Reading books is a cultural practice in decline. It is increasingly skewed towards the educated middle classes and towards women, and each young generation reads less books. Especially in a highly egalitarian society such as Finland, it is an unresolved question why and how some groups drop out of readership and why reading yields benefits to some while feeling symbolically repulsive to others. The talk will be based on my recent book Miksi lakkasimme lukemasta? Sosiologinen tulkinta lukemisen muutoksesta (Gaudeamus 2024). It shows, in the light of both longitudinal nationally representative quantitative data and rich qualitative data with people from unprivileged backgrounds, that reading is deeply linked to inequality. It can be understood as related to cultural capital, the mechanism which according to Pierre Bourdieu’s famous formulation maintains and reproduces cultural hierarchies, symbolic exclusions, and inequalities between social classes.
Commentators: Penni Pietilä and Roosa Suomalainen
Moderator: Meri Kulmala
Riie Heikkilä is a postdoctoral researcher at the Tampere University and a Docent of sociology since 2020. Her research interests include cultural capital, cultural consumption and production, and cultural and social stratification, which she has studied through the lense of inequalities. Her latest publications include Understanding Cultural Disengagement in an Egalitarian Society (Palgrave 2022) and Miksi lakkasimme lukemasta? Sosiologinen tulkinta lukemisen muutoksesta (Gaudeamus 2024).
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