Can you shed your cultural baggage? I asked myself this question the other day after writing an article about "The Why Code", a new tool from Kantar Media TGI examining the motivations behind consumer decisions. It's based quite sensibly on the idea that our tastes and buying habits depend on many more factors than our income. Our cultural values, formed by our family background and education, also come into play. This insight was inspired by the work of the late sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who seems to be something of a monument in France.
I'm not surprised. The idea of cultural capital is very handy for cultivated bohemians who enjoy mocking the vulgar rich. I'm sometimes guilty of that myself: in fact my wife is convinced I moved to Paris because it was the only place where people were even snobbier than me. But I'm not sure my cultural values have much to do with my background, unless they were a reaction against it. There was nothing in my upbringing to suggest that I would end up as a journalist in Paris. It's something of a miracle. (Although I do blame my father for the jazz and the spy novels.) Actually I rather like the idea of being able to slide up and down the cultural scale: burgers and Bruce Willis one minute and a Michelin starred restaurant after an art gallery the next. Or even better, the gallery followed by a burger. Here's to cultural mobility.
