It might be noted, however, that sociological arguments about individualisation (e.g. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2001) suggest that socio-economic patterns of the sort that are discussed in Bourdieu’s research are likely to be increasingly difficult to identify. This is recognised in the way in which advertising and market research attempt to find ever finer
categories into which to classify population segments (and see Addis and Holbrook 2001). What is interesting here too is that rather than beginning with social classifications and then seeing how they are reflected in consumption patterns (e.g. modes of museum visiting), the consumption patterns typically provide the starting point from which social types—or perhaps, more loosely, cultural formations—are identified. Examples of museum visitor studies that work in this way include Veron and Levasseur (1983) and Macdonald (1992, 2002), both discussed below; though neither links them to wider sociodemographic characteristics.