Telling Tales of Participation: Exploring the interplay of time and territory in cultural boundary work using participation narratives

Alongside Putnam’s (1995) work on social capital, consideration of the ‘stakes’ attached to participation is most clearly associated with the debate around Bourdieu’s (1984) concept of cultural capital and the role this plays in processes of domination and social closure. Yet the preferred method of understanding practice variation in the cultural field - the analysis of cross-sectional survey data focused on established tastes and activities - reveals little of the broader nature, dynamics, or significance of participation in people’s daily lives. In this paper I explore the potential of participation narratives for re-scoping the field of cultural participation. These accounts foreground the multiplicity of participation, its embeddedness in everyday concerns, institutions and relationships, and the interplay of time and space in the demarcation of the field by class and gender.