THE CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURAL CONSUMPTION OF THE POPULATION OF THE CITY OF NIŠ

Abstract

The paper is based on the results of an extensive empirical study of the cultural participation of the urban, suburban and rural population of the City of Niš, carried out in 2015, using a combined questionnaire on a sample of 800 respondents. The research results presented here refer only to the aspect of cultural consumption, with the aim of presenting the empirical findings and indicating whether, and to what extent, the place of residence of the participants, in correlation with the remaining socio-demographic features (age, gender, level of education, profession, satisfaction with one’s financial status), influence their cultural consumption, determining the frequency, forms and limitations of this consumption. The research approach is primarily founded in sociology, and is methodologically quantitatively focused on and developed within the theory of the class-cultural homology of Pierre Bourdieu. The research results indicate that young people who live in urban settlements, with a higher education background and favorable economic means, more often than others participate in cultural consumption, and are more frequently than others involved in acquiring additional artistic, intellectual and/or technical knowledge or skills in their leisure time. One half of all the respondents included in the study, mostly the middle-aged (40–54 years of age), point out the lack of money (an objective obstacle), while one-fourth of all the surveyed respondents, especially the oldest members of village societies (over the age of 55), point out the lack of interest (a subjective obstacle) as the main limitation to their own cultural consumption. The results mostly indicate an average frequency and very limited extent of cultural consumption of all the respondents included in the research to residential inequality and the social predispositions of cultural practices.