ANYTHING BUT HEAVY-METAL - SYMBOLIC EXCLUSION AND MUSICAL DISLIKES

I provide quantitative evidence of a cultural phenomenon. Using data o n musical dislikes from the 1993 General Social Survey I link literatu res on taste, racism, and democratic liberalism by showing that people use cultural taste to reinforce symbolic boundaries between themselve s and categories of people they. dislike. Contrary to Bourdieu's (1984 ) prediction, musical exclusiveness decreases with education. Also, po litical tolerance is associated with musical tolerance, even controlli ng for educational attainment and racism increases the probability of disliking genres whose fans are disproportionately non-White. Tolerant musical taste, however, is found to have a specific pattern of exclus iveness: Those genres whose fans have the least education-gospel, coun try, mp, and heavy metal-are also those most likely to be rejected by the musically tolerant. Broad familiarity with music genres is also si gnificantly related to education. I suggest therefore, that cultural t olerance constitutes multicultural capital as it is unevenly distribut ed in the population and evidences class-based exclusion.