Beyond Distinction: Theorising Cultural Evaluation as a Social Encounter

Abstract

This article expands recent attempts to theorise the role of culture's materiality in Pierre Bourdieu's relational epistemology. Drawing on empirical research about the reception of rock and jazz in Italy, and focusing on the evaluative practices of Italian critics, the article theorises cultural evaluation as a social encounter between the dispositions of social actors (i.e. their habitus) and the aural, visual and narrative properties of cultural objects. The article argues that such encounters produce relational aesthetic experiences, which are neither a property of social actors (e.g. their class) nor of cultural artefacts, but emerge from interactions between the sociohistorical specificity of the habitus and different cultural materials. This theoretical synthesis, it is argued, can account for meanings and affects which, albeit co-produced by embodied dispositions, are neither reducible to such dispositions nor to practices of distinction. Further, it can account for the formative power of aesthetic experiences, that is, the extent to which they create durable dispositions and attachments.

Making the Discovery: The Creativity of Selecting Fiction Manuscripts from the Slush Pile

“…This article's on‐the‐ground perspective shows necessary patterns in the experiences of manuscript discovery and how gatekeepers act upon these experiences to move the manuscript from the discovery phase to the justification phase. The suggested model for gatekeeping and the article's overall pragmatist and interactionist perspective thereby answers recent calls in valuation studies for research into the subjectivity of those who evaluate cultural goods, including these evaluations' unpredictability, materiality, performativity, and corporeality (Acord and DeNora ; Antal, Hutter, and Stark ; Beljean, Chong, and Lamont ; Hennion ; Lahire ; Nylander ; Prior ; Schwarz ; Varriale ).…”

Reconceptualizing Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism: Evidence From the Early Consecration of Anglo-American Pop-Rock in Italy

“…Italian critics were young people born mostly between the mid-1940s and mid-1950s, with high educational attainments and an upper or middle class background (Varriale, 2015b). Educational qualifications provided them with a cultural capital that was "institutionalized" in high school diplomas and university degrees, but also "embodied" as a mastery of highbrow categories, like originality, innovation and artistic autonomy (Bourdieu, 1986).…”

“…As I discuss below, more avant-garde magazines like Muzak and Gong did not invest on more "exotic" musical traditions (Sapiro, 2010;Frassen and Kuipers, 2013), but on different Anglo-American genres like free jazz. However, exoticism figures very prominently in how they discussed Afro-American musicians (Varriale, 2015b).…”

Szegény rokonok: A magyar jazzszcéna szerkezete és rétegződése

“…Ahogy az elméleti részben kifejtem, alapvetőenlegalábbis rövidtávon (Bourdieu, 1993) -olyan almezőről van szó, amelyben a termelők vesznek részt, ezért meglátásom szerint az "autonóm" fordítás is megállja a helyét. (Savage és Silva, 2013;Varriale, 2016), mint ahogy a mezőelmélet ezt sugallná. Kiváltképp a piac (heteronómia) és szimbolikus profitok (autonómia) -az esztétikai hiearchizálódás "autonóm" és "heteronóm"alapelveinek oppozíciója bír kisebb magyarázó erővel az erőtér dinamizmusára, a pozíció-és presztízsszerzés logikájára vonatkozóan, mint a történetileg kondicionált jazz-zenei mezőt strukturáló free és mainstream pólusokhoz köthető oppozíciók.…”

“…Ahogy részben tette pl Varriale (2014Varriale ( , 2016,Prior (2013). és DeBoise (2016).88 A fordítás az angolból "Like the cultural industries never happened"(Hesmondhalgh, 2006: 217) a sajátom: H.Á.…”