1,721,113 research outputs found
The Gendered Dynamics of the Artifying of Wine
No full textThe highly gendered nature of wine phenomena stretches back over the 8000 years that wine has been made from grapes. Although things have been changing over the recent decades, wine production, distribution, and consumption remain subject to multiple forms of division and inequality along gender lines. This includes processes whereby wine phenomena are subjected to artifying strategies for marketing purposes. When winemakers are presented as ‘artists’, and oenology presented as an artistic practice, deeply masculinist notions of artistic mastery and genius are usually invoked. The placing of the winemaker’s signature on bottle labelling underlines the masculinised creative act of winemaking. Bottle labelling may also be sexist in nature, with fetishized images of women’s bodies. We reflect upon these phenomena, pointing out the potential gender risks embedded in wine artifying pursuits, as well as instances of resistance and alternative ways of existing and acting in the world of wine
From Chateau Latour to Chateau Bourdieu: The Sociology of Wine Between Empire, Class, Ethnicity, and Gender (Or, The Oenologic of Practice)
No full textMany sociologists drink wine, but hardly any write about it professionally, and the putative scholarly field of the ‘sociology of wine’ remains inchoate, the study of wine mostly being ceded to other disciplines. This is strange, as wine is crucial to a host of phenomena, such as national and regional identities in winemaking countries, as well as identity construction and class-based distinction dynamics in many other locations. Wine has received relatively little attention from Bourdieu or those inspired by him. Indeed, some of the most influential writings on wine in a sociological register today are sometimes explicitly hostile to his sociology. Yet for all types of activities traversing the overlapping domains of the production, social distribution and consumption of wine, Bourdieusian elements must be brought into the analysis to be able to appreciate interlocking issues of class, ethnicity and gender relations and inequalities, particularly within imperial/colonial and post-imperial/post-colonial social contexts. In its 8000-year history, very major factors in the social structuring of wine have been imperial power and colonial expansion, factors bound up with ethnic and gender inequalities in wine phenomena both historically and today. A flexible and open-minded version of Bourdieu, as advocated by Bridget Fowler, draws attention to ongoing dynamics of power and resistance in wine worlds
Kuolet vain kahdesti: Kaksi muistokirjoitusta Bruno Latourille
No full textTämä puheenvuoro koostuu kahdesta erilaisesta muistokirjoituksesta Bruno Latourille. Ensimmäinen on tavanomainen kirjoitus, joka listaa hänen saavutuksiaan. Toinen on epätavanomainen ja se haastaa Latourin tavoilla, jotka olisivat sopimattomia tavanomaisessa kirjoituksessa. Tämä epätavanomaisuus on oikeutettu Latourin omien kirjoitusten epäsovinnaisuuden valossa. Pyrimme arvioimaan Latouria sekä hänen älyllisiä menestyksiään ja epäonnistumisiaan hänen omien käsitteidensä avulla, mutta joudumme myös toteamaan, etteivät mainitut käsitteet täysin riitä tehtävään. Toisinaan siis sovellamme kommenteissamme juuri niitä ajatuksia, joita Latour kiivaasti vastusti. Jäämme pohtimaan, mitä haamu-Latour moisesta muistokirjoituksesta mahtaisi ajatella
Sociological Masters of the World: For and Against “Global Sociology”
Get PDFCalls for “global sociology” are nowadays commonplace. Sometimes they are framed in a positive way, but more often are presented in a negative register, suggesting that sociology’s evident institutional inequalities and related analytical failings are so great that the discipline risks losing any claims to relevance as the world changes around it. Such demands suggest the need for partial or total “intellectual overhaul” of sociology, to render it fit for purpose today, epistemically, institutionally, and ethically. Sociology is seen to be overwhelmingly located in metropolitan locations in the Developed World and Global North. This institutional imbalance is widely understood to reproduce chronically Euro-American-centred analytical orientations. There is much to be gained today by taking a position on “global sociology”, forwarding one’s own preferred position while simultaneously criticising the positions of others. Sociological careers can be forged and intellectual kudos and recognition, which, by the very terms of the debate itself, are truly planetary in scope, can be won. This paper critically assesses some major positions in today’s “global sociology” game. Against the background of controversies over universalism and indigenization, the paper focuses particularly on Southern Theory and Postcolonial Sociology, indicates some of their major problems
Introduction to the Sociology of Wine—The Sociological Decanter : Pouring Sociology into Wine, and Vice Versa
Get PDFWine from grapes is both ancient and highly modern, increasingly widespread across vast swathes of the planet, and made, marketed and distributed by a huge industry that directly and indirectly employs millions of people and generates huge profits, at least for some. Yet despite wine’s social and cultural importance, sociology and sociologists have remained remarkably quiet about wine, unlike those in other academic disciplines. There is today no such thing as a scholarly field called the sociology of wine. This introductory paper to the special issue on wine and sociology considers this state of affairs, and what might be done about overcoming the relative silence of sociology on wine matters. It offers an extensive literature review covering what international sociological work there is on the wine/sociology interface, considering this relatively modest body of literature in relation to the more voluminous amounts of wine-related analysis offered by anthropologists, geographers, economists, and others. These scholarly domains are represented in the paper by reference to classic works and indicative readings. The paper poses a series of questions as to what a sociological field of wine analysis could look like, and what it would take to build such a thing. It also illustrates how the papers published in the special issue contribute to posing and answering some of these questions.Peer reviewe
What is “Fashion” and How to Research it? Polybius for Punk Fashion Sociology
Get PDFFashion changes societies, and is also itself shaped by multiple socio-cultural processes, including processes of globalization. At the same time, fashion scholarship is not only speaking about and seeking to understand fashion, but is also actively formulating ideas, assumptions and understandings as to what fashion can be, and where in the history and geographical locations fashion can be found.
This paper addresses the increasingly complex question of the nature of fashion in a globalized and increasingly interconnected world. Arguing for a radical, “punk”, attitude toward fashion scholarship, and the rethinking of fashion, we suggest an approach that goes beyond academic and political fashions, drawing upon history. For while it is strikingly obvious that fashion is a global and globalized phenomenon, its specific character, and indeed geographical locations and origins, remain contested. Drawing inspiration from the Greek historian Polybius, and his ideas of an ecumenical analytical approach to studying world-wide phenomena, we reflect upon the history and current state of fashion studies in what we consider an ecumenical moment, demanding new insights, but also holding many opportunities for the field
Masks, Cosmopolitanism, Hospitality: on Facial Politics in the Covid-19 Era
No full textPhilosophical issues of hospitality are bound up with broader issues of cosmopolitanism in thought and in practice. This paper considers the interplay of human faces, masks, forms of hospitality, and cosmopolitanizing and anti-cosmopolitanizing socio-political dynamics in the time of Covid-19. Despite confident assertions by some interested parties that it is now finished and past history, Covid-19 remains a major challenge across the globe, and so reflections on the interplay of masking, cosmopolitanism, and hospitality remain pertinent today and are not merely a quaint feature of life during the early years of the pandemic. Voluntary acts of self-masking are argued to be more than just mundane forms of micro-level action and interaction among persons. Instead, freighted sometimes with political meaning, and certainly loaded with ethical force, the donning of a face mask can operate as a small but compelling quotidian act of cosmopolitan concern and hospitableness towards other people, including those perceived to be very unlike oneself
Durkheim cosmopolita
No full textAttraverso un esercizio ermeneutico che rilegge l’opera di Émile Durkheim all’interno della cornice teorica del cosmopolitismo, il volume intende fornire al pubblico di studiosi e di lettori nuovi argomenti a favore dell’attualità del pensiero di questo prolifico pensatore del Novecento. Si tratta di una lettura della sua oeuvre, o almeno di parte di essa, nuova ed originale, che rigetta la visione di un Durkheim conservatore e che ne rivaluta il lavoro alla luce dei suoi contributi all’interpretazione di un mondo aperto ai processi di globalizzazione, in un’ottica – appunto – cosmopolita
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