuralist

approach to cultural participation and taste, suggested a theory of taste
centred on elective affinity groups clustering around shared preferences
and ‘sub’ cultures: each differing by preference in literature, art, con-
sumption patterns, hobbies, and other leisure activities. His taste publics
are clustered because of similar values that are expressed through this
cultural content. He develops a typology of taste publics that consume
taste cultures appropriate for their educational level and social background
(Crane, 2008). While Gans tried to argue that different taste publics
(while connected to social classes) should be seen as equivalent, rather
than hierarchical, he overarchingly highlights the dominance of high cul-
ture through the public dominance of the codified taste of the elite. This
arises due to its presence in the canon of works studied in education. The
work of French anthropologist and sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu
(1930–2002), is key in this regard and has become a foundational refer-
ence for those interested in the study of cultural taste and participation.
Bourdieu
Bourdieu’s work follows from the more abstract and philosophical con-
ceptualisations of taste considered by scholars such as Kant, Simmel and
Weber, but his work moves the field on by focussing on empiricism and
cultural class analysis. His seminal text, Distinction (1984), is an empiri-
cal analysis of 1960s French society and this work locates taste as a marker
of social distinction and has done much to illuminate the connections
between taste and culture. A core element of his enquiry was the role
played by cultural participation and taste in defining an individual’s social
position. His main thesis centres on the class homogeneity of individuals,
which results from their individual accruement and deployment of eco-
nomic, social and cultural capital in the social field. In simple terms, the
more capital one has the more powerful one is, and in this way, cultural
capital is often used to explain how inequalities are produced (Bottero,
2005; Savage, Warde, & Devine, 2005b).
While the concept of cultural capital isn’t fully explained in Distinction
(1984), in a slightly later text (Forms of Capital, 1986), Bourdieu evolves
and disaggregates the concept into three distinct forms of cultural capital:
14 K. McCall Magan
objectified, institutionalised and embodied. Objectified cultural capital is

found in tangible cultural items such as artefacts or cultural works which
bear witness to, or an expression of, an individual’s taste. Institutionalised
cultural capital is conveyed by educational bodies and comprises certifi-
cation, awards, and educational credentials with the higher levels of edu-
cational merit achieved accruing a higher status. Schools support a general
transposable disposition towards legitimate culture and this occurs by not
only teaching a canon of works which have been sanctified, consecrated
and therefore legitimated in the education system, but by developing
within individuals the corresponding condition of reception and the abil-
ity to move from primary level meaning to secondary signification.
Bourdieu (1977) views this as the legitimisation of certain cultural forms
that the higher classes have a taste for and as such, they actively conse-
crate these tastes in the education system. Embodied cultural capital rests
on the premise that cultural practices have been incorporated and once
cultural competences have been acquired, they feed into the “long lasting
dispositions of the mind and body” (Bourdieu, 1986, p. 243). Bourdieu
helpfully suggest that embodied cultural capital needs to be experienced
at first hand and is similar to “the acquisition of a muscular physique or
suntan,” and “cannot be done at second hand” (1986, p. 248). It becomes
present and realised through an articulation of cultural competency and
familiarity with cultural references and experiences by those who are
overtly familiar with specific cultural forms (Benzecry, 2011; Halle, 1993;
Silva, Warde & Wright, 2009). In this way, Bourdieu’s cultural capital
premise highlights the disposal of taste through the “consumption of spe-
cific cultural forms that mark people as members of specific classes”
(Bourdieu, 1984, p. 6). Once cultural capital has been accrued, in tan-
gible or embodied form, the process of accruement transfers a form of
legitimised power in the capital to the individual, and in this way, cul-
tural capital feeds and supports power relationships in the social field
(Fowler, 1999; Silva, 2006; Warde, Wright & Gayo-Cal, 2007).
Bourdieu specifically outlines that an individual’s habitus is crucial in
the formation of cultural taste. Through the dissonance an individual
feels when they meet others who are not “like us” we experience a sense
of difference with Bourdieu noting, this may be the only time we become
consciously aware of our habitus (Lizardo, 2004; Reay, 2004). The
habitus orients “thoughts, perceptions, expressions, and actions” and

ultimately (aesthetic) choices in life—whether an individual is conscious
of this or not (Bourdieu 1990, p. 55; Weininger, 2005). In the concept of
habitus, Bourdieu re-forms Weber’s stylisation of life premise which is a
systematic commitment that organises and informs our various taste
preferences and behaviours. As the distance increases from the functional
and necessary in life, an individual’s choices become more stylised and
informed by the primacy of form over function (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 20;
Weininger, 2005). Therefore, an individual’s cultural taste becomes a
social logic that emanates from inherited class position, educational back-
ground and social standing. As such it organises “practices and the per-
ceptions of practices” whilst also being “rooted in a specific class position”
(Bourdieu, 1984, p. 166). In this way, through the concept of habitus,
Bourdieu unites structure and agency.
According to Bourdieu (1984), higher classes demonstrate greater
stocks of all forms of cultural capital and express this by objectively find-
ing universal principles of good taste in certain cultural goods. Unguided
by notions of utility or practical concerns, they display Kantian disinter-
estedness: a discerning sensibility and a cultural ease developed as a result
of cultural transmission in a cultivated home.1 Therefore, this time invest-
ment accrues cultural competency and understanding. In an upper class
home, Bourdieu outlines “it is well known that all dominant aesthetics
set a high value on the virtues of sobriety, simplicity, economy of means,
which are as much opposed to first-degree poverty and simplicity as to
the pomposity or affection of the half-educated” (Bourdieu, 1984,
p. 225). Those in the middle ground, the petit bourgeois, demonstrate an
emulative capacity for the “cultural goodwill” with Bourdieu rubbishing
their “stock-piling avidity” (1984, p. 330). This demonstration of taste is
based on familiarity with good taste but not quite the knowledge of how
to exercise it correctly. Those in lower class positions are prone to overt
displays of more exuberant, “garish” taste, preferring function over form
and retain a “taste for the necessary” (1984, p. 330). In this way, “social
subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the
distinctions they make” and in this way, “taste classifies, and it classifies
the classifier,” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 6).
16 K. McCall Magan
A core aspect of this distinction, is the ability to exercise cultural taste

without appearing to explicitly do so: “to be unblemished by any merce-
nary or cynical use of culture” as a naturalised disposition is then consoli-
dated by the “supplementary profit of being seen” (1984, p. 78). Bourdieu
further highlights cultural capital as important for professionals and
managers (of the bourgeois classes) than for either elites who have an
inherited birth-right, or the working classes who do not possess many
stocks of it. They, as the “dominated fraction of the dominant class”
maintain, validate and affirm their position in this fraction (Bourdieu,
1984, p. xxi). Therefore, the dominant class through quiet assertion of
power, control the social logic of supply and demand in relation to goods
(1984, pp. 229–231). In this way Bourdieu realises the immanent power
of cultural goods (1984, p. 225). For this reason, Bourdieu’s understand-
ing of capital is often referred to as neo-Marxian, as Bourdieusian capital
can be considered as “accumulated labour” (1986, p. 42). The more capi-
tal one has the more powerful one is, and in this way, cultural capital is
often used to explain how inequalities are produced (Bottero, 2005;
Savage, Warde, & Devine, 2005b).
Thus, capital can become a form of social energy, a marker of distinc-
tion: one that is exercised within the social space of lifestyles as a form of
symbolic violence. It has the capacity to produce profits, real profits in a
tangible form such as money, or useful as a boundary maker and group
creator. Scholars posit the reasons for this are manifold but largely centre
on individuals demonstrating their elite cultural choices as a means for
upward social mobility in the class schema (Ostrower, 1998). Lamont
and Lareau suggest this is because “legitimate culture [is] made up of high
status cultural signals used in direct or indirect social and cultural exclu-
sion” (1988, p. 156). While Barnes Brus (2005) acknowledges this, and
further highlights that the accumulation of cultural capital continues to
demarcate those who have access to resources from those who do not.
The relative differences in capital, particularly cultural capital, become
the manifestation of Bourdieu’s theory of taste through the structure
agency relationship (Holt, 1997). In this way Bourdieu’s theory of prac-
tice is an iterative process of relationality between agency and structure.
Those with higher stocks of cultural capital, because they tend to have
higher stocks of all capitals, tend to be in the dominant class in society;
and those with less capital, the dominated. Individuals therefore deploy
their capital as a power-conferring resource: one that not only perpetu-
ates cultural inequality in contemporary society but one that continues to
shape opportunity, behaviour and relations in the social field (Bottero,
2005; Hanquinet, 2014; O’Brien, 2015).
Possibilities Beyond Bourdieu: Taste as Agency

While scholars demonstrate that Bourdieu’s theory of taste continues to
provide an understanding of how cultural taste and participation support
and inform the structuring of society, others highlight its highly reductive
nature, noting that Bourdieu works with conceptualised ideal types,
retro-fitting the data to suit the distinct social class divisions present in
1960s France. By distilling and triangulating his findings onto the three
distinct social classes, he presents an ideal type of individual, extrapolat-
ing distinctive taste preferences with behaviours and cultural engage-
ments (Bennett et al., 2009). Erickson (1996) is particularly vocal in this
and notes that Bourdieu vertically ranks class and culture in mutually
reinforcing ways. Bennett et al. (1999) also highlight Bourdieu’s tendency
to deduce meaning and provide preconceived and anaemic one-
dimensional understandings of cultural stratification.
Halle finds Bourdieu’s conceptualisations of taste as an expression of
social aspiration and mobility particularly weak and notes that the sup-
port for Bourdieu’s central theory is deeply unsatisfactory (Halle, 1993).
In Inside Culture (1993), Halle links art and culture to the social life of
the house, and the neighbourhood, and focuses on the symbolic meaning
individuals derive from the aesthetics of their home context. He high-
lights how similar the response is of all social classes and notes that, for
example, everybody likes landscapes; the issue is to what extent differ-
ences in cultural tastes create boundaries between people. He posits that
not one respondent in a survey ever offered status as the main reason for
their choices (Halle, 1993).
Holt (1997) tries to rescue Bourdieu’s theory of taste from its critics
and makes a case for the re-interpretation of Bourdieu’s cultural capital
premise. Highlighting how cultural boundaries, while implied in
18 K. McCall Magan
Bourdieu’s work, go unexplored and suggests that Bourdieu’s theory of

distinction is a set of propositions that consider social conditions, tastes
and fields of consumption. He recommends building on this and focus-
sing on the micro-politics of everyday interaction through a document-
ing of communities of taste (Holt, 1997).
French scholar, Antoine Hennion, explores the subjective experience
of cultural taste and emphasises the need to take account of taste as a
reflexive mechanism—one which considers the elective affinity groups
where individuals come together around their taste preferences as forms
of bonding, enjoyment and interaction with each other. He notes that
those who posit that taste is a passive social game, functioning as a rein-
forcement for markers of social difference, are radically unproductive
(Hennion, 2004). Citing Frith (1996), Hennion highlights how collec-
tives of fans sit late at night discussing musical forms, and that what hap-
pens through these attachments and interactions, are bestowals of value,
as meaning occurs as people are active and productive in the articulation
of their cultural taste. Hennion (2004) suggests therefore, that we (as
amateurs) commune with objects and experiences that we value and
enjoy, both objectively and subjectively, and that through this we create
value. That taste is of us, with-in us, and with-out us and is a determining
factor of our life experience, socially, culturally, in material and immate-
rial culture (Hennion, 2004).
Indeed, others such as Pinnock (2009) suggest that time investment is
indeed the key element and propose that cultural competencies are devel-
oped due to time investment in particular cultural forms. Pinnock (2009)
argues that through repeated attendance cultural competencies are devel-
oped, maintained and reproduced through the experience of cultural par-
ticipation. Over time this leads to accumulating stocks of cultural
consumption capital which result in greater enjoyment from each encoun-
ter (Pinnock, 2009). Effort and time over months or years must be
invested before rewards can be materialised and once internalised, values
are learnt and remain stable as a direct result of the a priori commitment
already made (Shockley, 2005). Katz-Gerro and Yaish (2008) also suggest
that cultural preferences and behaviours establish patterns that are diffi-
cult to alter and which shift only slightly across the course of our lifetimes.
Benzecry’s (2011) research on the subjective nature of taste in his eth-

nography of opera fans also supports this. Immersing himself over a three
year period with opera fans in the legendary Colón Opera House in
Buenos Aires, Benzecry considers the nature of the experience of the fan.
His study particularly focuses on the middle class fan and he develops a
typology of differentiation based on enthusiasm and intensity of partici-
pation from within the position of an opera fan. He hears stories of two-
hundred-mile trips for performances, overnight camp-outs for tickets,
while others testify to a particular opera’s power to move them (Benzecry,
2011). He posits the question: “is there a social location for passion?” and
if we are looking for a class-specific form of fandom, he tells us the answer
is no—such a thing does not exist (Benzecry, 2011, p. 51). However, if we
are to ask are their indicators or variables which do repeat themselves in
sociological research of cultural participation—then yes, there are pat-
terns and these patterns do relate strongly to education and to the socio-
demographic features of class (ibid.). In so doing, Benzecry (2011)
highlights the correlation but also the dissonance between an individual’s
subjective enthusiasm and felt experience of culture, and the sociological
need to render class position within a structural hierarchy.
The Role of Education as a Tastemaker

An important factor in the formation of taste and behaviour patterns in
relation to cultural participation is education (DiMaggio, 1982;
DiMaggio & Mukhtar, 2004; Lizardo & Skiles, 2008; Peterson & Kern,
1996; Peterson & Simkus, 1992).
Scholars such as Ganzeboom (1982) suggest that because of the cogni-
tive information processing capacities developed through education,
abilities and competencies for culture are developed. While Marshall et al
suggest that this can be because parents, who cannot pass on their profes-
sions to their children, but can impart the right kind of capacities for
them to do well, particularly with regard to the education system
(Marshall et al., 1997, cited in Savage, 2000). Lareau (2003) also suggests
that middle class parents, through concerted cultivation, focus on maxi-
mising the educational advantage available to their children through the
20 K. McCall Magan
choice of school, extra-curricular activities and extra paid tuition.

DiMaggio and Useem further suggest that exposure to education “is, to a
considerable extent, a function of class origins” (p. 142, 1978). While
Reay (2010), charts the changing nature of education policies and trends
in cultural participation, highlighting the reinforcing nature of the rela-
tionship between economic capital and cultural capital. Her research sug-
gests that the heightened nature of parent involvement and initiatives to
retain the middle classes within state schooling, is maximising the poten-
tial of the already advantaged, further perpetuating and exacerbating class
inequalities in education current policies (Reay, 2010, p. 73). Khan spe-
cifically notes that through exposure to a canon of cultural works, indi-
viduals develop internalised dispositions which support them in
negotiating and experiencing other cultural encounters (2012). He high-
lights how, in his research on privilege in private education in America,
the education system consecrates certain cultural forms and that students
are taught how to negotiate the general register of culture through a series
of skills and competences developed that are transferable and transpos-
able to variety of cultural forms. Reeves (2015) further highlights that
while cultural participation is driven to some extent by status seeking
activities, education not class, is the main driving factor.
ringing Structure and Agency in Taste

B
Together
As an attempt to subvert the corresponding relationship between high-
brow arts and social class, Peterson developed Gans’s (1974) taste cultures
into an articulation of cultural participation expressed as omnivorous and
univorous cultural consumption. In his work with Simkus (Peterson &
Simkus, 1992) and with Kern (Peterson & Kern, 1996), Peterson tested
two competing ideas: one, that high status individuals were generally
becoming more omnivorousness and secondly, that the burgeoning num-
bers of the younger and increasingly educated factions of society, were
replacing older people who were snobbish and univorous in their tastes.
Peterson found both to be true—with those born after the Second World
War to be distinctly more omnivorousness than those born before.

Conversely, lower status individuals consumed less and as such were more
univorous in their cultural habits. The resulting emphasis uncovered by
Peterson is a qualitative shift from singular univore participation in exclu-
sive highbrow art forms by the elite or dominant class, towards a middle
class breadth of omnivorous appropriation of legitimate cultural forms
(Peterson & Kern, 1996). Thus to be a cultural omnivore typifies as a
disposition that embraces legitimated highbrow arts as well as more
diverse and popular forms of culture. In later work Peterson (2005,
2007), recognised that omnivorousness did not mean that everything was
liked and embraced indiscriminately, he redefined it as an openness to a
variety of art and cultural forms, and a disposition to “appreciate and
critique in the light of some knowledge of the genre” (Peterson & Kern,
1996, p. 904). Chan (2013), suggested omnivorousness can also signify a
disposition that embraces legitimate as well as more popular forms of
culture, encompassing an openness of social and political attitudes.
Omnivores therefore are established as more trusting, more liberal, more
politically engaged less likely to belong to a religion and are not more
class conscious (Chan, 2013).
While Lizardo and Skiles explore omnivorousness as a disposition with
five dimensions (2013), Katz-Gerro and Sullivan (2010) consider the
omnivorous intensity of engagement as distinct from breadth of cultural
engagement as an active measure. Placing emphasis on how actively indi-
viduals consume rather than on the cultural form or experience they con-
sume (Sullivan & Katz-Gerro, 2010). These voracious cultural consumers
demonstrate an insatiable cultural engagement that requires frequent
participative engagement (Sullivan & Katz-Gerro, 2007). Hanquinet
(2014), states that omnivorousness is evidence of the decline of socio-
cultural hierarchies while others conceive of it as a new form of socio-
cultural distinction (Bryson, 1996; Coulangeon & Lemel, 2007). She
recognises that while visitors to art museums are predominantly highly
educated and members of the upper and middle social classes, we lack the
tools to unravel the aesthetic diversity amongst these cultural audiences
(Hanquinet, 2013). Hanquinet et al. (2014) also highlight that it is not
what is consumed culturally as a measure of quantitative accumulation
that marks out privilege in contemporary society but how this
22 K. McCall Magan
consumption occurs. With the content of the cultural form engaged with
less relevant than the ability to demonstrate discernment and make
abstract aesthetic judgments (Hanquinet et al., 2014).
Working with a Contemporary Bourdieu

In Australia, Tony Bennett, Michael Emmison and John Frow embarked
on the Accounting for Tastes (1999) project. This research mapped the
interests of the Australian population through a “richly textured social
cartography of cultural tastes” (1999, p. 2). Taking Bourdieu as their
starting point and theoretical basis, and updating this for a 1990s
Australian context, they explore the “roles played by social class, age, gen-
der, education and ethnicity in distributing cultural interests and abilities
differentially across the population” (Bennett et al., 1999, p. 1). They
found that the social pattern of cultural interests in Australia, is
“enmeshed” in a complex fashion with power and social logic, playing a
role in the unequal distribution of “cultural life-chances” (ibid.). Overall
they particularly highlight the role played by cultural capital in organis-
ing social distinctions, platforming the crucial contribution education
plays in the mix of the distribution of our life chances, cultural interests
and social networks.
The Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion project (2003–6) in the UK
builds on this, and provides a particularly useful and nuanced consider-
ation of the social space of lifestyles (Bennett et al., 2009). Bennett et al.
(2009) find that while legitimate culture may track across homologies of
some fields, it now has less importance in contemporary Britain than it
did in 1960s France. Here, Bourdieu found a system of cultural domina-
tion that persisted through generations, while in early twenty-first cen-
tury UK, they find a much more complex pattern of cultural taste and
participation. Noticing no primary divide on the lines of the Kantian
(intellectual) high art aesthetic versus the low-browed, leisured industri-
alist aesthetic of popular or commercial culture. They clearly find that the
simple distinction between high and commercial or popular culture has
been replaced (and is better articulated) by those who are engaged as dis-
tinct from those who are disengaged and that many individuals are
engaged in other forms of cultural participation. They notice that differ-

ent cultural forms have different pervasive logics. For example, within the
music field, sub cultural orientations are prevalent as are the leanings
towards innovation and commercial forms. While in visual culture,
attachment to legitimate culture predominates and distinguishes social
groups. This could be, they suggest, because the cultural order has
changed, and there are now fewer penalties for engaging in popular enter-
tainment or commercial forms, or indeed for ignoring legitimate culture
entirely. They also highlight that people are now loath to turn their aes-
thetic differences and cultural choices into judgments of social or moral
worth. Overall they unearth a breadth of engagement across a variety of
cultural fields.
They conclude ultimately that the “conceptual armory” bequeathed
by Bourdieu is insufficient (Bennett et al., 2009, p. 256) and that we
need to break from Bourdieu’s distinction between high and low culture
in order to more fully develop our understandings of taste as they relate
to culture (Savage, 2008). This is echoed by Savage, Gayo-Cal, Wright
and Tampubolon who ask, “What does cultural capital—if it exists at
all—consist of?” (2005a, p. 4). Highlighting the problematic nature of
Bourdieu’s cultural capital premise, they note the lack of “robust mea-
sures of cultural capital” and particularly those that would help us “order”
cultural taste (Savage et al., 2005b, p. 12). They trace the various limits
that can be encountered by researchers who wish to mobilise Bourdieu’s
cultural capital concept, not least the naming and labelling of specific art
forms and genres as many of these are now declassified (DiMaggio, 1987;
Savage et al., 2005b). Noting how most surveys are “skewed” towards high
culture, they also note there is “an undue concentration on musical activ-
ity and taste in existing sources and studies’” (Savage et al., 2005b, p. 11).
Bennett et al. (2009) ultimately suggest that Bourdieu’s cultural capital
premise requires updating in order to make it relevant for contemporary
research and they specifically highlight how they differ from Bourdieu on
3 counts. Firstly, they find more relational social complexity in their find-
ings. Highlighting that cultural preferences are not more or less an expres-
sion of class positions in the social space, but a more complex relationship
of class, gender, age and ethnicity. Secondly, they note that if the notion
of habitus is to be retained then gender, age, class and ethnicity, also need
24 K. McCall Magan
to be considered in the processes of person formation (Bennett et al.,

2009). Finally, they disaggregate cultural capital, “breaking it up into
several different kinds of cultural assets, revealing the varied ways in
which cultural resources are organised and mobilised across different
kinds of social relations” (2009, p. 3).
Bennett et al. (2009) note that cultural preference is led more by a
considered orientation towards cultural consumption with different class
groups deriving different sources of pleasure from cultural engagement.
Tastes, they state, do of course cluster but this clustering is many and
varied. They assert that “today’s cultural boundaries are different” and
that individuals do draw boundaries but only some of these are class
boundaries (2009, p. 255). Overarchingly, Bennett et al. (2009) move
the analysis of cultural practices beyond the broad class divisions prof-
fered by Bourdieu into a more complex, graded kaleidoscope of
individuals.
As the above shows, there remains some debate about what “an ‘authen-
tic’ operationalisation of cultural capital would consist of ” (Sullivan,
2002, p. 155), researchers have had to work with the concept in a way
that articulates and remains close to Bourdieu’s main premise of cultural
capital as a reflection of the dominant culture in society. However, the
pace of social and technological change also means understanding cul-
tural capital in the shift to an accelerated cultural present (Prior, 2005).
Prieur and Savage (2013) argue that cultural capital demands to be
understood in relative rather than absolute terms and that to focus on
understanding cultural capital as a relative entity is most useful. This
requires locating cultural capital and the properties of cultural capital to
a specific field at a moment in time—in a relational present (Prior, 2005,
2015). For example, Silva and Wright (2008) highlight the prominence
of television as a necessary cultural form to include in the CCSE research.
Friedman specifically highlights the importance of including lower regis-
ter cultural forms, such as comedy taste in cultural participation research.
Silva and Wright (2008) also note the need to allow for gender balance
and ethnicity boosts as, if they had remained faithful to Bourdieu’s origi-
nal study, these wouldn’t have been accounted for. These are good exam-
ples of how researchers engaged in cultural capital research have found it
useful to mobilise Bourdieu’s concept as a relational and field specific

concept in nuanced ways in different fields.
As scholars continue to explore Bourdieu’s legacy, Silva and Warde
highlight that much of the appeal lies in the “partial appropriation and
empirical application” of his work (2010, p. 157). Noting the applica-
tions and limitations of Bourdieu’s work, they usefully posit that it is not
necessary to take on all of Bourdieu’s concepts in order to fruitfully apply
his insights (Silva & Warde, 2010). We see this in the work of Bennett
et al. (1999), Bennett et al. (2009), Miles and Sullivan (2012), Friedman
(2011, 2014), Friedman et al. (2015), and Savage et al. (2013). In each
of these studies the Bourdieusian theoretical premise of capital accumula-
tion as a form of social domination is adopted and more specifically, the
mobilisation of cultural capital as method for display of power and affir-
mation of dominance in the social field is updated and refined for a con-
temporary context. Each of these scholars has found it necessary to
update and refine the Bourdieusian framework in order to mobilise his
theoretical lens and move research on cultural participation into nuanced,
contemporary social contexts. What results is a real concern for the
unequal nature of this experience, one that grows out of an unequal dis-
tribution of resources in the social, economic and cultural spheres.
This has led contemporary scholars to argue that perspectives and defi-
nitions of cultural participation and taste, as expressions of cultural value
are “in need of a radical overhaul” (Miles & Gibson, 2016, p. 151, 2017).
They point towards moving away from a top down, culture is good for you
grand narrative that retains a focus on involvement in state-funded cul-
tural institutions and legitimated activities towards one that offers a more
holistic and inclusive recognition of the range of arts, culture and creative
activities, including hobbies, pastimes and popular culture. In line with
this, scholars have begun to raise the debate on what exactly constitutes a
user and non-user of culture looks like and increasingly recognise that
cultural participation takes place within and outside state-funded cul-
tural institutions (Balling & Kann-Christensen, 2013; Miles &
Gibson, 2017).
26 K. McCall Magan
Cultural Participation and Policy

As public budgets have tightened across Europe, “there has been an
increased emphasis on evidence-based policymaking in the cultural
domain” (O’Hagan, 2014, p. 1). This has resulted in policymakers and
semi-state organisations seeking “indicators of participation in the arts,
and the determinants of variation in participation rates, as a matter of
some priority” (ibid.). This has resulted in a variety of arts audience
reports that prove attendance at arts and culture and resulting strategies
that seek to convert non-users of state provision into users. Concurrently,
a surfeit of Irish strategy, policy, evaluation and review documents in the
1990s and 2000s, have appeared which promote the economic and social
impacts of participation in arts and culture (Arts Council of Ireland,
2014, 2015, 2017; DKM Economic Consultants, 2009; Indecon, 2011;
NESF, 2007, 2008; O’Hagan 1998, 2015; Price Waterhouse Coopers,
2010). This has been paralleled by a similar case for culture in the UK
(Arts Council of England, 2006; Belfiore & Bennett, 2008; Crossick,
G. & Kaszynska, 2016; Holden, 2006; Jowell, 2004; Matarasso, 1997;
McMaster, 2008; Myerscough et al., 1988; Reeves 2002; Warwick
Commission, 2015). Centring on a culture is good for you argument they
focus on actions and policies to pursue programmes to promote greater
accessibility and democratisation of access. This has led commentators to
note that if art did all it was said to do for society, there would be no need
for health, education, prison and law reforms and policies (NCFA, 2013a,
2013b; O’Kelly, 2007).
Feder and Katz-Gerro term this the arts provision approach as it arises
from a policy perception that public funding for arts and culture can act
as a helpful and equalising force in society (2012). This has resulted in
cultural participation becoming mobilised as a “band aid for society”
(O’Kelly, 2007) and a “life skill” for an individual’s personal development
(Robinson 2001, cited in Jancovich & Bianchini, 2013). This has bur-
geoned into a variety of well-being arguments for cultural participation
most of which find causation, as well as correlation, more than a little
tricky (Galloway, 2006). It has also led scholars such as Oakley, O’Brien
and Lee to ironically ask: are we all “happy now?” (2013).
DeNora and Ansdell (2014) highlight that while culture, in and of

itself, does not actually do anything, policies continue to state the active
and useful role of arts and culture. This can take the form of promoting
peace and reconciliation (UNESCO, 2022a); the protection of cultural
diversity the eradication of poverty and the advancement of sustainable
development (United Nations General Assembly, 2015, UNESCO,
2022b). Pick (1991) states there is nothing new in governments finding
uses for culture in positive or negative ways but increasingly we witness
policy and organisational rhetoric that focuses on culture as the balm that
solves the ills of society (O’Kelly, 2007). Stevenson queries whether we
can accurately say there is a direct relationship between ‘participation’ or
‘attendance’ and ‘engagement’ and suggests that these terms indeed need
to be questioned” (2013). In his analysis of Scottish cultural policy and
Creative Scotland funding, Stevenson also asks, “What’s the problem
again?” (2013, p. 77). He suggests the problem is not that individuals in
Scottish society are not engaged in culture, but that they are not engaged
in the Scottish government’s version of culture. The problem, therefore,
lies squarely in definitions of culture and cultural participation.
This begs the question, what exactly is a non-user of culture? (Balling
& Kann-Christensen, 2013). Balling and Kann-Christensen identify “so-
called non-users” of culture as very active cultural participants whose
“cultural activities take place in non-institutional spaces (e.g. web sites,
on the streets or other informal settings)” (2013, p. 67). While Gilmore’s
(2014) case study of Macclesfield in the North West of England also
raises important questions about local knowledge and tacit, vernacular
forms of cultural engagement. Hanquinet’s Cultural Boundaries in Europe
(2014) further considers the cultures of everyday life in Europe, and the
declassified cultural tastes and practices of individuals.
Scholars therefore are beginning to foster a broader understanding of
cultural participation—one that includes hobbies, pastimes and more
local pursuits activities. This points towards a more democratic and inclu-
sive recognition of ordinary participation and the need to highlight the
variety of cultural expression and engagement in today’s society (Miles &
Sullivan, 2010). The narratives of participation Miles and Sullivan
uncover centre on everyday engagement with cultural forms. They high-
light the value-laden connotation of the word legitimate and the term
28 K. McCall Magan
high culture, noting that the “ghostly participants” in their study are
defined traditionally as non-users of legitimate culture according to arts
marketing data while in fact these individuals are “actually quite actively
engaged in arts and cultural practices” (Miles & Sullivan, 2010, p. 19).
Balling and Kann-Christensen (2013) frame this as the “movement from
a narrow to a broad concept of culture” which has led to a growing aware-
ness of what constitutes a “participant” (2013, p. 68).
The Understanding Everyday Participation—Articulating Cultural
Values (UEP) project includes a wide range of cultural participation such
as the cultural economy of charity shopping through to the attractiveness
of libraries and the cultural worth of parks and commons and more
(Delrieu & Gibson, 2017; Edwards & Gibson, 2017; Gilmore, 2017;
Miles & Gibson, 2017). This work marks a distinct move towards research
that is better reflective of the role arts and culture does hold in society.
This research project “proposes a radical re-evaluation of the relationship
between participation and cultural value” and explores “the connections
between understandings of community, cultural value, the creative econ-
omy and everyday participation,” (Understanding Everyday Participation,
2022). Aiming to paint a broader picture of how people make their lives
through culture and in particular how communities are formed and con-
nected through participation in a broad register of cultural activities.
Expressed in this way, it becomes clear how the state, in its role as
implicit and explicit cultural policy maker, has a central and powerful
role in “influencing both the heritage and the prospects of the arts and
culture in society” (Katz-Gerro, 2015, p. 1). Feder and Katz-Gerro
(2015), highlight how the “patterns of government funding of arts organ-
isations over time represent priorities driven by cultural policy” and show
“how this hierarchy corresponds to the social hierarchy among ethnic and
national groups and between the center and periphery” (2015, p. 76).
Through distributive funding mechanisms and favouring some activities
and actions over others, some genres and types of culture are preferred
over others. In this shaping of the cultural field, resources are distributed
and power relationships established. In so doing, implicit policies are at
work that support powerful groups in society and reinforce and repro-
duce the hegemonic power and control of those groups. This runs coun-
ter to the stated aspiration of many government policies and arts
organisation strategies to increase social diversity and act as an equalising

force that reduces inequalities and ensures the “arts are enjoyed by the
general public…support[ing] capacity building and professional devel-
opment in the field of public engagement” (Arts Council, 2015, p. 24).
The next chapter picks this thread up and explores arts and cultural par-
ticipation in an Irish context.
Conclusion
As the above shows, there have been much exploration of questions of
taste, culture and participation and how these relate to social processes or
subjective preferences and individuated meaning. While culture has been
an ideal of individual refinement and the artist, a romantic genius work-
ing at a remove from society, it has also had an enduring relationship
between highbrow culture and the powerful and dominant in society.
Recently scholars have begun to question the definitions and version of
culture that is deemed of value and legitimated through funding, access
policies and organisational strategies for inclusion. The next chapter
explores the Irish context and considers the Irish context for culture and
available arts attendance and cultural participation research in Ireland.
Note
1. Disinterestedness is a state of mind that is free of practical concerns, goals,
or desires. It is subjective and also universal. See Kant (1790) Critique of
Judgment for his fullest expression of aesthetics.
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Making Photographic Prints Glossy
Pictures printed on glossy, semi-glossy, or semimat paper may be
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How To Build
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PART I
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flimsy makeshift, but a stiff and thoroughly dependable canoe
designed for long service, which, barring accidents and given
reasonably good care, will continue to give satisfaction for many
years. The tools needed are the common ones found in most homes,
consisting of a rip and cross-cut saw, chisel, screwdriver, drawknife,
awl, brace and bits, rule, hammer, vise, plane, and three or four
cheap wood, or metal, screw clamps. The list of material given is for
a canoe having a length of about 16 ft., 31-in. beam, 18-in. depth at
the ends, 12¹⁄₂-in. depth amidships, and weighing from 60 to 70 lb.,
according to the material.
While oak or ash makes the best stems, other woods may be
used, rock elm and fir being very satisfactory substitutes. Where
cedar is specified, spruce pine, cypress, or fir may likewise be
employed. The materials for molds and ribbands, which are required
to give form to the craft, may be cut from any cheap stuff, and this
will reduce the cost somewhat.
STEM, 1 piece oak or ash, 6 ft. long and ³⁄₄ in. square.
KEELSON, (inside keel) 1 piece oak or ash 14 ft. long, 3¹⁄₂ in. wide, ³⁄₈ in.
thick.
GUNWALES, 2 pieces oak or ash, 16 ft. long, ⁷⁄₈ in. wide, ¹⁄₂ in. thick.
SEAT RISINGS, 2 pieces oak or ash, ¹⁄₂ in. square.
FENDERWALES, 34 ft. ¹⁄₂-in. half-round molding. Oak or ash best for hard
knocks.
OUTSIDE KEEL (may be omitted if desired), 1 piece oak, 14 ft. by 1 in. by
¹⁄₂ in. thick.
DECK BEAMS, 2 pieces oak or ash, 8 in. long, 1¹⁄₈ in. wide, ³⁄₄ in. thick.
SEAT FRAMES, 2 pieces oak or ash, 30 in. long, 3 in. wide, ³⁄₄ in. thick.
SEAT FRAMES, 2 pieces oak or ash, 12 in. long, 2¹⁄₄ in. wide, ³⁄₄ in. thick.
PLANKING, cedar or pine, 100 sq. ft., ¹⁄₈ in. thick. Best secured by
purchasing 25 ft. of 1-in. lumber, and having same dressed on two
sides to ¹⁄₈ in. thick, and in lengths of 12, 14 and 16 ft. This will give
the minimum amount of waste.
BACKBONE, 1 piece cedar or pine, any cheap stuff, 16 ft. long, 4 in. wide,
⁷⁄₈ in. thick.
MOLDS, 1 piece any cheap stuff, 16 ft. long, 1 ft. wide, ⁷⁄₈ in. thick.
RIBBANDS, 8 pieces any cheap stuff, 14 ft. long, ³⁄₄ in. wide, ¹⁄₂ in. thick.
RIBS, 360 running feet, cedar, 1³⁄₄ in. wide, ¹⁄₈ in. thick.
BREAST HOOKS OR DECKS, 1 piece cedar or oak, 32 in. long, 9 in.
wide, ³⁄₄ in. thick.
1 lb. 2-in. wire nails to make form for keel.
1 lb. ⁵⁄₈-in. copper clout nails, for fastening ribs.
¹⁄₂ lb. ³⁄₄-in. copper clout nails, for fastening seat risings.
18 1¹⁄₄-in. No. 8 brass screws, for fastening decks and deck beams.
24 1-in. No. 6 brass screws, for fastening seats.
4 lb. patent marine glue to cement canvas to planking.
3 oz. No. 2 ounce copper tacks to fasten canvas with.
11³⁄₄ yd. No. 6 ounce canvas for covering hull.
1 lb. ³⁄₈-in. copper tacks to fasten planking to ribs.
The Backbone and Molds
The first step in the construction of a canoe is to get out the

backbone and the molds, or forms, which give the correct
dimensions and shape of the craft. The backbone may be made from
any inexpensive soft wood, such as cedar, spruce, pine, or cypress;
and for making it a piece of lumber, 16 ft. long, 4 in. wide, and ⁷⁄₈ in.
thick, is used. By referring to Fig. 1 it will be seen that the upper
edge measures exactly 15 ft. 8³⁄₄ in., and that the lower edge is ¹⁄₂ in.
longer, giving a total length of 15 ft. 9¹⁄₄ in. The spaces numbered
from each end of the backbone toward the center, as 1, 2, 3, and 4,
indicate where the corresponding molds are to be placed. Seven
molds are used and as a canoe is tapered alike at both ends the
molds are numbered alike and are made exactly to the same
dimensions.
Fig. 1
The First Step in the Construction of a Canoe Is to Get Out the Backbone
and the Molds, or Forms, Which Give the Correct Dimensions and Shapes of
the Craft
A good way to lay out the backbone accurately is first to mark the
total length, making the lower edge 1 in. longer than represented in
Fig. 1, then measure along the top edge exactly 22¹⁄₄ in., and run a
pencil line across. From this line measure off ³⁄₄ in. and draw a
second line across the width of the board parallel with the first. This
space represents the thickness of the mold, and it is marked 1.
Measure off 23¹⁄₄ in. and make two parallel lines as before and
number it 2, measure another 23¹⁄₄-in. length and number it 3. Begin
measuring from the opposite end of the board as in the first instance,
22¹⁄₄ in. and give it number 1, then mark off 2 and 3 the same as for
the end already marked. The board is then cut off at the bevel mark
at each end.
The Molds or Forms
The molds which give the form to the hull are shown and
numbered in the order that they are fastened to the backbone. To get
out No. 1 mold draw a rectangle on a sheet of stiff paper exactly
13⁵⁄₈ in. long and 11 in. wide as shown in Fig. 2. Run cross lines to
divide it in quarters and mark out the center mortise for the
backbone, which is 5 in. deep and ⁷⁄₈ in. wide. Measure 4 in. toward
each side from the outside edge of the backbone mortise and mark
the mortises for receiving the gunwales, which are 1⁵⁄₈ in. long and
³⁄₄ in. wide or deep. To obtain the correct bilge curve lay the rule on
the bottom line and measure off exactly 1 in. to the left of the center
dividing line and make dot 0. Measure 2³⁄₄ in. farther to the left, to A;
turn the rule at right angles and measure 2¹⁄₈ in. inside the line and
make dot 1. Measure 1¹⁄₂ in. to the left of A, turn rule at right angles
and measure up the sheet exactly 4⁷⁄₈ in. and make dot 2, which will
be ¹⁄₄ in. inside of the left vertical line. On the center horizontal line,
which is 1¹⁵⁄₁₆ in. above dot 2, mark dot 3, ¹⁄₁₆ in. from the left vertical
line. Measure off 2 in. above the horizontal center line and make dot
4 on the vertical line. The space between these two dots is the
widest part of the bilge curve. Lay the rule on the bottom line of the
gunwale mortise and measure off ³⁄₁₆ in. from the outside line and
make dot 5. Pencil the angle from dot to dot and draw in the full
curve. Cut out the half section, fold on the vertical center line, and
draw the right side.
Fig. 2
Two complete No. 2 molds are required, but it is more convenient

to make each mold in two sections. Each half is made 11¹⁄₂ in. wide
and 12 in. deep, as shown in Fig. 3. First draw a rectangle to these
dimensions and run cross lines to divide it into quarters. Beginning at
the upper right-hand corner, mark the mortises for gunwales and
backbone, which, being only one-half of the complete form, will be
⁷⁄₁₆ in. wide and 3¹⁄₄ in. deep. Laying the rule on the outside line
immediately below the mortise, draw a second mortise for the keel,
which is ³⁄₈ in. deep and 1¹⁄₂ in. wide in the half section. Measure off
1³⁄₄ in. to the left along the bottom line from keel mortise and make
dot 1. The dot 2 is made by measuring 2¹⁄₂ in. to the left of 1, turning
the rule at right angles at B and measuring ⁵⁄₁₆ in. inside the line as
shown in the sketch. Make the dot 3 at a point 1³⁄₄ in. to the left of 2
and ³⁄₄ in. inside of the line. The dot 4 is 1³⁄₄ in. from C and 1³⁄₄ in.
inside of the line. The dot 5 is 1¹⁄₄ in. farther to the left and 3¹⁄₄ in.
inside of the line. The dot 6 is ⁵⁄₈ in. from dot 5 and 4³⁄₄ in. inside of
the line, which will bring it ³⁄₈ in. inside of the left vertical line. At a
point 1¹⁄₂ in. above 6 make dot 7 on the marginal line, and dot 8, 1¹⁄₄
in. above it. Between the dots 7 and 8 is the widest part of the bilge
curve. Dot 9 in exactly ¹⁄₄ in. inside of the vertical marginal line.
These dots produce the angles, and it is only necessary to trace in
the full curve and cut it out to make a pattern for the other three half
sections needed.
Fig. 3
It Is More Convenient to Make Each Mold in Two Sections, as Two Complete
Molds are Required
The molds No. 3, Fig. 4, are located near the center of the canoe
and are made a trifle wider. Make a rectangle 14³⁄₈ in. long by 12 in.
wide and draw cross line dividing it into quarters. Trace the half
mortises for the backbone, gunwale, and keel from the No. 2 mold
pattern. Lay the rule on the bottom line and measure off ¹⁄₂ in. to the
left from the center vertical line and mark dot 1, which is the
beginning of the bilge curve. At a point 2³⁄₄ in. to the left and ³⁄₄ in.
inside of the line place dot 2, and 2 in. to the left of this and 2¹⁄₄ in.
inside of the line place dot 3, then 1¹⁄₈ in. farther to the left turn the
rule at right angles and measure up 4 in. inside of the line for dot 4,
which is ¹³⁄₁₆ in. inside of the left marginal line. At a point 2 in. above
dot 4 make dot 5 on the marginal line and 2¹⁄₈ in. above it make dot
6. The space between gives the widest part of the bilge curve, with
dot 7 exactly ¹⁄₄ in. inside of the marginal line, measuring along the
bottom of the gunwale mortise. Trace the angle and from it run the
full curve and use this for a pattern for cutting out the other molds.
Fig. 4
This Mold is Located near the Centre of a Canoe and is Made a Trifle Wider
Mold No. 4 is placed amidships in the center of the canoe and only
one complete mold is required, as shown in Fig. 5. To make a
pattern draw a rectangle 15 in. long and 12 in. wide, and divide it into
four equal parts as before. From the No. 3 mold pattern trace in the
mortises for the gunwale, backbone, and keel. Lay the rule on the
bottom outside line and measure 2 in. from the center line to the left
at D and turn the rule at right angles and measure off ⁵⁄₁₆ in. inside of
the bottom line and make dot 1. Measure, from D, 1¹⁄₂ in. to E, turn
the rule up and measure off ⁵⁄₈ in. inside the line and make dot 2.
The dot 3 is 1¹⁄₂ in. farther to the left and 1¹⁄₄ in. inside the line and
dot 4 is 1 in. to the left of 3 and 2 in. inside of the line. The dot 5 is
1¹⁄₄ in. to the left of dot 4, and 4 in. inside of the bottom line, which
will bring it ¹⁄₄ in. inside of the left vertical side line. At a point 2 in.
above dot 5 make dot 6 on the outside vertical line and 1¹⁄₄ in. above
it make dot 7. The space between dots 6 and 7 gives the widest part
of the correct bilge curve. Exactly 3³⁄₄ in. above dot 7 and ¹⁄₄ in.
inside of the vertical side line make dot 8, which marks the beginning
of the bilge curve above the water line and at the gunwale mortise.
The curve of the canoe floor is quite flat, but not exactly a straight
line. Lay the rule on the bottom line and measure up, on the inner
edge of the keel mortise, ¹⁄₈ in., then 2¹⁄₂ in. to the left make a mark,
F, ¹⁄₁₆ in. inside the bottom line and a pencil line drawn between them
will enable one to trace the correct curve. Having cut out the pattern
make two wood forms exactly alike to have it complete, as shown.
After finishing the seven complete molds, fasten them securely
together by nailing a couple of battens across the halves.
Fig. 5
This Mold is Placed Amidships, in the Center of the Canoe, and Only One is
Required
Fig. 6
Straight-Grained Material must be Selected for the Stems, as It Is Necessary
to Bend Them to Shape
The Ribbands and Stems
The ribbands are merely strips of wood, ³⁄₄ in. wide, ¹⁄₂ in. thick,
and 14 ft. long. Any cheap stuff will do because they are only used to
give the correct shape of the canoe curve while building it. Six
ribbands are necessary, and it is best to use eight lengths in order to
make sure that the ribs are bent at the required angle and that both
sides of the canoe are ribbed at the one uniform curve. For the
stems ash or oak, ³⁄₄ in. square, is used, and straight-grained
material must be selected since it is necessary to bend them to
obtain the requisite curve.
To make the pattern for the stem mold, shown in Fig. 6, draw a
rectangle, 24¹⁄₂ in. long by 12 in. wide, and divide it into four equal
parts. Lay the rule on the left side at the upper corner, at G, measure
down 1 in. and make dot 1. Lay the rule along the top horizontal line
and measure 2¹⁄₂ in. from G and make dot 2, then draw a pencil line
between them. From dot 1 measure along this line exactly ³⁄₄ in., and
make dot 3. From dot 2 measure straight down 1³⁄₄ in. to H, turn at
right angles and measure off ⁵⁄₈ in. to the right and make dot 4, and
make a pencil line from 2 to 4 as shown. From dot 2 lay the rule
parallel with the top horizontal line and measure off 9³⁄₄ in., turn at
right angles and measure down on the center line 2¹⁄₄ in. and make
dot 5.
Lay the rule at the upper right corner and measure down the
vertical line 2³⁄₄ in., turn the rule at right angles and measure off 3⁷⁄₈
in. and make dot 6. From the upper right-hand corner measure off
1⁵⁄₈ in. and make dot 7 exactly ¹⁄₄ in. inside the top horizontal line.
Again place the rule at the right-hand corner, measure down the
vertical line exactly 2 in. and make dot 8. Draw the line from dot 7 to
8, and ¹⁄₂ in. from dot 8, make dot 9. This gives the correct contour of
the stem where it joins the splice of the keel.
Fig. 7
It Is Not Necessary to Make a Paper Pattern for the Keel, or Keelson, as the
Piece is Merely Tapered Uniformly from the Center to Ends, and It can be
Drawn Direct on the Board
The greatest curve and width of the stem is at J on the lower line.
To obtain the correct curve begin at the upper left corner and
measure from dot 1 down the vertical line 4¹⁄₂ in. to K, turn the rule at
right angles and measure 1¹⁄₄ in. inside the line, and make dot 10.
The dot 11 is placed by measuring down from K exactly 3¹⁄₄ in. to L,
when the rule is turned at right angles and a length of 4 in. measured
off inside of the line. The dot 12 is located in the same manner by
measuring 2³⁄₄ in. below L and running 8³⁄₄ in. inside the line, as
shown.
To finish the irregular curve of the stem, measure from J at the
center of the lower horizontal line 2 in. to M, turn the rule up and
measure off ¹⁄₂ in. inside of the line, and make dot 13. The dot 14 is
made by measuring off 4 in. from M to N and turning the rule to a
point 3 in. inside the line, as shown. Then from point N measure to O
1¹⁄₄ in., and then measure up 4 in. to dot 15. From the dot 14 to 15
run a straight line. The dot 15 should be exactly 5 in. inside of the
right vertical line.
Allowance for the beveled splice of the stem to the inside keel
must now be made, and the beginning is to run a light pencil line
from dot 15 to dot 6. From dot 15 measure up ¹⁄₂ in., turn the rule at
P and make dot 16 exactly ¹⁄₄ in. to the left of the upright line. From
dot 16 a line is run to dot 8 which completes the angle of the curve.
The full curve is then easily traced in.
The Inside Keel, or Keelson
The inside keel, or keelson, is made exactly 13 ft. 11 in. long and
3¹⁄₂ in. wide in the center, which is, of course, amidships. It is
unnecessary to go to the trouble of making a paper pattern for this
because the keel is merely tapered uniformly from center to ends,
and this may be drawn on the surface of the board direct. The board
being 13 ft. 11 in. long and 3¹⁄₂ in. wide, it is only necessary to make
cross lines exactly in the center both ways. From the center measure
1 ft. toward one end and make the width at that point 3¹⁄₂ in.
Measure 1 ft. farther along, and again make the width 3¹⁄₂ in. as
before. Continue in this manner, making the third station 3¹⁄₄ in.; the
fourth, 2⁵⁄₈ in.; the fifth, 2 in.; the sixth, 1¹⁄₄ in., and the width at the
ends ¹⁵⁄₁₆ in. This detail is well shown in Fig. 7. Bend the stem on the
mold and fasten it to the keel by means of a couple of ³⁄₄-in. No. 10
screws at each end.
The Ribs and Gunwales
Fig. 8
The Ribs are Fastened to the Outside of the Keelson and are Curved under
the Ribbands
The ribs are best made of cedar, cut from the same material as the
planking. They are 1³⁄₄ in. wide and ¹⁄₈ in. thick. It is a good plan to
saw out several long lengths and cut them off as required, the length
being determined by measuring from gunwale to gunwale around the
curve over the ribbands. The ribs are put in under the ribbands, and
the thickness of the latter will allow sufficient wood for making a good
fit at the sheer line. The gunwales are two straight strips, 16 ft. long,
⁷⁄₈ in. wide, and ¹⁄₂ in. thick.
Fig. 9
The Bent Stem is Fastened to the Keel with Screws at Both Ends
Setting Up the Canoe
Having made all the material ready, the work of setting up the
canoe may begin, and as it is built upside down, place the backbone
on boxes, about 1 ft. or more above the floor, and place the molds in
the numbered places on the backbone, allowing the backbone to rest
upon the bottom of the mortises cut in the top of the molds. Study
Figs. 8 and 9 before beginning the work of setting up the hull.
True up the molds with a square and fasten them firmly by
toenailing them to the backbone. Put the keelson in place, allowing it
to fit down in the mortises cut in the molds to receive it. Take
particular care that the stems are a good fit with the angle of the
backbone at the ends, then fasten by nailing through the top edge of
the mold into the stems. As shown in the stem-mold drawing, Fig. 6,
the splice where the stem fits the keelson must be cut out after it is
bent into place. This is easily done by marking around the outside
edge of the stem and then beveling from the inside on each side.
The outer edge is left about ¹⁄₈ in. wide, and the bevel runs out to the
width of the keel at the lower end.
The gunwales are next put on at the sheer line, and fastened to
the molds and stems, leaving sufficient of the nails exposed to make
them easily withdrawn later on. The four ribbands are then put on
each side, at equal distances apart, between the gunwale and keel,
or at 5-in. centers, measuring from the keel up toward the gunwale.
Fasten the ribbands by driving 1¹⁄₄-in. brads through them into the
mold. Measure off the keel for the ribs, which should be put on 3 in.
apart, measuring from the centers. The ribs are fastened to the
outside of the keelson and are curved under the ribbands. Fasten
each rib to the keel by means of two ⁵⁄₈-in. copper clout nails, then
spring them into place and fasten to the gunwales. Put in all the ribs
in the same way, spacing them so that a rib will be placed over each
mold. When all the ribs are put in, remove the ribbands, and begin
planking the hull.
Planking the Canoe
As a canoe is planked with ¹⁄₈-in. cedar it is easily bent to the

curve of the ribs while cold, thus doing away with the trouble of
steaming. Unlike heavier-planked craft the planking is not rabbeted
at the stem but is nailed to the beveled surface. For strength and to
give a perfectly smooth skin on which to lay the canvas, it is
advisable to run the planking the full length from stem to stem. Begin
by putting on the garboard strake, which is the bottom plank at the
keel. Punch holes in the plank with an awl, not directly in line, but
staggered from side to side along the ribs. This will prevent the
possibility of splitting. Drive in the copper clout nails while the plank
is kept in place with a clamp to facilitate the work. Hold a clinch iron,
or any handy piece of iron, inside and clinch the nails so that the
ends are well imbedded in the rib on the inside. It is a simple matter
to fit each plank in place, because they are merely a close fit at the
edge, butted together without beveling. The number of planks
required will depend upon the width, and while wider strips may be
used, planking cut to the width of 3 in. is generally employed. In any
case the top plank or sheer strake should be level with the gunwale
from one stem to the other. When the hull is completely planked, cut
off the ends of the planking to the curve of the stems and gunwales.
The backbone and molds may now be taken out by sawing the
backbone in two. Tack a couple of strips across the gunwales to
keep the hull from sagging out of shape, then drive the nails over the
sections the molds occupied, since these forms prevented doing this
work before.
Seat Risings and Seats
The seat risings are simply straight sticks, ¹⁄₂ in. square, and are
fastened on the inside for the seats to rest upon. They are about 4
in. below the gunwale. Oak or ash is the best material, and the
length is 14 ft. To fasten in place, first bore a small hole and then nail
through the planking and ribs, and clinch on the inside of the rising.
Fig. 10
The Seat Frame may be Caned, or a Canvas Seat Tacked On, as Preferred
The seat frame is fashioned as shown in Fig. 10, and may be

caned, or a canvas seat tacked on, as preferred. Many canoeists
prefer to kneel, in which case a seat bar, about 4 or 5 in. wide, is run
athwartships for the paddler’s back and thighs to rest against while
paddling.
The Deck Beams and Decks
The deck beams are merely straight pieces, about 8 in. long, 1¹⁄₈
in. wide, and ³⁄₈ in. thick. These are notched at the ends as shown in
Fig. 11, so that they will come up and wedge against the sides of the
gunwales about ¹⁄₂ in. Put them in by boring a hole through the
gunwale and fasten with a 1¹⁄₄-in. No. 10 screw at each end. Two are
required, one at each end.
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
The Shape of the Deck or Breast Hooks and the Beams That Support Them
The deck, or breast, hooks are made 16 in. long by 8 in. wide and
of the shape shown in Fig. 12. To fasten them in place bore three

Cultural Participation The Perpetuation of Middle Class Privilege in Dublin Ireland Kerry Mccall Magan Full Chapter

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Cultural Participation: The perpetuation

of middle-class privilege in Dublin,

ISSN 2661-8699 ISSN 2661-8702 (electronic)

Cultural participation has been a long-standing area of enquiry in the

cultural participation that is remarkably enduring. It highlights how cul-

Dublin, Ireland Kerry McCall Magan

2 Sociological Questions of Culture 11

5 A Nation Highly Engaged 81

7 Policy Implications and Recommendations119

Kerry McCall Magan is Country Director for the British Council in

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

launch of a cultural policy framework proposing a ten-­year plan was wel-

participation as elsewhere. Notably, that the better socio-economically

Bourdieu, Key Cultural Thinker

The use of Bourdieu’s (1984, 1986) cultural capital premise as a theo-

Bourdieu, P. (1984 [1979]). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste.

Kiberd, D. (1996). Inventing Ireland: The literature of the modern nation.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 11

Herbert Gans (1986), though generally favouring a structuralist

objectified, institutionalised and embodied. Objectified cultural capital is

habitus orients “thoughts, perceptions, expressions, and actions” and

A core aspect of this distinction, is the ability to exercise cultural taste

Possibilities Beyond Bourdieu: Taste as Agency

Bourdieu’s work, go unexplored and suggests that Bourdieu’s theory of

Benzecry’s (2011) research on the subjective nature of taste in his eth-

The Role of Education as a Tastemaker

choice of school, extra-curricular activities and extra paid tuition.

 ringing Structure and Agency in Taste

War to be distinctly more omnivorousness than those born before.

Working with a Contemporary Bourdieu

engaged in other forms of cultural participation. They notice that differ-

to be considered in the processes of person formation (Bennett et al.,

useful to mobilise Bourdieu’s concept as a relational and field specific

Cultural Participation and Policy

DeNora and Ansdell (2014) highlight that while culture, in and of

organisation strategies to increase social diversity and act as an equalising

Crane, D. (2008). Taste culture. In W. Donsbach (Ed.), The international

Fowler, B. (1999). Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological theory of culture. Variant, 2(8)

Canoe making is commonly considered more difficult than building

The Backbone and Molds

The first step in the construction of a canoe is to get out the

The Molds or Forms

Two complete No. 2 molds are required, but it is more convenient

The Ribbands and Stems

The Inside Keel, or Keelson

The Ribs and Gunwales

Setting Up the Canoe

Planking the Canoe

As a canoe is planked with ¹⁄₈-in. cedar it is easily bent to the

Seat Risings and Seats

The seat frame is fashioned as shown in Fig. 10, and may be

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Dublin, Ireland Kerry McCall Magan

2 Sociological Questions of Culture 11

5 A Nation Highly Engaged 81

7 Policy Implications and Recommendations119

launch of a cultural policy framework proposing a ten-year plan was wel-

Bourdieu, Key Cultural Thinker

Possibilities Beyond Bourdieu: Taste as Agency

The Role of Education as a Tastemaker

ringing Structure and Agency in Taste

Working with a Contemporary Bourdieu

Cultural Participation and Policy