Taste and Social Mobility

The relationship between social capital and sport has been an increasing focus of scholarly literature in recent decades. However, very few of these studies consider social capital alongside theories of cultural consumption. Even fewer seek to assess the place of social capital in sports spectatorship. Taking primarily a Bourdieusian and neo-Bourdieusian theoretical approach, this study seeks to rectify these gaps by analysing three key components of social capital-social network size, social network prestige and social network variety-and how they relate to patterns of sports spectatorship and participation. Results indicate that the type of social capital that is most predictive seems to rely heavily upon the nature of the cleavages between cultural patterns of sports engagement. While the size of social network seems most universally applicable to predict sports engagement generally, network variety also seems to be highly applicable to the most omnivorous engagement profiles. Finally, network prestige appears applicable to some highbrow profiles of sports engagement.

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Scores of sociological studies have provided evidence for the association between broad cultural taste, or omnivorousness, and various status characteristics, such as education, occupation, and age. Nevertheless, the literature lacks a consistent theoretical foundation with which to understand and organize these empirical findings. In this paper, we offer such a framework, suggesting that a mechanism-based approach is helpful for the examination of the origins of the omnivore-univore taste pattern as well as its class-based distribution. We re-ground the discussion of this phenomenon in Distinction (Bourdieu 1984), conceptualizing omnivorous taste as a transposable form of the aesthetic disposition available most readily to individuals who convert early aesthetic training into high cultural capital occupational trajectories. After outlining the genetic mechanisms that link the aesthetic disposition to early socialization trajectories, we identify two relational mechanisms that modulate its manifestation (either enhancing or inhibiting it) after early socialization.

This research aimed to understand how elitist thinking takes place regarding music consumption in Brazil. Fifteen music professionals were interviewed, as they were considered individuals with high cultural capital in the subject. The results showed that, although cultural elitism in relation to music is on the way to being softened, it is still very present in Brazilian society, being strongly supported by cultural and social issues. Even if implicitly, a notion of good and bad musical taste can be observed from the (de)valuation of certain musical styles, especially by people professionally involved in the musical world. Keywords: Cultural elitism. Musical taste. Social classes. Resumo Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo compreender como se dá o pensamento elitista no que concerne o consumo musical no Brasil. Foram entrevistados 15 profissionais da área da música, considerados indivíduos com alto capital cultural no assunto. Os resultados apontaram que, embora esteja caminhando para uma amenização, o elitismo cultural em relação à música ainda se encontra bastante presente na sociedade brasileira, sendo fortemente sustentado por questões culturais e sociais. Ainda que de forma implícita, uma noção de bom e mau gosto musical pode ser observada a partir da (des)valorização de determinados estilos musicais, sobretudo por pessoas envolvidas profissionalmente no meio musical. Palavras-chave: Elitismo cultural. Gosto musical. Classes sociais.

The main aim of this article is to show to what extent social mobility weakens cultural barriers. The findings are based on the results of a study on the stratification of musical tastes conducted in Poland in 2019 on a nationwide random sample. We demonstrate that upwardly mobile individuals adapt more to their status of origin than to their new position. Our results also disconfirm hypotheses concerning the "socialization" of downwardly mobile individuals to the highbrow culture. It shows that individuals moving down are closer to the lower classes in participation in culture as compared to "stayers." The results suggest an important shift: the upwardly mobile have ceased to translate their occupational success into a more esteemed culture to gain social approval. Respectively, the skidders do not resist the status implications of downward mobility by denying failure and striving to compensate socioeconomic degradation with sharing their tastes with their status peers.

Taste is a subject of longstanding academic interest. The question of how cultural interests and preferences are socially stratified is at the heart of the sociology of culture. This article adds to this literature by examining the tastes of a specific social fraction, those working in cultural and creative occupations ( N = 203). The analysis finds that, in keeping with existing quantitative research on changing cultural hierarchies, cultural workers are open and eclectic in their expressions of taste. They are reflexive, able to play with, and question, ideas of taste alongside conceptions of artistic or cultural legitimacy, connecting their understandings to broader questions of social division and distinction. At the same time, this ‘emerging’ form of cultural capital is a new dividing line, substantiated by modes of consumption, depth of appreciation, and willingness to articulate commitments to engagement with culture. These distinctive tastes of cultural workers matter becaus...

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This paper adds a comparative perspective to the study of taste, cosmopolitanism and social organisation. Drawing on material provided by two similar projects in the UK and Finland it explores the relationships between national and cosmopolitan taste cultures. Whilst there have been some recent attempts to study taste in a comparative perspective, the weight of sociological inquiry into taste is focussed on specific national spaces, including the France of Bourdieu’s (1984) seminal contribution. This tendency persists even as the production and circulation of culture is increasingly accepted as global. Global culture is assumed to be the driver of cosmopolitan ways of being, but is also interpreted as a threat to distinct national cultures. Studies of taste provide an empirical setting where the lived experience of global culture and the ambiguities of cosmopolitanism can be observed. Based on interviews and focus group discussions from the UK and Finland, the paper broadly concurs ...

David Waine was the Head of Network Production, and subsequently, Head of Broadcasting at BBC Pebble Mill from 1983 to 1994. He held the top job at Pebble Mill during a period of great significance for the BBC Nations and Regions, with competition from independent production becoming established and privatisation beginning to affect the working culture within the BBC. He focussed attention on four key areas of television programming, which are explored in this interview: daytime, leisure, drama and multicultural output. However, by the time he left, there were foreboding signs concerning the long-term future of the broadcast centre.

When Alternative Comedy started in 1979, no university educated person went to stand up. But I suppose we attracted a new audience that's grown and grown. Audiences seem better behaved now. They will sit and let complex ideas be related, they don't mind a bit of a lecture (Alexei Sayle in Friedman, 2013

The quest for social status is usually considered one of the main drivers of the demand for consumer credit. This article provides a nuanced take on consumer credit by exploring the interaction between consumption, borrowing, and class identity. To do so I pursue a cultural class analysis inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Drawing from 26 semi-structured interviews, the article has two main findings. First, it shows that people engage in borrowing not only to gain prestige, but also to assert their belongingness to symbolic groups, which embody the values of imagined communities. Second, against the idea that borrowing is undertaken mainly for conspicuous consumption, the article's findings show that middleincome families in Chile borrow to consume 'ordinary' goods. Through the consumption of these goods, the Chilean middle classes seek to stabilize their class identities through their life trajectories, thereby achieving a sense of place in a changing environment. These findings lead me to focus on the normalization of credit and the process through which borrowing practices turn consumer goods from wants into needs, ratcheting up the demand for credit. The article argues that this is an overlooked way in which competitive dynamics drive the demand for credit, which is a missing link in the explanation for the rise of household debt.

This article uses a micro-qualitative approach to explore the apparent rise of eclecticism among the new upper middle class. It proposes an observation of six individual cases chosen from a Québec (Canada) sample made up of members of these higher categories of the status scale who are avid consumers of art and culture. This analysis of individual cultural repertoires, which takes into consideration the set of obvious items in relation to their uses-practical as well as symbolic-bears mainly on the principles of classification, hierarchical ordering and legitimation applied when dealing with the various components of repertoires. This leads to distinctions between different forms of cultural eclecticism on the basis of socioprofessional domains and different meanings of these eclecticism practices at the level of the individual. It also leads to a test of the relevance of the high/low distinction on which most of the research on this topic has been based. Is this distinction the most useful one for evaluating the real degree of openness of people, and of their tastes? In this regard, we consider the role of the old/new distinction, which is rarely taken into account but which appears, on the ground, as an equally strong structuring and discriminating principle in the area of taste.

We would like to acknowledge the help and support in carrying out this research by members of BBC Education, in particular, Jane Straw, Tony Matthews, Sylvia Hines and Catherine McCarthy. We would also like to thank Kate Mitchell and Moira Bovill of BBC Research for their advice and practical help in carrying out the TOPS survey. The assistance in producing this report was provided by Caroline Lark and Evelynne Rogers of the Institute of Human Ageing. We also recognise the considerable efforts of Jan Bogg, Margaret Boneham, Peter Sharples, Sarah Gantley, Kim Parkin and Marjorie Sixsmith in recruiting and interviewing the in-depth panel. Finally, we would especially like to thank all the people who participated as subjects in the various stages of the research.

The Belle Gibson scandal that broke in 2015 is a testament to the growing phenomenon of lifestyle gurus in the 21st century. In this article, our aim is not to explain the psychology behind Gibson’s lies. Rather, we focus on the social, cultural and technological conditions that enabled Gibson’s persona to flourish and their impact on contemporary understandings of the self. Lifestyle gurus embody the para-social, trading off the appeal of intimacy, authenticity and integrity. We demonstrate how social media have increased the levels of emotional investment, trust and attention capital in para-social relationships by providing ubiquitous access to native experts and creating the platform to achieve influence and micro-celebrity status. Finally, we contend that the growing number of lifestyle gurus providing the public with health advice and scientific knowledge points to the need to examine critically the social and cultural landscape that enables micro-celebrities to emerge.

Finns are said to be homogenous when it comes to cultural taste. However, the division between the Finnish-speaking majority and the Swedish-speaking minority is often considered significant. Previous study shows that the Swedish-speakers are statistically better-off when it comes to issues such as income and health. The stereotype of the Swedish-speakers is that in cultural consumption they represent upper-class taste. Most contemporary theory claims that the notion of legitimacy itself is changing. The paper examines ideas of legitimate taste brought up in twenty focus groups. We shall compare the linguistic groups and form a picture of what type of culture is considered legitimate by which group. In the end we aim to answer the question of what legitimate taste in the Finnish context means. The paper is based on a focus group study that serves as a pilot research for the project Cultural Capital and Social Differentiation in Contemporary Finland.

This research aimed to understand how elitist thinking takes place regarding music consumption in Brazil. Fifteen music professionals were interviewed, as they were considered individuals with high cultural capital in the subject. The results showed that, although cultural elitism in relation to music is on the way to being softened, it is still very present in Brazilian society, being strongly supported by cultural and social issues. Even if implicitly, a notion of good and bad musical taste can be observed from the (de)valuation of certain musical styles, especially by people professionally involved in the musical world.

Kant's Critique of Judgment is a storehouse full of provocative concepts and structures, which is why, since at least the 1970's, many contemporary Kant scholars and philosophers of other sorts have attempted to mine and explicate this text to varying degrees of success. Among these concepts and structures, there are a few that continue to evade complete elucidation. One of the most well tread, albeit still contested, grounds that appears in the third Critique is "purposiveness without purpose." Picking up from some recent interpretations of Kantian aesthetics, I contend that it is possible to discover at least three forms of purposiveness without purpose in aesthetic judgments. A second concept, the sensus communis, I will contend, is as important as the three sites of purposiveness without purpose. In fact, I will show how the sensus communis, in its ternary form, can be mapped onto the three sites of purposiveness without purpose; the two concepts cannot be separated. Finally, this mapping will allow for an attempt at what I could refer to as an "inconstruction" of the Deduction of Aesthetic Judgments that will engage many of the long-standing questions surrounding this text.

This article offers a survey of the recently discovered scrapbooks collated over a number of decades by the Yorkshirewoman Dorothy Richardson (1748–1819). The large set of thirty-five volumes presents an important collection of press cuttings relating to the history and consequences of the French Revolution, and also contains 'historical and miscellaneous' material of a more eclectic nature. I argue that the texts significantly improve our understanding of Dorothy Richardson's position as a reader, writer and researcher working in the North of England at the turn of the nineteenth century. Furthermore, her set of albums raises important questions about the relationship between commonplacing and scrapbooking practices, and the capacity of such textual curatorship to function as a form of both political engagement and autobiographical expression.

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In this paper we review recent sociological research dealing with the consumption of culture produced in the fine and popular arts realms. We note that most of the initial theoretical developments in the sociological study of culture consumption were first developed to explain audience segmentation in the fine arts realm under what we refer as the "cultural capital" paradigm developed by Pierre Bourdieu. This paradigm shift in its turn has led to the current dominance of the "omnivore thesis" in the sociology of taste. The consumption of popular culture on the other hand remained for a long time dominated by the Birmingham "resistance" and "subculture" paradigms developed in the 1970s. Recent research in the study of popular arts consumption has moved beyond the limitations of the subculture paradigm by way of incorporating the theoretical legacy of the cultural capital paradigm in order to account for patterns and audience and producer differentiation in the popular arts realm within "scenes." This has brought the study of popular and fine arts culture consumption under a single conceptual framework after a long period of theoretical disengagement.

In this article we analyse class cultures by mapping out differences in ‘original taste’; that is, respondents’ classed preferences for food and drink. By employing Multiple Correspondence Analysis, we produce a relational model of tastes. Using three indicators of social class – occupational class, income and education – we find clear class divisions. The upper and middle classes exhibit diverse and what are typically regarded as ‘healthy’ tastes; this contrasts with the more restricted and what are typically regarded as ‘less healthy’ tastes found among the working classes. Our findings challenge ongoing debates within cultural stratification research where it has become almost usual to demonstrate that the contemporary upper and middle classes exhibit playful tastes for the ‘cosmopolitan’ and the ‘exotic’. We find that upper- and middle-class households also enjoy very traditional foodstuffs. We argue that this illustrates a need for a relational understanding of taste: even the ...

This article examines how upward mobility affects both class and ethnic social positioning of Mapuche indigenous people in Chile. The article builds on cultural class analysis dominated by Bourdieusian approaches, suggesting the incorporation of an intersectional and postcolonial lens, considering the ways in which ethnicity complicates classed trajectories, focusing on class mobility and indigeneity. Drawing on 40 life history interviews of first-generation Mapuche professionals, the analysis reveals complex and varied responses to social mobility. The interviewees display three groups of responses: the 'mobile-accommodators', embracing deracinated middle-class identities; the 'rooted', asserting connections with working-class and Mapuche origins; and the 'resignifiers', embracing a more ambivalent class identity, but articulating a strong sense of Mapuche identity. The experience of upward social mobility represents a challenge to the respondents' sense of class position, class and ethnic identities, as they have had to manage indigenous identity claims across their social origins and destinations.

This article investigates taste preferences for one popular music genre: salsa. It is based on in-depth interviews with 40 Latin American immigrants in Switzerland and the Netherlands. Eight recorded pieces of salsa that represent different salsa styles were played and respondents' spontaneous appreciations were noted. The findings show a clear and fairly strong connection between taste preferences and status/class indicators, particularly education and to a lesser extent occupational status and social origins. Highstatus respondents prefer those pieces and styles classified as artistically worthwhile by professional experts in salsa music, whereas low-status respondents showed more appreciation for pieces and styles that experts classified as popular, commercial, and artistically inferior. Respondents also differed in their preferences for other musical genres, styles, and pieces as well as in the reasons they gave for their preferences. These results largely confirm Bourdieu's distinction theory for this specific 'popular' genre, and suggest that cultural 'omnivorousness' can coincide with statusrelated distinctions and exclusivity on the level of within-genre distinctions. The findings also show that respondents use salsa music as a resource to define and express their 'Latin' identity-thus illustrating both 'bounding' and 'bridging' mechanisms.

Scores of sociological studies have provided evidence for the association between broad cultural taste, or omnivorousness, and various status characteristics, such as education, occupation, and age. Nevertheless, the literature lacks a consistent theoretical foundation with which to understand and organize these empirical findings. In this article, we offer such a framework, suggesting that a mechanism-based approach is helpful for examination of the origins of the omnivore-univore taste pattern as well as its class-based distribution. We reground the discussion of this phenomenon in Distinction (Bourdieu 1984), conceptualizing omnivorous taste as a transposable form of the aesthetic disposition available most readily to individuals who convert early aesthetic training into high cultural capital occupational trajectories. After outlining the genetic mechanisms that link the aesthetic disposition to early socialization trajectories, we identify two relational mechanisms that modulate...

Professor Mike Savage is Director of the ESRC's Centre for Research into Socio-Cultural Change at the University of Manchester. His recent works include the coauthored Globalisation and Belonging and The politics of method: identities and social change in Britain since 1940.

The concept of omnivorousness has become influential in the sociologies of culture and consumption, cited variously as evidence of altered hierarchies in cultural participation and as indicative of broader socio-cultural changes. The ‘omnivore thesis’ contends that there is a sector of the population of western countries who do and like a greater variety of forms of culture than previously, and that this broad engagement reflects emerging values of tolerance and undermines snobbery. This article draws on the findings of a study of cultural participation in the UK to explore the coherence of the omnivore thesis. It uses a survey to identify and isolate omnivores, and then proceeds to explore the meanings of omnivorousness through the analysis of in-depth, qualitative interviews with them. It concludes that, while there is evidence of wide cultural participation within the UK, the figure of the omnivore is less singularly distinctive than some studies have suggested.

Drawing on two projects which develop the methodological model of Bourdieu’s Distinction in the UK and Finland, this paper explores the issues raised by the use of multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and mixed methods in comparative work on cultural tastes. By identifying the problems in the construction of two comparable yet nationally relevant research instruments, the paper considers the importance of the similarities and differences in the meaning of items in different national spaces for Bourdieu-inspired comparative analysis. The paper also reports on the evident similarities between the two constructed spaces and draws on the dialogue between quantitative and qualitative methods enabled by MCA in examining what different positions in social space appear to mean in these countries. It concludes by suggesting that, whilst Bourdieu’s model provides a robust set of methods for exploring relations between taste and class within nations, when used appropriately, it can also prov...

This paper adds a comparative perspective to the study of taste, cosmopolitanism and social organisation. Drawing on material provided by two similar projects in the UK and Finland it explores the relationships between national and cosmopolitan taste cultures. Whilst there have been some recent attempts to study taste in a comparative perspective, the weight of sociological inquiry into taste is focussed on specific national spaces, including the France of Bourdieu’s (1984) seminal contribution. This tendency persists even as the production and circulation of culture is increasingly accepted as global. Global culture is assumed to be the driver of cosmopolitan ways of being, but is also interpreted as a threat to distinct national cultures. Studies of taste provide an empirical setting where the lived experience of global culture and the ambiguities of cosmopolitanism can be observed. Based on interviews and focus group discussions from the UK and Finland, the paper broadly concurs ...

This article investigates the critical interplay between utopian collectivity and post-industrial ruins as "apocalyptic commons" in Derek Jarman's film The Last of England. This film's Thatcher-era critique reveals global capitalism's repressed yet intensified settler-colonial dimensions, portraying abandoned manufacturing sites intercut with nonlinear evocation of Britain's imperial past. I argue that this film's post-apocalyptic ruins perform an allegorical critique of settler colonialism by linking economic histories of imperialism and the "closing of the commons" to the neoliberal present. In this film, Jarman extends the utopian promise of the commons toward an equally radical potential inhering in the dystopian commons. These dystopian commons work to reopen a futurity, staging the alleged aftermath of historic crisis as already present-tense. Jarman's apocalyptic commons reflect unsolved legacies of neoliberal capital, liberal imper...

The objective of our research is to investigate fandom from a psychological perspective. As a departure from previous research relying on a sociological approach, we focus on the nature and strength of fan-idol relationships. To this end, this study reports the findings from qualitative research carried out in the field of music on how fandom is expressed through fans' interactions with their favourite singer/band, its associated significations and behaviour. We identify four significations: the musician as a brand, as a public personality, as an intimate and as a god. We highlight that fandom is initially an individual phenomenon whereby an individual creates a specific relationship with a musician, and that all fans can be considered valuable consumers independently from the relationship's strength.

This study surveys recent research on print-era scrapbooks and contemporary social media to highlight commonalities between the two formats, both in terms of the practices they have historically promoted for users, and the methodological challenges they produce for researchers. It argues that scrapbooks and social media can be conceptualized as sites of personal media assemblage and personal media archives, a designation that highlights the simultaneously social and archival dimensions of each form. After discussing these formal similarities, the author identifies three shared functions: (1) documenting friendship, (2) navigating new media abundance, and (3) communicating taste and building cultural capital. By drawing functional and formal parallels between the two media, the goal is to observe how these ‘old’ and ‘new’ technologies might mutually shed light on each other’s neglected social and archival dimensions, offering scholars a wider range of angles from which to approach th...

The comment questions whether cultural distinctions in the 1960s were as rigidly aligned by class as is sometimes believed. Alan Warde’s data from focus groups and questionnaires bring out some fundamental ways in which people think their own taste and that of others – for example, the way they continually emphasize taste being “just personal” (as against being class-based or other group-based judgments). But rather than reflecting any new, more “democratic” tendencies, this may be more revealing of general mechanisms underlying judgments of taste, and incorporating them as parts of personal identity and everyday guides for action and discrimination. The comment suggests interpreting the statements of interviewees in these terms rather than in terms of dichotomic historical comparisons.

This article is an analysis of how Hollywood stars are represented in three central celebrity genres – the fashion magazine interview, the endorsement advertisement and the appearance of the red carpet live broadcast. In contrast to recent research in celebrity culture this is an investigation of how specific media texts articulate key concepts central to an understanding of contemporary celebrity culture such as the star as both ordinary and extraordinary, the star as resource and the notion of intimacy at a distance. Thus the article offers a useful framework for analysis of traditional celebrity genres and how Hollywood icons in this context exemplified by Benedict Cumberbatch and Lupita Nyong’o are represented.

Cultural taste may appear to be one of the strongest marks of human individuality, yet the most consistent finding in the sociology of taste is that social position systematically shapes cultural preferences (Bourdieu 1984; Katz-Gerro 2004; van Eijck 2001). In this article, we show that case-specific macro-historical processes are capable of powerfully influencing how—and how much—social position shapes cultural choices, identifying educational institutions and pedagogical prac-tice as a crucial intermediate arena linking macro-political change to the dynamics of taste acquisition at the individual level (DiMaggio 1991; Lizardo 2008). We do so by examining how a crucial historical turning point generated a substantial difference between cultural consumption patterns in

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Distribution électronique Cairn.info pour De Boeck Supérieur. © De Boeck Supérieur. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays. La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit.

Nostalgia is not a singular phenomenon; it is multi-layered, diversely experienced and variously exploited, as I demonstrate by briefly outlining the history of nostalgia, especially the recent shift from modern to post-modern versions of the experience. The modern, temporal version of nostalgia is founded on the unattainable distance between the past and the present; the post-modern, atemporal version erases this sense of distance. Central to the modern concept of nostalgia is the experience of wistfulness, a hopeless longing for something lost and irrecoverable. But for post-modern nostalgics, the irrecoverable is now attainable, the difference between past and present flattened out. This is partly because post-modern nostalgia re-cycles images, objects and styles associated with the relatively recent past, a prime site of such re-cycling being the Internet. I therefore look at a range of websites that use nostalgia as a central concept in their marketing and which demonstrate some of these recent shifts in the experience of nostalgia. In the final part of this article, I explore these concerns in relation to the reception of four films about the English, past released in the 2000s: Ladies in Lavender (2004), Becoming Jane (2007), Brideshead Revisited (2008) and An Education (2009). How are films mobilised for nostalgic purposes at the levels of production, marketing and consumption? How is an experience of the past built into these films? Are some of the resulting images, sounds and pasts more resistant to nostalgic uses than others? Are these films discussed by audiences in terms of nostalgia? If so, is this is a positive or negative experience? Ranging in this way across a variety of material, my article is an attempt to bring together cultural history, conceptual, formal analysis and the analysis of reception or consumption.

This paper presents a preliminary analysis of the survey components of an ESRC project on Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion focused on the relations of culture and class in contemporary Britain. It draws on the data produced by a national survey of the cultural activities, ...

Let us, then, attempt explanation, not with the fantasy of the novelist, but with an intuition supported by the facts of history and science. (José Vasconcelos) No basta adaptarnos a una sociedad que cambia en la superficie y permanece idéntica en la raíz. No basta imitar los modelos que se nos proponen y que son la respuesta a otras circunstancias que las nuestras. No basta siquiera descubrir lo que somos. Hay que inventarnos. (Rosario Castellanos)1 The Chicana social predicament necessitates a reconsideration of both the “idealized past ” and the “future perfect.”

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On May 10, 1876, the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia opened its doors to an excited and enthusiastic public. The Exposition marked the explosion of large-scale corporate capitalism and consumerism after the Civil War and functioned as both a self-congratulatory political event and a showcase for industrial capitalist progress in the United States. Exhibit organizers designed the program to highlight American progress as part of the commemoration of the Revolution, dividing the displays into departments such as manufacturing, textiles, furniture, tools, motors/transportation, engineering, public works, and graphic arts, and ''intellectual, moral, and physical improvement.'' The fair introduced a host of new technologies and other developments that would have lasting impacts on the lives of Americans, including the telephone and various refrigeration processes. Exhibitors traveled from every corner of the country and abroad to present their information and products to fairgoers (Rydell 10-21). Many of them clamored for fairgoers' attention and trust, promoting unfamiliar brandname products such as Fleischmann's yeast and Libby's canned meats. These exhibitors distributed pocket-sized advertisements called trade cards-3 Â 5 in. lithographed cards with colorful images and descriptive text that authenticated the wares for sale with testimonials and expert advice. Visitors moved through the Exposition collecting these portable lithographs along with holiday greeting cards, calling cards (similar to today's business cards), and other printed materials from the fair. Indeed, the nation's centennial celebration marked the beginning of the widespread commercial use of trade cards and a popular cultural fascination with them as reflected in the art of Jennifer M. Black is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Southern California. Her dissertation, ''Branding Trust: Advertising, Legitimacy, and Trademarks in US Popular Visual Culture,'' looks at the relationship between sentimentalism in popular culture and the emergence of brand logos in advertising from 1876 to 1930. She would like to express her sincerest thanks to Karen Halttunen, whose insightful comments during the revision process provided immeasurable help. At the Huntington Library, David Mihaly, Cathy Cherbosque, and Erin Chase were incredibly helpful; while

Consideration of the "stakes" attached to participation is most clearly associated with the debate around Bourdieu's [(1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. London: Routledge] concept of cultural capital and the role this plays in processes of domination and social closure. Yet, the preferred method of understanding practice variation in the cultural fieldthe analysis of cross-sectional survey data focused on established tastes and activitiesreveals little of the broader nature, dynamics or significance of participation in people's daily lives. In this paper, I explore the potential of participation narratives for re-scoping the field of cultural participation. These accounts foreground the multiplicity of participation, its embeddedness in everyday concerns, institutions and relationships, and the interplay of time and space in the demarcation of the field by class and gender. As well as highlighting the limitations of theoretical models that focus on participation through the lens of cultural practices funded by the State, they suggest that articulations of cultural value in policy need to take more account of the personal histories, social relations and local contexts of participation.

The goal of this chapter is to question this observed eclecticism - or "omnivorousness" in the expression popularized by R.A. Peterson - in light of the results of a study conducted in Quebec (Canada) on art lovers and cultural consumers among the upper middle class. One of the principal objectives of this inquiry was to study the relation between professional and cultural worlds: In what ways does professional status determine one's cultural sphere? And up to what point do these two worlds cohere? Another equally important objective was to establish for this population the criteria considered relevant in matters of taste: Is the long-standing high/low distinction the most determining factor in the expression of taste, or do other classificatory schemes play a more significant role? This led to an exploration of a double complexity: that of the cultural uni verse of the elite, which is actually far more heterogeneous than one may assume a priori; and that of the multiplicity of symbolic markers that underlie the process
of taste legitimization.

This book's dual thrust is indicated by its title. _France on film_ suggests an interrogation of national identities and their filmic representation. Through consideration of history and heritage, gender and ethnicity, place and community, the book broadly delivers what the reader had been led to expect on this score, with its almost exclusively 1990s focus giving a decidedly contemporary relevance to the whole. The second half of the title suggests sustained reflection on the popular. The book partially delivers on this count. While some of the pieces do engage perceptively with the popular (without necessarily having a shared understanding of how it might be defined), others touch on it more tangentially, while yet others ignore it completely. This is a shame. A sustained analysis of what the popular might mean now would have been most timely.