Aesthetico-cultural cosmopolitanism: A new kind of ‘good taste’ among french youth

Abstract

This chapter seeks to examine how young people engage with the globalization of culture from a cosmopolitan perspective, that is, the relation to and inclusion of Otherness through cultural consumption. To address this question, we shall draw on a French survey (N = 1605) that was designed to describe how young French (aged 18 to 29 years old) consume international cultural products and subsequently structure transnational artistic and cultural imaginaries for themselves. This analysis presents aesthetico-cultural cosmopolitanism along a spectrum of configurations (five in total) that account for the majority of young individuals; it thus distances itself from the view of cosmopolitanism as a phenomenon associated only with elites. Nevertheless, social variations linked to living conditions, capital, resources, and aspirations are not absent from this spectrum.