Encultured Biases: The Role of Products in Pathways to Inequality

Abstract

Recent sociological work shows that culture is an important causal variable in labor market outcomes. Does the same hold for product markets? To answer this question, we study a product market in which selection decisions occur absent face-to-face interaction between intermediaries and short-term contract workers. We find evidence of “product-based” cultural matching operating as a pathway to inequality. Relying on quantitative and qualitative observational data and semi-structured interviews with intermediaries in trade fiction publishing, we show intermediaries culturally match themselves to manuscripts as a normal feature of doing “good work.” We propose three organizational conditions under which “encultured biases” come to the fore in product selection, and a fourth resulting in inequalities along demographic lines and other markers of perceived cultural proximity and distance. We close with a discussion of other settings in which product-based cultural matching is likely to occur, call for the investigation of cultural matching beyond previously theorized conditions, and argue for the inclusion of cultural products in the broader movement toward reconsidering culture as a causal factor.

Innovation and creativity in creative industries

“…In return, they are often paid in clothing or nothing at all for their labor. Unsurprisingly, cultural producers and intermediaries are disproportionally born from the cultural and economic elite, who can fund these precarious careers and socialize their tastes, resulting in creative products made by and for the affluent (Brook et al., 2020; Childress & Nault, 2019).…”

Race and Genre Ambiguity in the Critical Reception of Popular Music

“…As a result, non‐white authors are more likely to be associated with a clear and specific genre identity by literary critics. Childress and Nault, (2019) also show how non‐white authors are often limited by racialized expectations of literary content among publishing intermediaries. Likewise, Gualtieri (2021) draws directly on insights from critical race scholarship to demonstrate how ethnic restaurants are constrained by racialized logics of evaluation that systematically devalue culinary categories associated with non‐whiteness in the Michelin Guide and among professional chefs.…”

“…Many notable studies in the sociology of culture have shown how intermediaries—including literary, food, music, and film critics—subtly devalue categories associated with non‐white producers (Childress and Nault, 2019; Chong 2011; Gaultieri 2021) and others highlight the obstacles black performers face in crossing racialized genre boundaries (Erigha 2019; Murray 2021; Orosz 2021; Schaap and Berkers 2020). In contrast, we consider how this is inconspicuously manifest in the discourse of popular music critics when they assign genre labels to musicians and their records.…”

Valuations of diversity: The role of marquee quotas in creative industries (Working Paper)

“…For example, racebased judgements about the economic worth of a given film or actor can influence export distribution strategies, whereby majority-Black films are held back by expectations of failure (Erigha 2018(Erigha , 2019(Erigha , 2020. In fiction publishing, cultural intermediaries are given autonomy in decision-making, such that their preference for stories and authors that approximate their own socio-cultural background goes unchecked, leading to an underrepresentation of non-white authors more broadly (Childress and Nault 2019).…”