Cultural Omnivorousness is the tendency of individuals to engage with a wide range of cultural forms, crossing traditional boundaries between highbrow and lowbrow taste. Coined by sociologist Richard Peterson in the 1990s, it challenged Bourdieu's idea that social groups define themselves through exclusive cultural preferences, arguing instead that breadth and diversity of engagement became the new cultural currency. Critics note that this openness can itself become a subtle form of distinction

Peterson's research began with an empirical puzzle: surveys showed that those once assumed to favor opera and classical music exclusively increasingly reported enjoying country, jazz, and folk music as well. Rather than abandoning hierarchy altogether, this suggested that status was being reorganized around the capacity to appreciate many genres rather than just one. The omnivore, in this sense, replaced the snob — not by rejecting taste hierarchies, but by mastering a wider field of cultural reference points, signaling cosmopolitanism, flexibility, and social ease across different contexts

Later scholars have complicated the concept further, asking whether omnivorousness reflects genuine democratization of taste or merely a more sophisticated form of cultural capital available to those with the resources and confidence to sample broadly. Knowing how to enjoy both fine dining and street food, for instance, can function as a marker of privilege rather than its absence. As digital platforms and algorithmic recommendation systems reshape how people discover culture, researchers continue to debate whether omnivorousness signals an erosion of class boundaries or simply a more adaptable, harder-to-detect way of drawing them