Habitus and Style of Music Consumption: A Case Study of the Youth in the City of Tehran

he coming out of differentiation based on the consumption of different kinds of music, particularly non-Iranian music, among the Iranian youth, has raised lots of questions about their structuration and characteristics, as well as the outcomes of the country cultural policies. This paper attempts to answer these questions thought investigating the relationship between the habitus of the Iranian youth and their music consumption and by using survey research method. The findings indicate a considerable variety in consuming different kinds (styles) of music among the respondents. The analysis of the data showed statistically significant relationship between these styles and the habitus variables of Bourdieu such as socio-economic status, the location of residence, major of the study, ethnicity, and sexuality. Regarding the significance of the effect of these variables, the analysis of the data indicated that the location of residence, socio-economic status, major of the study, and sexuality had respectively the highest effect on the sort of the music consumption. However, ethnicity had no effect on the independent variable. The findings about diversity of musical consumption and the effect of socio-economic variables indicate the emergence and development of different musical styles and the coming up of a sort of sub-cultural inclinations within the general culture. This, in turn, makes more prominent the failure of officially cultural policies in the case of the youth sub-cultures in accordance with the (dominant (general) culture.