Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Role of Service Workers and Consumers in Cultural Production

蒂姆·多德石楠·贾默森埃默里大学比以往任何时候都有更多的人围绕消费来组织他们的生活，从而使大多数收入群体能够使用商品来提升他们的生活方式。这一过程在葡萄酒方面尤为明显，因为各行各业的消费者通过消费葡萄酒提高了他们的社会地位。 在美国，举例来说，在社会地位较高的群体中，对美酒的熟悉一直是一种文化货币。 然而，近年来葡萄酒行业经历了爆炸式增长，葡萄酒和葡萄酒相关知识（例如，评级和评论）在收入群体中更容易获得。 消费者对“品味”的扩大和对商品的更广泛接触可能表明，旧的社会等级制度已被更民主的消费空间所取代，高档葡萄酒的消费不再仅限于富人。然而，并非所有的葡萄酒都是平等的，也不是所有的消费者。 相反，行业评论家和“专家”，合法的某些葡萄酒，以及如何以及何时欣赏它们。 消费者自己以不同的技能和知识水平进入消费网站（例如，文化资本），塑造他们对特定葡萄酒的品味以及他们如何消费葡萄酒。 服务人员（例如，品酒室的主人、服务员和女服务员）通过交流有关风格、价值和鉴赏葡萄酒的方法的信息，在专家和消费者之间调解这种关系。 通过使用葡萄酒作为一个案例研究，该项目结合了对文化生产和文化资本的研究，问：作为文化中介的服务工作者和消费者如何与专家生成的分类方案进行互动，以及在什么条件下这些互动支持或减少消费群体之间的地位差异？ 这个多方法项目利用了各种数据源，包括行业出版物的内容分析（例如，《葡萄酒观察家》（Wine Spectator）在纳帕谷，加州和亚特兰大，格鲁吉亚消费网站的参与者观察，并采访葡萄酒消费者和葡萄酒行业内的服务工人。这些发现将通过突出消费空间通过合法化专家组织的方式，推进经济和文化社会学的理论和经验知识。此外，该项目的更广泛的影响重振研究有关社会阶层的文化层面的消费社会的背景下，并解决持久的社会关注的发展，维护和意义的文化资本的关系，限制在美国的流动性的边界问题。

Tim Dowd Heather JamersonEmory UniversityMore people than ever before organize their lives around consumption, thereby allowing most income groups the ability to use commodities to upscale their lifestyles. This process is especially evident in the case of wine, as consumers from all walks of life enhance their social position through its consumption. In the U.S., for instance, a familiarity with fine wine has long served as cultural currency within high status social groups. However, the wine industry has experienced explosive growth in recent years making wine and wine-related knowledge (e.g., ratings and reviews) much more accessible across income groups. The expanded sense of "taste" among consumers and wider access to the commodity may suggest that old social hierarchies have been replaced by more democratic spaces of consumption with fine wine consumption no longer limited to the affluent. Yet, not all wines are equal, nor are all consumers. Instead, industry critics and "experts", legitimate certain wines, as well as, how and when to appreciate them. Consumers themselves enter consumption sites with varying levels of skills and knowledge (e.g., cultural capital) that shape their tastes for particular wines and how they consume them. Service workers (e.g., tasting room hosts, waiters and waitresses) mediate this relationship between experts and consumers by communicating information about style, value, and ways to appreciate wine. By using wine as a case study, this project combines research on the production of culture and on cultural capital to ask: How do service workers as cultural intermediaries and consumers interact with expert-generated classification schemes and under what conditions do these interactions uphold or lessen status distinctions among consumer groups? This multi-method project draws on a variety of data sources, including content analysis of industry publications (e.g., The Wine Spectator); participant observation in consumption sites in Napa Valley, California and Atlanta, Georgia; and interviews with wine consumers and service workers within the wine industry. These findings will advance theoretical and empirical knowledge within economic and cultural sociology by highlighting the way in which consumption spaces are organized through legitimating experts. Additionally, the project's broader impact reinvigorates research about the cultural dimensions of social class within the context of a consumer society and tackles questions of enduring social concern regarding the development, maintenance, and significance of cultural capital in relation to boundaries that restrict mobility in the United States.