Search

A variety of concepts in the policing literature denote a so‐called “sixth sense” that police officers claim to possess. “Intuition,” “suspicion,” or “common sense” all specify a tacit knowledge said to heighten an officer's sensitivity to danger and potential suspects. This paper argues this type of knowledge exemplifies the application of “cultural schema” (DiMaggio, 1997): a shared knowledge structure that allows people to respond to environmental stimuli in ways that render their lives more predictable. We combine two case studies—one in Canada, the other in the Netherlands—which include ethnographic field notes and 199 interviews with police officers, to reconsider the police sixth sense in light of theoretical and empirical advances in cultural sociology and cognition research. This paper further discusses the benefit of studying this sixth sense itself as a form of cultural knowledge—that is, as “police culture”—to improve our understanding of cultural resources most or least compatible with emerging police reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent debates on musical taste have centred on the collapse of cultural boundaries between high art and popular culture. This paper examines Chinese hip‐hop as a unique case study to explore taste preferences in a relatively new popular cultural phenomenon in the understudied context of Eastern popular culture. Drawing from 42 interviews with Chinese young hip‐hop followers, the article examines musical taste preferences within Chinese hip‐hop and different modes of appreciation deployed by listeners. The findings reveal that young Chinese hip‐hop fans display cultural openness to foreign influences and genre mobility. The openness is employed as a marker of cultural capital for the Chinese middle class that values hybridity and innovation. However, even the most open‐minded individuals draw thematic hierarchies within hip‐hop through the unanimous rejection of vulgar and violent themes in favour of more serious and wholesome music. This rejection is framed as a strategy to authenticate hip‐hop within the broader popular culture arena while cultivating personal qualities of civility and wholesomeness that are highly valued in contemporary Chinese society. The paper contributes to the literature on musical taste preferences in cultural consumption by shedding light on the social relevance of cultural openness and music in contemporary Chinese popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]