Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to approach (re) produced patterns of privilege and cultural consumption through the lens of the Matthew Effect, aka the rich-get-richer principle, as exemplified by the Russian-speaking subcommunities in Vienna.

Paper long abstract:

In 1968 sociologist Robert Merton published an article titled ''The Matthew Effect in Science'' in which he applied the biblical passage after St. Matthew for addressing particular сonsistency in which “unknown scientists are unjustifiably victimized and famous ones, unjustifiably benefited”. Later on, this rich-get-richer principle, dubbed as Matthew Effect, was instrumentalized for explaining power asymmetries as well as the role played by structure in nurturing multivarious patterns of privilege coming out in “right” citizenship, class, ethnicity, or occupation (Croucher 2009). In a similar vein, I argue that the principle of cumulative advantage would be productive for research on privileged mobility and the respective adjustment, consumption, and - lifestyle practices of its agents. Unlike other forms of mobility, which pathologize, stigmatize, or marginalize the leaving of one’s own place of residence, lifestyle migration is “marked by power and privilege” (Benson, and O’Reilly 2009a; Harper, and Knowles 2009) that enable, among other things, the maintenance of social, economic, linguistic and cultural autonomy from the host society and structuring a convenient model of individual integration. To illustrate how the Matthew effect operates at the level of (re) produced patterns of cultural consumption, I will draw on my ethnographic fieldwork in Vienna (Austria) where I engage with Russian-speaking hierarchical “subcommunities” (Kopnina 2016), each of which is distinguished through the inclusive “systems of disposition” (Bourdieu 1984) tacitly created and legitimized by actors involved.