Understanding the valuation of goods in markets has become one of the key topics in economic sociology in recent years. Especially in markets for goods that are valued for their aesthetic qualities, the ascription of value appears to be a complex social process because product quality is highly uncertain. The wine market is an extraordinary example because most consumers and even experts are not able to differentiate between wines based on objective sensory characteristics and cannot rank wines in blind tastings according to their price. Our premise is that assessed quality differences cannot be explained by the sensual qualities of the wine. Instead, we explain variations in valuation by social processes in which quality is constructed and contested. To do so we make use of Bourdieu's field theoretical perspective, which is strongly supported in our empirical analysis of the German wine field. It shows that his model of the structure of fields has considerable power in explaining price differentiation between wineries and that the orientation of consumers towards different segments of the field is based on class hierarchy. Zusammenfassung

Reducing the consumption of meat can make a significant contribution to sustainable development. However, at least in Western societies with their already rather high levels of per-capita meat consumption, only a minority of consumers reduces meat intake by following a vegetarian or plant-based diet. To arrive at a differentiated understanding of the conditions of meat avoidance, we empirically assess the importance of a broad set of specific motivations and constraints previously discussed in the literature, including specific benefits, particular constraints, social norms, and a vegetarian self-identity. The analysis is based on a random sample of students at the university of Zurich (Switzerland)—a social group exhibiting a rather high prevalence of plant-based diets and vegetarianism. Researching this young and educated population sheds light on the motivational underpinnings of consumer segments especially willing to reduce meat intake. Data were collected in November and December 2016. We found that a vegetarian self-identity, both injunctive and descriptive social norms, and convenience are the most important direct determinants of meat avoidance among this young and highly educated consumer segment. Furthermore, the results suggest that a vegetarian self-identity mediates the effects of ethical, health-related, and environmental benefits, taste as a constraint and partially the injunctive norm. Pecuniary costs of a vegetarian diet are not significantly correlated with meat avoidance.

Political consumption is a flourishing field of research at the intersection of consumer research and political sociology. Political consumption means the consideration of ethical or political motives in the decision to buy certain products. Its main forms are the buying (buycott) of products distinguished by certain ethical or political characteristics such as sustainability, social justice, or corporate responsibility, and the boycott of products that lack such characteristics. However, there is an ongoing discussion about the status of political consumption. Some authors suspect that it may distract citizens from more challenging forms of participation (crowding-out thesis). In contrast, most empirical research has shown that political consumers are also more active than the general population in other forms of political participation. However, this has only been shown for fairly general measures of political consumption and participation. Our contribution to this debate thus focuses on one specific form of political consumption and corresponding forms of participation: activism for the Global South and fair trade consumption, zooming in on the case of Switzerland, where fair trade consumption is quite widespread within the population. Our results show that fair trade consumption is only weakly related to other forms of engagement for Global South issues, thus it does not distract from more challenging forms of engagement, but it is also not part of a more general engaged lifestyle. This is supported by the fact that the motivations and structural underpinnings of other forms of activism for the Global South differ from those of fair trade consumption.

In markets for goods that are valued for their aesthetic qualities, the ascription of value appears to be an uncertain social process. The wine market is an extraordinary example, as most persons are not able to differentiate between wines based on objective sensory characteristics. Therefore, we theorize valuation according to Bourdieu’s field theoretical perspective as a social process in which quality is contested. Our empirical analysis shows, first, that his model has considerable power in explaining price differentiation between wineries and second, that the orientation of consumers toward different segments of the field is based on a homologous class hierarchy.

What turns a bottle of fermented grape juice into a cult wine? Current research in the sociology of culture and food assumes that nowadays the distinctiveness of goods is ascertained not on the basis of traditional food hierarchies (e.g. French food and wine as the global benchmark) but based on criteria of authenticity and exoticism. Since public discourse plays an important role in the consecration of aesthetic goods, we study wine journalism in Germany over time. This enables us to analyse the replacement of traditional criteria and the emergence of new criteria of aesthetic valuation in the wine world. The study is based on a systematic content analysis of the two most important German weeklies from 1947 to 2008. We can show that wine reporting shifts dramatically from an orientation towards French and domestic wines and a rather businesslike approach to wine towards a more global orientation and a discourse of authenticity focusing on artisanal production, natural conditions of production and the winemaker as an individual personality/artist.