A study of cultural participation, from a discussion of laymen and clerics as participants in the literary culture of the low countries in the 14th century, to a look at the composition and extent of the arts public in the age of television.

1. Foreword (by Fokkema, Douwe W.); 2. Introduction (by Rigney, Ann); 3. The Benefits of Clergie: Laymen and Clerics as Participants in the Literary Culture of the Low Countries around 1300 (by Gerritsen, W.P.); 4. The Uses of the Past (14th-16th Centuries): The Invention of a Collective History and Its Implications for Cultural Participation (by Coleman, Janet); 5. Cultural Participation as Stimulated by the Seventeenth-Century Reformed Church (by Schenkeveld-Van der Dussen, Maria A.); 6. The Ability to Select: The Growth of the Reading Public and the Problem of Literary Socialization in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (by Kloek, Joost J.); 7. Creating an Instrument of Cultural Transmission: Primary-School Education in the Netherlands, 1800-1900 (by Tijn, Theo van); 8. Learning over Class: The Case of the Central European Ethos (by Nemoianu, Virgil); 9. The Flaneur and the Production of Culture (by Parkhurst Ferguson, Priscilla); 10. The Increasing Autonomy of Literary Institutions in Belgium in the Late Nineteenth Century (by Vervliet, Raymond); 11. The Public as a Constituent of Poetics: Some Fluctuations in Postwar Dutch Poetry (by Brems, Hugo); 12. Soccer, U.S.A.: Some Reflections on American Mass Culture (by Bertens, Hans); 13. Reading in Social and Cultural Life: Soviet Phenomena (by Stelmakh, Valeriya); 14. Cultural Inequalities in Cross-national Perspective: A Secondary Analysis of Survey Data for the 1980s (by Ultee, Wout C.); 15. The Gentrification of a Rearguard: An Attempt to Explain Changes in the Extent and Composition of the Arts Public in the Age of Television (by Knulst, Wim); 16. The Text-analytical Study of Art Criticism: A Model for Establishing the Complexity and Specificity of Cultural Communication (by Vanbergen, Johan); 17. Culture as a Network of Socially Constructed Realities (by Hejl, Peter M.); 18. Contributors; 19. Index