Exploring Dissonance and Omnivorousness: Another Look into the Rise of Eclecticism

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The debate over the rise of eclecticism, more particularly Peterson’s ‘omnivore thesis’, has received much attention over recent years. For Lahire, eclecticism reflects less an increasing individual openness to a variety of cultural styles than intra-individual dissonances. Based on a large survey into cultural practices in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation (Belgium – N = 2021), this article compares these two notions with the aim of understanding the complexity of the structural relations that organise cultural tastes and practices into ‘cultural profiles’. I argue that omnivorousness cannot be reduced to dissonance but instead both notions characterise different configurations of cultural choices. More importantly, I show that identifying omnivorous and dissonant patterns matters less than understanding how these patterns emerge from tensions between existing and emerging cultural hierarchies at the individual and social levels.