The dual clustering of tastes and ties: Extending the notion of relational similarity in cultural fields

Sociological research on culture has long conceptualized categorical differentiation in terms of relational “distances” and relied on network imagery to describe the structural properties of fields of cultural production and consumption. Partly constrained by research design, extant research on relational similarity often focuses on either one-mode social networks, or two-mode cultural affiliation networks independently. Only a few recent empirical studies have considered the multiplex interaction between affiliations to cultural artifacts or categories and social relations embedding audience members within a system of dependence relations. We extend the notion of relational similarity to consider the interplay of cultural preferences and social ties and explore how distances between cultural genres are shaped by the mutually constitutive relation linking individual preferences and social networks. Analyzing a large online network of users (N = 43,549) and their expressed music preferences, we show that considering preferences alone results in two genre clusters separated by crisp boundaries. Considering both preferences as well as social network ties yields a sparse, connected component where the boundaries of genre categories become blurred. The study provides evidence that the structure of the space spanned by musical genres varies considerably once the connectivity properties of tastes and ties are jointly considered. This happens because social connections expose individuals to a set of potential future preferences that is typically broader than the set containing their current personal tastes. We discuss the qualitative implications of this result and its significance for future research on the duality of cultural tastes and social ties. • The structure of cultural fields is affected by network ties among filed participants. • We derive the empirical implications of this claim in a study of music preferences. • Notion of relational similarity is extended to account for individual tastes and network ties. • Accounting for network ties changes the categorical structure of cultural fields. • We frame this result as an outcome of experience sampling enabled by network ties.