Understanding Cultural Taste

Sensation, Skill and Sensibility

David Wright

ISBN: 9781137447074

DOI: 10.1057/9781137447074

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Understanding Cultural

Taste

Sensation, Skill and Sensibility

David Wright

10.1057/9781137447074 - Understanding Cultural Taste, David Wright

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Exeter - PalgraveConnect - 2015-10-20

Understanding Cultural Taste

10.1057/9781137447074 - Understanding Cultural Taste, David Wright

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Exeter - PalgraveConnect - 2015-10-20

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10.1057/9781137447074 - Understanding Cultural Taste, David Wright

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Exeter - PalgraveConnect - 2015-10-20

Understanding Cultural

Taste

Sensation, Skill and Sensibility

David Wright

University of Warwick, UK

10.1057/9781137447074 - Understanding Cultural Taste, David Wright

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of Exeter - PalgraveConnect - 2015-10-20

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10.1057/9781137447074 - Understanding Cultural Taste, David Wright

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Contents

List of Figures vi

Acknowledgements vii

Introducing Taste 1

1 Theorizing Taste 9

2 Measuring Taste 42

3 Governing Tastes 72

4 Globalizing Tastes 96

5 Producing Tastes 118

6 Digitalizing Tastes 144

Conclusion: Dimensions of Taste 165

Notes 172

Bibliography 173

Index 184

v

10.1057/9781137447074 - Understanding Cultural Taste, David Wright

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Figures

2.1 Variants of the dominant taste 50

2.2 From ‘Media Tarts’, The Guardian, November 2006 64

5.1 The Lovely Consensus by Grayson Perry, 2003, glazed

ceramic, 60 × 41 cm, 23

5/8

× 16

1/8

inches 122

vi

10.1057/9781137447074 - Understanding Cultural Taste, David Wright

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Acknowledgements

The ﬁrst part of this book was written during a term of study leave from

the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies at the University of War wick, UK,

in the spring of 2014. I’m grateful to colleagues there for supporting this,

and especially to Clive Gray and Jerry Ahearne who both offered helpful

comments and advice on the book proposal. Some chapters have been

aired in seminars at the centre, and I extend my thanks to students on

the Global Audience and Research Methods in the Cultural Sector mod-

ules over the last few years for indulging this, even if it was marginal to

their interests. ‘Producing Tastes’ (Chapter 5) was aired both in a brown-

bag research seminar at the centre and in a seminar at a meeting of the

Cultural Distinctions Generation and Change research team in Madrid

in November 2013. I’m grateful to Semi Purhonen of the University of

Tampere, Finland, and the rest of that team for the invitation and their

hospitality. ‘Globalizing Tastes’ (Chapter 4) was also informed by work

with Semi Purhonen and Riie Heikkilä of the University of Helsinki,

Finland, on a British Academy project entitled ‘Comparing Cultural

Capital in the UK and Finland’. ‘Digitalizing Tastes’ (Chapter 6) was pre-

sented at the event Cultural Participation in the Twenty-First Century

in January 2015, which was organized by Simone Varriale and the Insti-

tute for Advance Study at the University of Warwick. My thanks go to

all of the participants of these events for their comments, suggestions

and questions.

A signiﬁcant intellectual impetus for this work was my experience as a

research fellow based at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, and

in collaboration with colleagues from Manchester University, UK, while

working on an empirical study of British tastes, which was published as

Culture Class Distinction (Bennett et al., 2009). I’m grateful to the mem-

bers of that team – Tony Bennett, Modesto Gayo, Mike Savage, Elizabeth

Silva and Alan Warde – and the associated fellow travellers with whom

the work brought me into contact, for their continuing companionship

and inspiration.

I was especially pleased to receive permissions f rom Andrew Birch to

reproduce the cartoon in ‘Measuring Taste’ (Chapter 2), from Taylor and

Francis and Harvard University Press to reprint the image from Distinc-

tion in the same chapter, and from Grayson Perry, the Victoria Miro

Gallery, London, and the Dakis Joannou Collection, Athens, Greece,

vii

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viii Acknowledgements

to reproduce the image of The Lovely Consensus in ‘Producing Tastes’

(Chapter 5).

Chapter 5 will outline my belief in the signiﬁcance of various support

workers to cultural work. This is doubly the case for academic work, so

my thanks go to Felicity Plester for taking the time for an initial conver-

sation, and to the editorial and copy-editing team at Palgrave for their

assistance en route. A close reading of that chapter might also suggest

some insincerity in my expression of the traditional authorial disclaimer

about mistakes, but they are certainly all my own.

Finally, thanks to my partner in life, and companion in tasting,

Alison. This book is for her most of all.

10.1057/9781137447074 - Understanding Cultural Taste, David Wright

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