Search

• Audiences of low-brow literature are strongly differentiated along categorical lines. • Gender and age, not religion or ethnicity, differentiate low-brow tastes. • High-brow tastes tend to be less gender-specific, than low-brow. • High-brow tastes tend to be less cohort-specific, than low-brow. • Age correlates negatively with the brow-level of the preferred literature. In his paper establishing the foundations of omnivorousness theory, Richard Peterson suggested that the system of tastes is organised as a pyramid "with one elite taste at the top and more and more alternative forms at about the same level as one moves down the pyramid toward its base", with tastes at the bottom "mark[ing] the status boundaries between taste groups defined by age, gender, race, region, religion, lifestyle" (1992, p.254). Whereas high-status individuals are likely to consume a few genres at all levels of the taste pyramid, low-status ones tend to patronise only one genre situated at the bottom. One of the predictions following from this model concerning the omnivorounsness of privileged groups has been tested in numerous studies, but the thesis of low-brow tastes having stronger structural embeddedness has been researched much less extensively. If Peterson is correct, we should find that the consumption of high-brow objects strongly correlates with status characteristics such as education where the consumption of low- and middle-brow does not; by the same token, the consumption of low-brow objects would correlate with gender, age, ethnicity, or other groupings where the consumption of high-brow objects does not. In this paper, we use a dataset from a St Petersburg public library system to analyse 1 300 000 book choices of over 100 000 readers to find out whether these predictions hold. We find that there is indeed a strong negative correlation between the attractiveness of authors for predominantly educated readers and the gender and age specificity of their audience. We discuss three possible theoretical explanations of this finding which can be discerned from the literature: (1) "group" and (2) "grid" interpretations, using the terms from Mary Douglas's cultural theory, and (3) the opposition between relaxational and self-cultivating usages of culture. We argue that the particular differentiation pattern speaks against the "group interpretation" prevalent in other literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Assessing human rights engagement as a series of events rather than long-term trends. • Paying attention to events allows conceptualization of multiple types of state performances when it comes to human rights. • Arab Spring changed voting patterns of most repressive states serving on the Human Rights Council. • A few repressive states (China, Cuba, Russia) did not shift their voting patterns. Sociological research on human rights analyzes the degree to which states engage with international human rights commitments over time. Yet we have a limited understanding of how specific events shape the long-term trajectory of human rights norms. This paper explores the effect of the Arab Spring on voting in the UN Human Rights Council. Using multiple growth curve models, I find that the emergence of the Arab Spring changed the voting patterns of most non-free states, but only temporarily, and that this holds even when controlling for protest events facing a given country. In contrast, a small set of non-free states did not change their votes during the Arab Spring. Drawing on research from cultural sociology, this paper explains these divergent voting patterns as heterogenous performances in the face of an event causing deep uncertainty such as the Arab Spring. The paper concludes that commitments to human rights norms must account for how events puncture broader trends, and that engagement with the human rights regime – and perhaps other performances of state legitimacy — requires an understanding of the multiple audiences, events, and policy possibilities to which states are attuned in international forums. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Understandings of success among artists in emerging scenes are highly contextual. • Disavowal of economy is not a universal organizing principle of artistic fields. • Institutional composition of artistic fields affects career strategies. • Dominance of noncommercial art institutions can hinder art market development. • Lack of noncommercial art institutions promotes market development at early stages. Abstract This paper examines early career strategies and understandings of success among artists in the two emerging art scenes of Russia and India. It argues that differences in these understandings and strategies are shaped by the institutional composition of the artistic fields in the two countries. The paper is based on in-depth interviews with early career professional artists conducted in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, New Delhi, and Mumbai. It argues that the Bourdieusian disavowal of economic interests is no universal organizing principle of cultural fields but should instead be seen as highly contextual. In particular, it is less prominent in art scenes where few noncommercial contemporary art institutions exist. Thus, in India, where art dealers are the most powerful gatekeepers, artists' career strategies are informed by market logic. Meanwhile, early career professional artists in the Russian art scene do not see the market as a potential driver of their careers. They engage in close relationships with noncommercial art institutions that provide artistic recognition and promote an anti-market orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper clarifies the role of objects in generating both cultural meanings and valuable forms of status by building upon previous research on cultural consumption and mediation, while simultaneously highlighting the intrinsic materiality of such practices. Beginning with the sociological notion that clues to high-status cultural consumption exist within journalistic writing about food, this project asks how profit-seeking firms make use of related discursive strategies to establish that their cultural products are not only delicious but also distinctive. To that end, this paper examines the packaging materials and packaging discourse of two case study firms whose food products are similar, in kind and country of origin, and whose food packages all meet the shared expectations of the US gourmet food market, in order to explore how their packages differentiate themselves from their competitors and frame their contents as valuable. In order to understand these firms as both commercial storytellers and amateur cultural intermediaries, the comparative case study methodology is employed with the goal of describing the process whereby profit-seeking firms make use of gourmet food writing and food packages to create distinction within an omnivorous, and economically valuable, marketplace. This paper draws attention to food packaging as a form of gourmet food writing which has a role to play in the dynamics of distinction within the contemporary gastronomic field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This article studies how an artwork's referencing of creative content affects its peer recognition in Hollywood filmmaking. • It asks whether and to what extent a film's referencing of artistic content from earlier films conditions its chances of being referenced. • The author analyzes reference styles of 5555 U.S. American movies released between 1930 and 1995 and shows how artistic standards emerged during the new Hollywood movement in the 1960s. • The findings of this article offer new insights for sociologists of culture and organizations who ask how an artwork's embeddedness into the cultural space affects its recognition by contemporary peer audiences. How does an artwork's referencing of creative content affect its peer recognition? Artists constantly seek to balance the tension between originality and conformity. Previous research argues that peers tend to reward socially well-embedded artists that signal community involvement and literacy of established conventions. Another stream of sociological research argues that the criteria for peer recognition are not fixed but depend on a cultural field's legitimacy. This paper examines the emerging and shifting standards of peer recognition throughout 70 years in U.S. American filmmaking. I ask whether and to what extent a film's referencing of artistic content from earlier films, such as snippets of dialog or camera shots, conditions its chances of being referenced. I analyze reference styles of 5,555 U.S. American movies released between 1930 and 1995 and show how artistic standards emerged during the New Hollywood movement in the 1960s. While films of the New Hollywood (1960–1979) and Blockbuster Era (1980–1995) were rewarded for signaling cultural literacy and openness in their reference styles, these standards did not apply yet to Golden Age filmmakers (1930–1959). These findings offer new insights for sociologists of culture and organizations who ask how an artwork's embeddedness into the cultural space affects its recognition by contemporary peer audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deploys conceptual and analytical tools from cultural sociology to analyze Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). While often characterized as violent and uncivilized, MMA has a core following of fans who watch MMA and consume MMA media out of an interest in the aesthetics of the sport. As salient actors within the ‘internally legitimate’ sphere of the sport, this paper explores the way the MMA media construct symbolic boundaries around different kinds of fights through aesthetic and moral evaluations. Through qualitative content analysis of MMA media discourse, I attempt to reconstruct their general aesthetic principles, demonstrating a fourfold typology of MMA in practice: repulsive ‘excessive violence’, boring ‘insufficient action’, soft ‘palatable practices’, and sublime ‘aesthetic violence’. This framework allows the MMA media as ‘connoisseurs’ to create hierarchical ‘distinctions’ between their aesthetic attitudes and those of more casual ‘mass’ audiences. This research may prove useful for scholars interested in MMA, culture, and sports media studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expression “spiritual, but not religious” (SBNR) has gained considerable traction among sociologists of religion and culture, media outlets, and the broader public in recent years. Though the expression itself has achieved wide appeal, few studies have explored what SBNRs believe about God, religion, or spirituality. This paper uses survey data from Wave IV of the Baylor Religion Survey (2014) and draws from the theory of “cultural omnivorousness” to show that SBNRs have significant sociotheological differences when compared to those who are both religious and spiritual (RAS). The expression “spiritual, but not religious” is more than a manifestation of religious deinstitutionalization or “believing without belonging.” Rather, being “spiritual, but not religious” involves sociotheological boundary work that distinguishes SBNRs from traditional monotheists. When compared to RAS respondents, SBNRs are more likely to view God as a higher power or cosmic force instead of a personal being and are more likely to adopt an individualistic ethic as opposed to finding moral authority in God or Scripture. By examining the historical context and sociotheological characteristics of SBNRs, this paper locates a boundary between SBNRs and RAS monotheists and offers theoretical reasons why SBNRs engage in sociotheological boundary work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We provide a "bottom-up" perspective on Europeans' evaluations of what belongs and what does not belong to culture, innovating the typically theoretical approach to such scholarly debates. • Based on new survey data from nine European countries, using latent class analysis we identify five distinct ways to evaluate the contents and boundaries of expressive culture. • Differences in Europeans' ways to evaluate culture align with cross-national differences in cultural policy models and levels of inequality. • We add to the cultural stratification literature by showing how the ways to evaluate culture are socially stratified and associate with Europeans' wider politico-cultural attitudes. • Contrary to traditional assumptions, the narrow evaluations are associated with lower-status groups, while the upper-status groups embrace broad notions of expressive culture. Despite the long history of debating its meaning and its current unprecedented ubiquity both in scholarly and popular discourses, little is systematically known about how "culture" is conceived by ordinary people. This paper examines how evaluations of the contents and boundaries of expressive culture are patterned among people in and across present-day European societies, and to what degree these evaluations associate with sociodemographic and politico-cultural divisions. Using survey data collected in 2021 in nine European countries and applying latent class and multinomial regression methods, the analysis reconstructs Europeans' boundaries of the concept of culture – which objects, places and practices they see as belonging or not belonging to culture, and with which objects they remain ambivalent. The results show that the classical distinction between narrow (exclusive) and broad (inclusive) notions still structures Europeans' evaluations of expressive culture, but it operates in several modes and with national and sociodemographic variations. In contrast to traditional assumptions, the narrow evaluations are associated with lower-status groups, while the upper-status groups embrace broad notions of culture. Moreover, the broad evaluations are associated with factors such as cultural cosmopolitanism and liberal-progressive political attitudes, highlighting the potential of extending cultural stratification research by the "bottom-up" study of patterned evaluations and understandings of the concept of culture itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-esteem research, arguably the largest field of research in the history of social science, has devoted much of its efforts to the idea that self-esteem causes a broad range of behavioral and social problems, but has failed to produce strong, consistent evidence for most claims. However, this research has conceptual and methodological problems, including a limited understanding of the role of culture, and the assumption that global levels of self-esteem are the main causal mechanism of interest. This paper argues that self-esteem motivated behavior may be better understood as socio-culturally contextualized pursuits of valued identities, which are difficult to understand without considering their social and cultural conditions. Self-esteem therefore lies at the intersection of culture and cognition, and it is argued that an interdisciplinary approach to self-esteem pursuits could be beneficial. A way to reconcile constructionist views of identity with a cognitive self is then suggested and discussed. It is possible, by drawing on models of neurocognition, to think of a cognitive self as performed, context-dependent, and emergent rather than fixed, internal, and expressed. Finally, the paper discusses the social contingencies and consequences of self-esteem pursuits in relation to research issues such as aggression, stratification, crime, masculinity, and political attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Responses to performance are structured by feeling rules. • Once activated, feeling rules suppress certain affective expressions. • Emotions activate cognitive schema. • By suppressing feelings, feeling rules, therefore, also suppress interpretation. • Feeling rules thus, act as mechanisms of exclusion in the public sphere. This article examines an episode of goat sacrifice performed on an airline tarmac in Pakistan and the feelings and interpretations various audiences expressed in response to it, to make two specific contributions to the literature on cultural performance. First, by focusing on the ways that affective responses to the performance were socially structured, it describes how cultural performances, like the goat sacrifice, shape affective citizenship by way of feeling rules. Second, this article focuses on the affective dimensions of the goat sacrifice to theorize a novel form of fusion, I call "disruptive fusion." Disruptive fusion turns in the goat sacrifice case on jugaar, a strategy of subversive improvisation associated with subalterns in South Asian settings. Despite its association with subversive ingenuity, jugaar, I show in this paper, can work also as a mechanism of stratification. It amplifies exclusions, I argue, because even ostensibly subversive cultural performances, like goat sacrifice on an airline tarmac, activate feeling rules. These rules proscribe certain affective expressions while highlighting others. Since emotions activate cognitive schema, feeling rules can shape the extent to which certain interpretations gain traction in the public sphere. This paper demonstrates how the feeling rules embedded within cultural performance can work to amplify certain interpretations of a news story, and therefore heighten some people's claims to affective citizenship while squashing others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: How we care for dependent people is an important test of how we make decisions about value in our society. These are not just decisions about budgetary prioritisation, but about how different conceptions of value are to be reconciled. This paper discusses the interaction between cultures of economic circulation and cultures of care with respect to the dependent elderly. It focuses on the ways in which the dependent elderly themselves experience economic life, particularly as it relates to their care. The paper begins by showing how the economic experience of elderly people is distinctive. It then explores how elderly people interact with markets in care and with modern caring institutions. It concludes by drawing out implications for the future of elder care and for our understanding of how life is valued in modern market economies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: While focusing on the internal segmentation of a particular local scene, this article strives to make a conceptual contribution. At the same time, it adds itself to the available studies analyzing music scenes in East-Central Europe. It analyzes the local hardcore/punk scene in Brno, the second largest city in the Czech Republic, and demonstrates the differentiation processes at work within the scene. Basing its observations on qualitative research and long-term participant observation, the main contribution of this paper is a conceptual map of the scene''s inner differentiations in relation to two main dimensions generally related to the study of subcultures—commercialization and political articulation. Our study shows how these two elements complement one another in various configurations (thus, “including ''em all”), creating the scene''s particular discursive spaces that relate in dissimilar ways to both general popular culture and politics. The main part of the paper maps out these configurations within the scene we are studying. In addition, we describe the specifics of the post-communist context characteristic of the Czech Republic and its possible implications for subcultural studies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights • Theoretical account of the interaction between public and personal culture. • Public culture activates cognitive associations beneath conscious awareness. • Partial empirical test of proposed account using survey experiment on childbearing. • Comparison of the effect of beliefs about family and finances on associations. • Discussion of conditions under which this proposed account is relevant to behavior. Abstract This paper proposes a mechanism by which exposure to forms of culture “in the world” activates individuals’ cognitive associations beneath conscious awareness, making certain behaviors more likely. A survey experiment illustrates part of the proposed mechanism, testing whether cues that make salient a shared cultural representation affect the activation of individuals’ associations with childbearing. Drawing on cultural beliefs regarding the ostensible contradiction between close relations and monetary exchange, we expect that making one of these spheres salient would inhibit activation of associations with the other sphere. As predicted, respondents randomly assigned to a cue regarding family have fewer associations between childbearing and finances. We demonstrate the relevance of these findings to respondents’ fertility desires, a measure connected to behavior. We discuss the conditions under which this mechanism may exert the most influence on behavior and outline key future research questions that the proposed model introduces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines some provisional steps toward a theory of culture grounded in computational thinking. I begin by describing computational thinking, drawing on Marr’s hierarchy for the analysis of information processing systems. I then address the definition of culture, arguing that culture is a property of causal chains, rather than a thing-in-the-world. I briefly address contemporary debates over the nature of culture—embodied versus embedded—and argue for an ecological approach in which culture-in-action unfolds as embodied schemas recognize (and produce) “handles” in the environment. When schemas are “objectively adapted” to the handles, they generate action that is ecologically rational. To explain ecologically rational culture-in-action, I outline a formal approach to cultural learning based on Probably Approximately Correct (PAC)-learning theory. I illustrate my approach throughout with examples drawn from the sociology of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developments at the intersection of cultural sociology and network theory suggest that the relations between persons and the cultural forms they consume can be productively analyzed using conceptual resources and methods adapted from network analysis. In this paper, I seek to contribute to this developing line of thinking on the culture-networks link as it pertains to the sociology of taste. I present a general analytic and measurement framework useful for rethinking traditional survey (or population) based data on individuals and their cultural choices as a two mode persons × genres network. The proposed methodological tools allow me to develop a set of “reflective” metrics useful for ranking both persons and genres in terms of the pattern of choices and audience composition embedded in the cultural network. The empirical analysis shows that these metrics have both face and criterion validity, allowing us to extract useful information that would remain out of reach of standard quantitative strategies. I close by outlining the analytic and substantive implications of the approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how culture and social structure are intertwined in markets. Starting with the notion that markets are composed of both producers and cultural elements, a two-mode and dynamic social network approach is used to define social structure as a set of relations among producers through cultural elements, and culture as a set of relations among cultural elements through producers. The example of global high-end fashion in London, Milan, New York, and Paris between 2008 and 2013 is used. Data were gathered from a prestigious and influential design forecasting bureau which synthesized data about the stylistic elements selected twice-a-year by fashion houses for their collections. While at a granular level of analysis (looking at specific seasons), both stylistic elements and houses are less clustered than expected, they form in the long run a highly clustered structure, both culturally and socially. Intermediate-level analysis reveals that while elements are still less clustered than would be expected by chance, houses appear to some extent to be randomly clustered. This sheds light on a long-standing conundrum in fashion: why does it appear to be completely random, and yet highly legible? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• There are competing collective narratives about Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan. • Different disaster narratives differently shape survivors' emotionality. • Survivors' emotionality can facilitate or block their reflexivity. • Ahistorical disaster narratives lead to covert silencing of victims' emotions. Through a case study of Typhoon Morakot, which landed in Taiwan in 2008 and caused massive destruction to many aboriginal communities, this paper explores how narratives of disaster impact individual survivors' emotionality and reflexivity. We draw on 45 in-depth interviews and engage the literatures on cultural trauma, emotion work, and reflexivity. We find that in framing their experiences, most survivors drew upon narratives of government incompetence or ethnic-environmental injustice, which circulated respectively in Taiwan's mainstream media and a counter-hegemonic public. To a lesser extent, some survivors hybridized these two frames while a few others followed the government's official narrative that the government did nothing wrong. Our analysis highlights a sharp contrast: the injustice frame prompted survivors to express ethnic pride, assert righteous anger, and display an eloquent reflexivity, whereas the other three frames prompted survivors to express their frustrations as grief rather than anger, and oftentimes engage in the emotion work of gratitude-display and self-censorship and ultimately develop a silenced or split reflexivity. This study advances the cultural sociology of disasters by conceptualizing how disaster narratives shape the emotional aspects of post-disaster recovery. Furthermore, we highlight how covert silences in ahistorical disaster narratives can be detrimental to all in an age of environmental crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We address a less studied topic: states' cultural response to disasters. • We propose a perspective based on the cultural sociology of the state and cultural theories of trauma, theodicy, and performance. • States' cultural response is " performance ": states project their definitions of situation of disasters and construct their positive self-images when interacting with the publics. • The efficacy of their performance depends on how effectively states' address the key components of the " nomos " or " meaning structure " about catastrophes and suffering and how this performance is influenced by their political structures. • Our theoretical perspective is illustrated in a comparative study of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China and the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the US. • The findings also speak to an enduring debate over whether democratic or authoritarian regimes perform better in disaster responses. The sociology of disaster has paid scant attention to states' cultural response—states' effort to use meaningful narratives and symbolic actions to address issues about citizens' suffering and death to enhance their legitimacy and secure citizens' support. Our paper starts to address this gap by asking: How do states culturally respond to massive disasters? How effective are their responses? What can explain the efficacy of their cultural responses? We propose a perspective based on the cultural sociology of the state and cultural theories of trauma, theodicy, and performance. We illustrate this perspective in a comparative study of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China and the 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the United States. We argue that the efficacy of their cultural responses depended on whether and how effectively they addressed the key components of the meaning structure of disasters through compassionate reaction to citizens' suffering and death, convincing accounts of states' accountability, and cogent narratives about the long-term consequences of disasters on citizens. Both states struggled to address these issues at various points in their respective disasters, and their cultural responses were shaped by their political structures. The findings also speak to an enduring debate over whether democratic or authoritarian regimes perform better in disaster responses. We eschew the exclusive focus of the debate on administrative responses and its simplistic correlation between regime type and responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Tools from the sociology of culture can help settle interdisciplinary debates about categorization. • Moral vignettes can be translated into simpler connotative structures without much loss of information. • Connotative meanings of moral vignettes help us reach a rigorous definition of a prototypical moral wrong. • Distance from the prototypical moral transgression is informative of the time it takes to classify events as immoral. • Distance from prototypical moral transgression is predictive of the moral language that occurs around events in naturally occurring text. The sociology of culture provides tools to weigh in on key interdisciplinary debates that hinge around categorization and its underlying processes. For example, at present, there is widespread debate about how individuals come to perceive events as immoral. In this paper, I use sociological approaches to cultural meaning to test one of the leading theories of moral cognition: the idea that individuals attribute immorality through template matching. I use spatial measures of cultural meaning to define and locate a prototypical moral wrong. I then test the theory of template matching and find evidence that distance from the typical moral transgression -in semantic space - is related to the time it takes to categorize an event as immoral or harmful. I then test these results on a corpus of naturally occurring text to assess their external validity. These studies provide empirical evidence supporting the notion that the attribution of immorality occurs through template matching. Furthermore, they also serve to illustrate that productive conversations can emerge when we take the insights that sociologists of culture and cognition have reached in the past few decades out of our disciplinary boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper considers an aspect of culture rarely formally studied by sociologists: the organization of sensory experience. • We develop and employ a novel technique aimed at measuring music experience. • We analyze the dimensionality of the distribution of reported experiences. • Analyses reveal three dimensions of experience, which appear to stretch between poles that correspond to binaries of embodied experience. The theories of William James and John Dewey regarding the nature of experience suggest that there is an aspect of the organization of culture that sociologists have not yet studied formally, namely the structuring of sensory experience. We propose a way of trying to measure respondents' experience of "textural" music, as opposed to their preferences, evaluative judgments, or associations. We employ a novel data-gathering approach as part of 61 in-depth interviews, and then analyze the dimensionality of the distribution of reported experiences. We find three dimensions, all of which seem to touch upon fundamentally meaningful binaries of embodied experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growing concerns over the ability of conventional research methods to effectively tackle key theoretical issues within the contemporary sociology of culture, these have yet to produce concerted efforts at rethinking existing methods, let alone at crafting novel techniques of sociological inquiry. As a result, there is a steadily widening gap between our variegated theoretical conceptions of 'culture' and the actual tools that we use to put these conceptions to the empirical test. This special issue aims to address this gap by exploring a series of new methods designed to chart the role of culture in everyday life. The various contributions to this issue start from the premise that conventional techniques of sociological research very often constrain our understanding of culture and effectively limit the types of questions we come to ask of it. To overcome such constraints, each paper presents a method that is designed to tap into different and often un(der)explored aspects of culture: from the issue of how we effectively 'experience' cultural forms or the problem of how we can systematically articulate and describe the embodied dimension of 'culture-in-action' to the question of the classificatory principles that inform our everyday esthetic judgments or the genesis of these principles in early childhood. Together, the different contributions to this issue aim to demonstrate that a more rigorous approach to core theoretical issues among contemporary scholars of culture inevitably implies a more systematic effort at 'thinking through' the conventional toolkit of cultural sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• While cosmopolitans tend to have status signals that are supported by long-lasting institutions and reinforcement mechanisms, they also make use of dynamic status signals. • Status signaling is responsive to rapidly changing circumstances like cultural markets. • Businesses that appeal to people with high status benefit from status signaling when they are relatively unpopular, and suffer a small penalty when they are popular. Influenced by older work on high culture, researchers often look to the social closure that institutions can provide to explain how elites avoid having their status signaling overrun by imitators. In so doing our understanding of status signaling has been biased toward long-lasting social processes and relatively stable social situations, at the expense of more dynamic circumstances and behavior. This paper uses restaurant review data from Yelp to give evidence of dynamic status signals, constructed around rarity in real-time thanks to consumers' perception of the market. Supported by this mechanism, these status signals that are fast to develop and fast to change indicate the need to enlarge our theories to accommodate more complex systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper takes Bourdieu''s account of the working-class choice of the necessary as a strategic route into a set of theoretical and methodological shortcomings in his interpretation of the relations between class and culture. These shortcomings – ranging across his sampling procedures, questionnaire design and interpretation of survey data in Distinction – call into question significant aspects of his account of working-class culture, his account of the relations between class and habitus, and his approach to different forms of cultural capital. These criticisms contribute to a broader argument concerning the political implications of Bourdieu''s own version of the Kantian aesthetic and the tutelary role this envisaged for the collective intellectual. The specific qualities of Bourdieu''s Kantianism and its consequences for his interpretation of working-class culture are highlighted by comparison with alternative deployments of Kantian categories in earlier anthropological inquiries and the foundational formulations of British cultural studies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper considers how the analysis of cultural engagement can be elaborated through a reworking of the concept of cultural capital, as originally derived from Distinction. Drawing on detailed studies of the UK and Aalborg, Denmark, we show that despite the weakening of “highbrow” culture, cultural oppositions can nonetheless readily be detected. We point to nine oppositions, mostly shared between the nations. Three tensions between (a) participation and non-participation in cultural activities; (b) knowledge and ignorance in cultural issues (such as for music, literature, and art); and (c) an international and a local or national orientation stand out as the most important. We discuss whether these oppositions can usefully be conceptualised as cultural capital. We argue that such a conceptualisation demands, first, that cultural capital is understood in relative rather than absolute terms, and that a field analytic perspective provides the means of understanding cultural capital as such a relative entity. Second, the move from the empirical observation of oppositions to the conceptualisation of cultural capital also demands that the functioning of features such as participation, knowledge and an international orientation in class domination should be demonstrated, as it cannot just be assumed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: While structure and culture often are proclaimed dual and yet autonomous, this paper spells out a processual approach in which structure and culture are seen as intertwined and interdependent formations. To that end, we aim at understanding how meanings come to be, then build into process, and become integrated in a set of constructs of differing scopes, scales, and levels collectively known as “culture.” Meanings are “sparks” generated by irregular switchings across socio-cultural compounds called “netdoms,” mixtures of social networks and semiotic domains. Switchings originate from identities mitigating uncertainty from biophysical sources and from attempts at control by other identities. A “story” concatenates meanings in a relational structure within a horizon of possibilities. Netdoms constitute the fabric of socio-cultural life, wherein domains—through stories—provide the interpretive texture, while networks—through relations—supply the social texture. Socio-cultural formations invoking more complex compounds of stories (story-lines and plots) thereby frame social time, enabling, through narratives, mobilization for social action. We further model a level of syncopated complexity, denoted “style,” which illuminates the puzzle of how culture and structure fit together. (Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Seminar Series in Social Network Analysis in Manchester, UK on January 15th, 2008, at the Harvard Business School on March 17, 2008, and at the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting in San Francisco on August 8, 2009.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: While neuroscientists, cognitive anthropologists, and behavioral psychologists have begun to examine the dialectical relationship between space and cognition, sociologists have remained curiously silent. Sociologists concede that cognition affects our relationship to space, but seem less willing to explore how space might affect us cognitively. In this paper I argue that the spatial configuration of our environment facilitates particular cognitive modes. I examine what I call structured versus unstructured spaces. I also focus on the structuring of space and whether that structuring is imposed or implied. The structure of the space and the articulation of that structure interact to produce different modes of thought. This relationship between space and cognition has important implications for how and, perhaps, why we use culture. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper we attempt to characterize the key differences and points of convergence between two contemporary approaches to the relationship between culture and cognition in sociology which we label the toolkit and strong practice theory perspectives. We follow recent work at the intersection of culture and cognition in attempting to explicitly formulate the cognitive underpinnings of these two approaches in terms of the assumptions that they make about cultural acquisition, transmission and externalization. Our analysis suggests that in spite of very important differences in emphasis and explanatory range, toolkit and strong practice-theoretical approaches are complementary, although the specific types of modal situation for which each of them is best suited need to be more clearly specified. We develop a framework that shows how the two approaches can be deployed in conjunction as well as specifying the modal settings and situations that each will be more likely to handle best as well as those in which they will run into trouble. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents the outline of a symmetrical approach for investigating linkages between cultural classifications and various types of social divisions based on class, gender, age, etc. Central to this approach is the argument that cultural classifications and social divisions are co-constructed in ways that involve both discursive/symbolic and behavioural/material dimensions. After outlining this theoretical framework, we explore its usefulness firstly by examining discursive representations of cultural categories such as highbrows and omnivores and secondly by analysing patterns of cultural consumption in Québec from 1979 to 2004. Exploring the links between discursive construction of cultural categories and social divisions, we identify various classification struggles waged around cultural eclecticism. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Pierre Bourdieu advocated relational thinking and a relational methodology. Nevertheless, he rejected social network analysis as a suitable technique for analyzing fields and he prescribed correspondence analysis. There are no fundamental technical differences between the two methods: social network analysis can produce spatial diagrams that are very similar to correspondence maps. Bourdieu''s problem with network analysis concerns the kind of relations that should be analyzed: objective relations instead of the interpersonal relations usually studied in social network analysis. This paper discusses the differences between the two types of relations and it argues that interpersonal relations mediate and transform the effect of objective relations. Network analysis is needed for investigating this process, which may help to further integrate Bourdieu''s field theory and theory of practice. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper contributes to the ‘culture of consumption’ [Poetics 28 (2000) 207] research stream. Specifically, we examine hypotheses laid out by Peterson [Poetics 21 (1992) 243] using Canadian musical concert audience data from the 1990s. Results show that while the number of those who attend only classical music concerts (‘snobs’) is in decline, those who attend both classical and other types of music concert (‘omnivores’) is up sharply. Overall, the classical music concert attendance is unchanged for the period. Multivariate regression analysis is used to identify sources of the changes in the incidence of snobs and omnivores. We find that shifts in individual behaviour, as opposed to demographic changes in the population, are primarily responsible for the decrease in snobs. In addition, snobs are increasingly more likely to be drawn from older age groups. Omnivores are younger and more likely to live in urban areas than snobs. Despite their more varied choices, omnivores display the same level of attendance frequency as snobs at classical music events and a greater attendance frequency than snobs at theatre and dance performances. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Cultural economists have traditionally justified public funding of the arts through the claim that there are “market failures,” particularly externalities, in the consumption of the arts. But when we try to explain the wide variation in funding for the United States’ federal arts funding agency, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), we find that something more than the usual economists’ model is required, since it is not evident that fluctuation in the degree of market failure has been sufficiently large to provide an explanation of the NEA''s history. This paper advocates a transaction cost approach to thinking about the economics and politics of arts funding. It finds that the transaction cost politics method of looking at the “delegation problem”—the decision by elected legislators to provide bureaucratic agencies with a certain amount of decision-making discretion—gives a fruitful means of explaining the declining fortunes of the NEA through the 1990s, as well as changes to its administrative structure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• This paper examines the relationship between cultural capital and preferences over television shows among Croatian youth. • Bourdieu's theoretical framework can be used in studying contemporary culture as distinctions continue to persist. • Domestic TV preferences are connected with parents' preference for domestic cultural contents. • Preferences for TV content are not only genre-related since divisions also run along the lines of language. • Language is a demarcation of tastes as students that prefer foreign TV also prefer highbrow culture and foreign music. Despite the abundance of research on television genre preferences, the role of cultural capital has so far received little attention. This research employs Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital – and related theories of cultural consumption – to argue that there is a relationship between the respondents' television preferences and embodied, objectified, and institutionalized cultural capital of their parents. Empirical data was gathered from a large survey conducted on a quota sample of third- and fourth-year high school students in six larger cities on Croatia's Adriatic coast. In order to determine different patterns of television genre preferences, factor analysis was used, which identified two types of taste in television: domestic television spectacles and foreign fiction television. Hierarchical regression analysis was employed to establish the effects of sociodemographic variables and cultural capital of respondents and their parents. The obtained results indicate not only the role of parental cultural capital and taste but also division between global cultural cosmopolitism and cultural seclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Socio-semantic network analysis brings together social ties and cultural structures. • Social ties and cultural structures are dual, i.e., constitute each other. • A multitude of other co-evolving dualities shape the focal, socio-semantic, duality. The social and the cultural orders are dual – that is, they constitute each other. To understand either we need to account for both. Socio-semantic network analysis brings together the study of relations among actors (social networks), relations among elements of actors' cultural structures (their semantic networks), and relations among these two orders of networks. In this introductory essay, we describe how the duality of the social and semantic networks that constitute each other, as well as other related dualities (including material / symbolic, micro / macro, computational / qualitative, in-presence contexts / online contexts, 'Big' data / ' thick ' data), have evolved in recent decades to mold socio-semantic network analysis into its present form. In doing so, we delineate the current state of the art and the main features of socio-semantic network analysis as highlighted by the papers included in this Special Issue. These articles range from in-depth analysis of ' thick ' data on small group interactions to automated analysis of 'Big' online data in contexts extending from Renaissance parliamentary discussions to cutting-edge global scientific fields of the 21st century. We conclude by delineating current problems of and future prospects for socio-semantic network analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The concept of "zeitgeist" allows us to identify period-specific cultural patterns. • Zeitgeists do not necessarily define their period, can overlap in complex ways. • Formal analysis of properties of zeitgeist can complement in-depth interpretation. • Properties include: duration, scope, course, and media and carriers. • Media and carriers include social groups and objects. Current research on culture rarely differentiates explicitly between period-specific and other kinds of cultural patterns. This paper develops the concept of "zeitgeist" as a tool for sociological analysis. I propose we understand zeitgeist as a hypothesis for a pattern in meaningful practices that is specific to a particular historical time-period, links different realms of social life and social groups, and extends across geographical contexts. As such zeitgeist sensitises us to a phenomenon that can be described independently of and alongside other cultural phenomena such as trans-historical schemas or binaries or group-specific patterns. Dissociated from an idealist tradition in historiography, which makes strong assumptions about periods as coherent entities, tends to allocate one zeitgeist to one period, and assumes that zeitgeist is held together by the coherence of a set of ideas, zeitgeists can be described and compared according to their formal properties: We can ask how zeitgeists extend in time and social space and by what media and socio-material carriers the patterns of zeitgeists are held together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]