Showing papers on "Taste (sociology) published in 1995"

Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital

Abstract: Focusing on youth cultures that revolve around dance clubs and raves in Great Britain and the U.S., Sarah Thornton highlights the values of authenticity and hipness and explores the complex hierarchies that emerge within the domain of popular culture. She portrays club cultures as "taste cultures" brought together by micro-media like flyers and listings, transformed into self-conscious "subcultures" by such niche media as the music and style press, and sometimes recast as "movements" with the aid of such mass media as tabloid newspaper front pages. She also traces changes in the recording medium from a marginal entertainment in the 50s to the clubs and raves of the 90s. Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Thornton coins the term "subcultural capital" to make sense of distinctions made by "cool" youth, noting particularly their disparagement of the "mainstream" against which they measure their alternative cultural worth. Well supported with case studies, readable, and innovative, Club Cultures will become a key text in cultural and media studies and in the sociology of culture.

Arguing by analogy: Hume's standard of time

Abstract: Hume's essay, "Of the Standard of Taste," begins with this declaration: "The great variety of Taste, as well as of opinion, which prevails in the world, is too obvious not to have fallen under every one's observation."'I I take this sentence to be a philosophical joke, or if not a joke, at least an ironic announcement of the key terms in Hume's investigation of the standard of taste. Hume begins with what is obvious and observed by everyone, but in a paradox that resonates throughout the essay: what presents itself to everyone's eyes is the variety of taste and opinions. We all agree that we do not all agree. This is merely common sense, and Hume suggests that "this variety of taste is obvious to the most careless enquirer" (227). But the tension suggested in Hume's observation about "every one's observation" is already implied in the term standard, which ambiguously vacillates between a sense of what is common, average, and shared by all and the identification of a unique-or at least

The Beautiful, Novel, and Strange: Aesthetics and Heterodoxy

Abstract: This work seeks to fill a lacuna in studies of aesthetics at its point of origin in England in the 1700s. He shows how aesthetics took off not only from British empiricism but also from such forms of religious heterodoxy as deism. The third earl of Shaftesbury, the founder of aesthetics, replaced the Christian God of rewards and punishments with beauty-worship of God, with a taste for a work of art. William Hogarth, reacting against Shaftesbury's "disinterestedness," replaced his Platonic abstractions with an aesthetics centered on the human body, gendered female, and based on an epistemology of curiosity, pursuit, and seduction. Paulson shows Hogarth creating, first in practice and then in theory, a middle area between the beautiful and the sublime by adapting Joseph Addison's category (in the "Spectator") of the novel, uncommon and strange. Paulson retrieves an aesthetics that had strong support during the 18th century but has been obscured both by the more dominant academic discourse of Shaftesbury (and later Sir Joshua Reynolds) and by current trends in art and literary history. Arguing that the two traditions comprised not only painterly but also literary theory and practice, Paulson explores the innovations of Henry Fielding, John Cleland, Laurence Sterne, and Oliver Goldsmith, which followed and complemented the practice in the visual arts of Hogarth and his followers.

Tourism: The Human Perspective

Abstract: The book pursues three themes: the character of the industry and its various sectors are introduced; the motivation to tour is examined in a context of culture, behaviour and society; and selected issues in marketing are explained and discussed. The book concludes by considering the future for tourism from a perspective of social and economic change. Questions addressed include the following: Do people need a holiday? How does fashion and cultural change affect tourist choice? What is the role of taste in finding a destination attractive? How do lifestage, lifestyle and disposition influence holiday decisions? The book makes use of material and examples from other fields, and is flavoured with illustrations from popular culture, the arts and literature.

Letitia Landon : the woman behind L.E.L.

Abstract: "Lines of life" - the emergence of the poetess the historical text speaking the heart - "Corinne is but another name for her who wrote" "that ghastly wallowing" - women and love Pythian performance - "I stood alone 'mid thousands" "for women of taste and refinement" - the use and abuse of the drawing-room annual "to give a history to every face" - Landon's "Flowers of Loveliness" "This, I think, is how it all came about" - reconstructing L.E.L.

Paying the piper : causes and consequences of art patronage

Abstract: The essays in this collection discuss the conscious sponsorship of the "creation, production, preservation, and dissemination" of the fine arts; that is, arts patronage (p. 1). In particular, the analytical focus of this skillfully edited volume is on the varieties and consequences of various patronage structures. The result is a veritable tour d'horizon of the social, economic, and historical dimensions of this interesting subject: from "The Social Basis of Beethoven's Style" (Tia Denora) to "The Battle for Classical Music on the Air" (Richard Peterson); from "The Indian Arts Fund and the Patronage of Native American Arts" (Kenneth Dauber) to "State Patronage in the German Democratic Republic: Artistic and Political Change in a State Socialist Society" (Marilyne Rueschemeyer). Judith Balfe and Thomas Cassilly provide an interesting case study of the intersection of taste preference and social class with regard to museum volunteers and various other "friends." Their argument is that arts organizations that have instituted Friends recognize that this must involve more than just a desire to support the arts. "They must also provide opportunities to meet compatible individuals-especially those who are wealthy and socially prominent... collectors and owners of historic buildings that are closed to the public" (p. 129). In other words, these Friends, for a relatively modest sum, have the satisfaction feeling that they have helped to preserve the best of the nation's patrimony while also having the psychological satisfaction of "being able to mingle with some of the most prominent collectors and connoisseurs in the country" (p. 127). At the other end of the spectrum, Richard Peterson surveys the long struggle to ensure that classical music is presented regularly on radio. Unlike museums with their Friends, public radio stations do not share an aesthetic consensus with either their members or their listeners. As part of the educational emphasis that justified the creation of public broadcasting, classical music has traditionally enjoyed a pride of place in programming. On the other hand, news and public affairs programs have always been present and, among listeners as distinct from members, informational programming is the runaway favorite. In fact, "most nonmember public radio listeners do not choose classical music at all" (p. 274). "Thus the noble experiment pronounced in the fledgling days of radio, that classical music on the air would help the masses acquire a taste for such music and draw many of their number into the concert hall to enjoy live performances, now seems to be a great failure" (p. 283). Public issues beget social dramas, as Steven Dubin puts it in his case study of a posthumous portrait of Harold Washington, Chicago's only black mayor, that was displayed in a 1988 exhibit of student work at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). "He is clothed only in a woman's brassiere, panties, garter belt and hosiery" (p. 186). Dubin observes that particular circumstances contribute to the likelihood of controversy

An Empirical Approach to Representing Patterns of Consumer Tastes, Nostalgia, and Hierarchy in the Market for Cultural Products

Abstract: Previous empirical research on consumer tastes for cultural products has investigated the structures of markets for art, entertainment, and popular culture by examining how customer characteristics affect preferences among cultural categories (e.g., films versus television) or within a category (e.g., television soap operas versus TV sports programs). The present study explores preferences both among and within cultural categories. It hypothesizes and finds taste patterns that reflect age-related nostalgia and that indicate a hierarchy from highbrow to lowbrow cultural products. Further—in answer to a research question concerning the market segments defined by ethnic group, gender, and religion—it appears that whites, men, and Christians tend relatively to favor the more popular or lowbrow aspects of the consumer culture.

The Anthropological Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu: Genesis, Concepts, Relevance

Abstract: The works of Pierre Bourdieu contribute to the establishment of a true sociology of culture and open prospects for the sociology of sport. A review of the genesis of this sociology shows that it has been constructed through breaks with French sociology’s way of approaching culture in the 1960s. The presentation of some of Bourdieu’s concepts is intended to show how they illuminate the social coherence of cultural behaviors and how the latter fit together. Finally, the paper emphasizes the relevance of such cultural analyses for those who study the social uses of the body, sport culture, or physical education.

The Sun Gives Without Receiving: An Old Story

Abstract: Even though as a child I used to watch my mother in the 1940s sewing up, with the skill of a jeweller, gifts of food parcels to send from sunny Australia to her mother, who stayed behind in war-tor Vienna, parcels that always contained, as I remember, several pounds of butter, and even though I marvelled at how thickly she spread her toast, let alone at her cheerfully acknowledging such unhealthy excess, it was not until I settled down in a hot sugar plantation town in western Colombia in 1970, a town without drinking water or adequate sewage, that it was borne upon me what butter could mean as a privileged sign of affluence, golden and creamy, suspended between solid and liquid, dependent on refrigeration no less than on good milk cows, a dairy industry, a nice temperate climate, "alpine" comes to mind, indeed "alpina" was the brand name of Colombian butter, fresh cuttable bread to be buttered . . . indeed, a whole other world, an inconceivably different clean and creamy european world transplanted and superimposed, if only for a gratifying instant by the mere thought, let alone taste and incorporation, of butter. And having made his contract with the devil, he earns much more money but can only spend it on luxuries; on butter, sunglasses, a fancy shirt, liquor . .. If you buy or rent a farm, the trees stop bearing. If you buy a pig to fatten up, it gets thin and dies. Secar, was the word they used. To dry, to dry up like a green tree drying out through lack of water, drying to a crisp in the relentless sun. And the same word applied to livestock, the pig getting thinner and thinner, wasting away to skin and bone. Secar. To dry up. Too much sun. Why can only luxuries be bought and consumed with the devil pact? Butter, sunglasses, a fancy shirt, liquor ... a strange list, I thought, being thrown by the butter, a new sign precariously signalling to me both the difference of my new, third world, existence, and the way in which that existence connected

Taste cultures and musical stereotypes: Mirrors of identity?

Abstract: (1995). Taste cultures and musical stereotypes: Mirrors of identity? Popular Music and Society: Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 37-58.

The Ambiguity of Taste: Freedom and Food in European Romanticism

Abstract: Between the political revolutions of 1789 and 1848 no other subject so directly challenged the notion of "good taste" in literature as food. To be "in good taste," a work of the high style excluded references to literal taste; culinary allusions in tragedy and lyric poetry therefore represented an ironic attack on literary decorum and a liberation from the constraints of figurative taste.In "The Ambiguity of Taste, " Jocelyne Kolb attempts to define changes in genre and metaphorical usage by undertaking close readings of six authors. She looks first at Moliere and Fielding, whose culinary allusions herald poetic revolution but whose works do not themselves escape the limits of a neoclassical aesthetic. Byron and Heine, known as renegades, are treated in separate chapters and in the greatest detail. The penultimate chapter joins Goethe and Hugo as champions of poetic freedom, and in the final chapter Kolb briefly considers Thomas Mann and Proust, whose works display the gains of poetic revolution.This book will be savored by students of comparative literature and European Romanticism. Its accessible style will tempt nonspecialists and food enthusiasts as well.Jocelyne Kolb is Professor of German Studies, Smith College. This book was the winner of the 1995 American Conference on Romanticism Book Prize."

Art and Authority in Antebellum New York City: The Rise and Fall of the American Art-Union

Abstract: When an art enthusiast declared, in 1845, that "pictures are more powerful than speeches," he captured a widespread conviction that paintings held the power to moralize or demoralize viewers.1 That belief gave urgency to antebellum struggles over patronage, exhibition, and aesthetic authority. How were artists to be supported in a society that lacked traditions of aristocratic or state patronage, and how might support be structured to foster artistic excellence? What was the most appropriate site for the exhibition of art works, and how broad a popular appeal was it possible or desirable for such exhibitions to command? Finally, which social group was most capable of judging artistic quality, and should such aesthetic authority be confined to men? These questions lay at the heart of a heated debate in the antebellum North. At stake for the disputants was the location of cultural authority in the nation and the relation of art to an expanding world of commercial entertainment. New York's American Art-Union offers an opportunity to examine, in one significant context, the struggle that defined the social role of art and artists in the antebellum North. Founded in 1839, the organization was, by the late forties, the primary market for American paintings other than portraits. Organizers hoped at once to encourage American artists and to promote a "taste for art" within the city

Using Economic Incentives to Distinguish Perception Bias from Discrimination Ability in Taste Tests

Abstract: Taste test are commonly used to determine if participants can detect a difference between products; however, any test is subject to guessing and a perception bias by the participants. The authors u...

Francis Hutcheson and The Problem of Conspicuous Consumption

Abstract: In the last three decades or so there has been a great deal of discussion about the origin of aesthetics as a philosophical discipline. Most contributors to the debate agree that the early eighteenth century is crucial. In Britain in this period the systematic philosophical engagement with art as we know it today emerged. The philosophical controversy has mainly been about which aesthetic category or categories most adequately characterize the appearance of philosophy of art: Should we opt for "disinterestedness," "taste," "aesthetic attitude," "beauty," or something completely different in our efforts to understand this development? In this essay I suggest a more wide-ranging, cultural historical or social historical framework wherein the emergence of aesthetics in the early eighteenth century can be understood, and on this basis I give an interpretation of aspects of Hutcheson's Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue.' Most interpretations of the emergence of aesthetics proceed from the assumption that the early theoreticians, such as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, carved out an independent, specifically "aesthetic" realm for art, which could then become the domain of their theoretical efforts.2 The interpretation to follow shows that the opposite was the case: Hutcheson wanted (as did his predecessor Shaftesbury) to give moral legitimacy to the contemplation of art, a task that was forced upon him by the social and political circumstances of the early eighteenth century. Early contributions to the philosophy of art must be understood as part of a complex redrawing of social and cultural boundaries. The late seventeenth century into the early eighteenth century in Britain was a time of profound political, economic, religious, and cultural transformations. The cultural transformations are manifest in the emergence of an extensive periodical press, the rise of the novel as a literary genre, greater availability of theatrical and musical performances, an enlarged interest in painting, and the growing public criticism of artistic creations, as well as in the increased prestige of experimental and empirical approaches to many areas of inquiry.3 The period was also one of an increased preoccupation with dress and the moral consequences of fashion. Expanding imports as well as increased domestic production of textiles for the first time made it possible for a large number of people to have a choice in dress. Though many found this and similar developments morally and politically reprehensible, the economic significance of fashion and conspicuous consumption was quickly discovered by contemporary observers.4 Many of these developments reflect the fact that social status had become more ill-defined. The old communal view of the social order had gradually dissolved, and forms of accomplishment characteristic for those on top in this social order had lost much of their validity. Particularly the opening of the upper ranks of society to anyone with enough money, and the possibility of dressing and appearing as a gentleman (even if, strictly speaking, one wasn't) gave cause for concern. I can find no better way of characterizing these new social groups than the imprecise "middle class," or what in the contemporary

Social identity and aesthetic taste

Abstract: Bourdieu's theory of aesthetic taste shares with social identity theory the concepts of reciprocal comparison and differentiation among social groups. This study used discourse analysis of interviews with further‐education students on the topic of aesthetic taste to test the hypothesis, derived from these theories, that individuals always present their tastes in line with social differentiations. Since these students were moving from working‐class to middle‐class identities via education, it was expected that their discourse would be rich in the inconsistencies which need discourse analysis. Most respondents denied links between social class and aesthetic taste, but produced inconsistent “individualist” and “socialisation” repertoires. The individualist repertoire gave priority to individual choice in looking forward to a middle‐class identity, while the socialisation repertoire favoured egalitarianism in looking backward to working‐class origins and tastes. This inconsistency was resolved in one...

On Paul Guyer’s Kant and the Experience of Freedom

Abstract: This excellent volume is a welcome companion to Prof. Guyer's first book, his path-breaking Kant and the Claims of Taste. That work gave an extraordinarily close analysis of Kant's deduction of taste. It also generated, in many readers, a desire to know much more about how the third Critique relates to broader aesthetic, historical, and moral issues, both within and beyond Kant' s own system. The present volume collects six recent articles which develop this broader focus, and it adds four substantive essays, which include outstanding historical studies of the eighteenth century background of Kant's aesthetics. In his Introduction, Guyer is explicit about coming to a change of view on these issues. He says, "in my earlier work I was rash enough to suggest that Kant's discussion of such topics as the sublime and genius, which appear to be tied only loosely to the basic architectonic of the Critique of Judgment, were mere concessions to the literary fashion of his day, thus not essential to his fundamental argument about the conditions... inherent in a judgment of taste. ...I might now be tempted to assert the opposite.. .that it is Kant's exclusive focus on the problem of the intersubjective validity of judgments of taste, in the 'Analytic of the Beautiful,' which is his mere concession to a literary fashion of his time... I might also claim that the real heart of Kant's aesthetic theory and the underlying motivation for its creation is the connection to his moral theory which appears in his discussion of the sublime, of aesthetic ideas as the content of works of aesthetic genius, and of beauty as a symbol of morality" (pp. 2-3). This welcome re-orientation does not come with a revision of the fundamentals of Guyer's earlier analysis of Kant's justification of judgments of taste, but rather is meant to supplement and deepen it. On that analysis, Kantian judgments of taste are understood as having a complex epistemological and psychological character, as being universally valid disinterested judgments based on a pleasurable response that is felt as rooted in a special "freedom from cognitive or practical constraint" (see e.g., pp. 7-12, and 279). Guyer now adds, "the sense of the unity of aesthetic experience without its subordi-

Los efectos estéticos de la publicidad

Abstract: An important macro area of advertising effects has to do with the aesthetic effects of advertising as a whole, or in the words of Bourdieu, with the effects on the taste of society, to the extent that advertising is an important cultural intermediary that operates with symbolic-artistic representations. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that the dominant sociological analyzes in certain studies on the consumer society are too burdened by the concern to examine all social phenomena from the point of view of their integrating or disintegrating capacity of the social body, and Although such a perspective is legitimate, in the main it leaves without nuancing important aspects of consumption behaviors that can be qualified as

Creating one's future from one's past: nondefensively

Abstract: The museum itself (which is the first of three that will be established with support from the Smithsonian Institute) is a remarkable achievement. It has absorbed a portion of the extensive collection of artifacts produced by Native Americans from all parts of the New World (Central and South America, as well as the expected material from North America which is usually treated as if it were "separate") that was assembled by a white, nineteenth-century amateur with a deep interest in Native Americans and with fine, albeit catholic, taste. Janet ABU-LUGHOD is a Professor of Sociology a d Historical Studies at the New School for Social Research, New York City.