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- Convenors:
-
Marie Heřmanová
(Czech Academy of Sciences)
Michal Lehečka (Charles University)
Ludmila Wladyniak
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- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Main Site Tower (MST), 03/004
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel explores legitimization processes and (re)production of cultural hierarchies in contemporary cultural consumption. It aims at exploring the role of class, gender and race in conceptualization of taste as well as the role of non-human actors, such as recommendations algorithms.
Long Abstract:
Many accounts of the transformation of current societies pay attention to the falling currency of highbrow culture, together with its diminishing association with the upper classes ( DiMaggio and Mukhtar 2004). The mass media and upper-class' acceptance of popular culture is assumed to dissolve the structures of legitimation and leave the effect of cultural capital as an 'echo' of the past. Peterson's (1992) observation about the changing patterns of upper-class taste, from narrow, highbrow culture to a wide range of diverse cultural interests (omnivorous taste) has sparked much discussion (see e.g. Lena 2016; Warde, Wright, and Gayo-Cal 2007). While the issue of omnivorousness remains to be settled, there are several theoretical re-conceptualisations of its implications (Smith Maguire 2016; Flemmen, Jarness, and Rosenlund 2018). In recent years the focus has also been on the role of algorithms and AI in emergent patterns of cultural consumption (Striphas 2015, Dourisch 2016) as well as on the discourse of innovations (Zukin 2020).
The panel invites theoretical and empirical explorations of contemporary cultural consumption that deal with, among other things:
- everyday practices in spaces of cultural consumption
- re-examination of the role of class, race and gender in (re)production of hierarchies of taste and consumption
- algorithmic culture and the impact of streaming platforms on hierarchies of taste and consumption
- explorations of links between cultural canon and everyday consumption practices in institutional settings (education, media etc)
- the definition, roles and practices of creators and curators of taste in the attention economy.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This paper will discuss the entanglement of local cultural initiatives in global capitalism from the grassroots perspective of local film communities. Using multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, the issues of economic uncertainty and how it affects social impact of cinema will be explored.
Paper long abstract:
Well seated within capitalist hierarchies of global entertainment, cinema in general is a huge industry dominated by corporate entities. At the same time however, it is substantially fueled by a broad network of local communities, significantly set around independent (or semi-independent) movie theaters and film festivals that create the ground level of film consumption and importantly influence audience’s tastes. While often labelling themselves ‘alternative’ to corporate film circles, politically leaning towards liberal/leftist attitudes and progressive social agendas, such organizations must operate in a predatory capitalist environment and play its rules. That means not only engaging in the rivalries with big-capital counterparts and monopolists, but also succumbing to the use neoliberal framework of economic profitability, with its optimalization logic and labor (self)exploitation. Constantly navigating between resisting the stresses of global capitalism and collaborating with its agents in order to survive, influence not only those film communities, but the discourse of what is ‘mainstream’ and ‘alternative’ within the cinema. Using grassroots perspectives of local film communities and my own personal experiences gained throughout multi-sited ethnographic research conducted since 2019 with such film communities in Opole, Wrocław and Berlin, I will discuss this issue of acting ‘against but within capitalism’ and strategies undertaken in this field by particular organizations and their workers. Using this empirical insight, I will reflect on fundamental uncertainty and temporalities of every day practice of local cultural initiatives, and how they should be seen in broader context of neoliberal conditioning of in contemporary postindustrial societies.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the role of social media influencers in shaping preferences and consumption patterns on Czech university students. It focuses on the notion of authenticity as communicative process between influencers and their followers.
Paper long abstract:
Social media influencers (SMI) play an ever-increasing role in shaping preferences and consumption patterns of social media users. As many researchers have noted (Audrezet et al 2017, Cuningham and Stuart 2017, Dubrofsky and Wood 2014), „authenticity“ seems to be the main SMI’s asset as opposed to traditional media and brands. The influencer-to-follower relationship is thus based on a very specific notion of authenticity that is paradoxical at its very core, where influencers are being paid to produce content that seemingly represents their authentic taste and lifestyle. Audrezet et al (2017) examine various „authenticity management strategies“ developed by SMI’s in order to balance their relationships to clients (brands) on the one hand and followers who seek authentic (unpaid) content on the other.
The paper explores this paradox by examining the role that SMI’s play in shaping of cultural preferences of Czech university students. Based on digital ethnography among Czech influencers, content analysis of Instagram content and semi-structured interviews with students, it focuses on how content posted by influencers impacts the notion of taste and cultural preferences and if (and how) authenticity is constructed within this process.
Paper short abstract:
The globalized reality TV show Married at first sight offers an unprecedented way to get married : couples meet in front the altar. This paper will analyze how the people engaged in producing this show in Poland assert different tastes and values based on different repertoires in the purpose to build true and authentic love stories for the viewers to watch.
Paper long abstract:
The reality TV show Married at First Sight deflects the arranged marriage and offers an unprecedented way to get married : couples are formed based on “scientific” expertise and meet in front of the altar hoping to find "true love". Distributed by a German company, this format has been exported since 2013 to thirty territories like in Poland. This paper will propose to analyze the conditions of the production of "authentic true love stories" by the producers of the polish version but also by the participants (brides and grooms). Based on a multi-scale ethnography of the transnational circulation of this format, we will analyze the mediations at work for its adaptation, which aim to produce a "watchable" content that viewers must believe to be "real", "authentic" instead of "fake" or "staged". We will analyze how the binding framework of the format necessarily condition the love stories which will appear on screen, but we will also pay a particurlar attention on analyzing the mediations which appear when it comes to adapt the format for the political and cultural polish context. Adapting the TV format Married at first sight will appear as an exchange shaped by a tension between standardization and differentiation, in which people engaged in the production of the polish version assert different tastes and values based on different repertoires and with different purposes.
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.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores how specialty coffee aficionados resident in São Paulo negotiate definitions and imaginaries of product origin to access the high-quality international coffees they desire and which help them accrue status in the local coffee consumer scene.
Paper long abstract:
This paper considers the centrality of product origin in the specialty coffee consumer community and examines how it is experienced and symbolically consumed as an essential part of field-dependent cultural capital. The concept of ‘origin,’ as it is understood in the specialty coffee industry, is a key term in product differentiation and part of the definition of specialty coffee itself. However, considering it as a symbolic imaginary that is central to the experience of ‘doing’ specialty coffee, differences emerge in the creation and maintenance of such imaginaries, with respect to particular local contexts. I take as my case study the community of specialty coffee drinkers in São Paulo, Brazil—an urban group of 'hip' connoisseur consumers whose consumption landscape is shaped by being located in the largest coffee-producing nation in the world. Drawing on ethnographic work with these passionate consumers, I show how international trade structures maintain Brazilian consumers on the periphery of the transnational, commodity-specific consumer culture of specialty coffee, and reinforces their unequal participation in the ‘orthodox’ origin discourses negotiated and defined by coffee-importing nations. In particular, the relative lack of distance (both social and geographic) between coffee producers and consumers in Brazil and the practical difficulties that prevent Brazilians from easily and directly accessing coffee from other producing nations (rather than via importing nations, where it is roasted and returned to Brazil) transforms the shape of moral geographic imaginations, how status is accrued, and how 'cool' is negotiated between local participants in the specialty coffee scene.