Consolidating temporal effects on aesthetical practices: Evidence from China

In understanding the role of temporal variables such as age and generation in shaping aesthetical tastes, existing studies draw no clear boundaries between various theoretical pathways. This article attempts to address this issue through an age–period–cohort (APC) analysis to understand how life course, generational location, present-time dynamics, and cultural/economic capital jointly shape cultural practices in contemporary urban China. Undertaking a multilevel modeling exercise, our study showed that the effects from the age, period, and cohort were all significant in determining cultural engagement and expenditure. The APC effects represented independent causal pathways involving individual life-cycle dynamics, the democratization of affordable leisure activities, and a cohort-level hysteresis of habitus represented by a taste for necessity formed during China's communist times. The role of these temporal variables seemed far more than secondary, yet they may be conceived as more of a renewal of the structural homology thesis than an invalidation of it.