AustLit

'This paper investigates Australians’ reading tastes and engagement with books and book culture. We examine data from the Australian Cultural Fields survey for evidence of a ‘reading class’ in contemporary Australia. The space of Australian reading as illustrated by multiple correspondence analysis shows demarcated spaces of reading engagement and disengagement, zones of consuming fiction and non-fiction and varying levels of involvement with book culture that map onto socio-economic variables of gender, age, level of education and occupational class. Using cluster analysis, we delineate five groups in Australia in relation to books and reading: non-readers/non-participants, restricted reading, young readers, popular readers and invested readers. These findings largely support the argument that there is an Australian reading class – invested readers – which is rich in cultural capital as it is defined in large part by level of education and occupational class status. There is also evidence of reading ‘interest groups’ – young readers and popular readers. The discrete tastes and practices of these sectioned-off cohorts suggest that cultural capital is not as strong a rationale for the involvement of these groups in books and reading as it is for the reading class.' (Publication abstract)