Intergenerational mobility and omnivorism in eating

Publication date: 1 February 2018
Source:Appetite, Volume 121
Author(s): Henryk Domański, Zbigniew Karpiński
Drawing on three hypotheses concerned with cultural consequences of social mobility, we investigate whether intergenerational class mobility influences omnivorism in eating, regarded as a new dimension of lifestyle. Using data from a national survey carried out in Poland in 2013 and diagonal reference models, we find most support for the hypothesis of maximization saying that upward mobility encourages conformity to the habits of the class of destination. It shows that in Poland, as in other societies, the upwardly mobile tend to align their behaviour with that of their highest status reference group. Accordingly, the downwardly mobile representatives of the top category conform more to the norms of the class of origin than those of the destination class. At the same time, individuals who experience intergenerational inflow to the highest managerial and professional categories display higher levels of highbrow tastes than their non-mobile counterparts from the origin classes. Contrary to the thesis about replacement of traditional class barriers by omnivorism we see that the omnivore/univore divide does not obliterate the highbrow/lowbrow one.



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