Abstract

CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 2020, VOL. 23, NO. 1, 94–96 BOOK REVIEW Aesthetico-cultural cosmopolitanism and French youth: the taste of the world,by Vincenzo Cicchelli and Sylvie Octobre, Forward by David Inglis. London, Palgrave, 2018, 405 pp. (inclusive of index), (eBook), ISBN 978-3-319-66310-4, ISBN 978-3-319-66311-1 Originally published in French, the book is based on an in-depth quantitative and qualitative study of French youth with regard to their choices of aesthetic and cultural repertoires. Additionally, the book is situated within the voluminous interdisciplinary debate on cosmopolitanism (for useful overviews, see Delanty 2018; Skrbis and Woodward 2013). This debate concerns the extent to which cosmopo- litanism emerges out of globalization as an observable attribute and not merely an ideal; and whether the social sciences should be developed from within the normative premises of cosmopolitanism. The book adds new empirical evidence highly relevant to interpretations and arguments about cos- mopolitanism. The text is supplemented by nearly 100 pages of appendices, some very informative tables and graphs. Throughout the book, the authors offer a meticulous and detailed presentation of information about their survey that echoes Bourdieu’s(1984) work. Their introduction brilliantly situates the book within France’s broader cultural universe, where the empirical exploration of glo-