Collecting data on taste and cultural hierarchies by means of focus group interviews

Nina Kahma, University of Helsinki

The paper is based on a focus group study that serves as a pilot research for the project Cultural Capital and Social Differentiation in Contemporary Finland. The research project relies on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of distinction and on its critique, most notably the research conducted by Bernard Lahire.

Focus group interviews have been carried out from February to June 2006. Topics that are discussed are films, music, art, television, reading, eating out and participating in different cultural or popular events. Interviews will provide information about consumption of cultural products, participation in different kinds of events and cultural knowledge. Moreover, they will yield information on people's shared understandings, their ways of talking about taste and the mechanisms of differentiation in Finnish context. The aim of the focus group study is to identify the relevant cultural categories, genres and cultural objects between which distinctions are made.

The main purpose of the paper is to reflect the process of generating data by means of focus group discussions. In addition to methodological questions the preliminary results of the focus group study are also examined. The paper discusses also such questions as what kind of cultural hierarchies and perceptions of cultural hierarchies can be found in the data and what kind of divisions related to cultural consumption exist in different social groups and regions.