Everyday Experts: The Embodied Knowledge of Aesthetic Connoisseurs

• In Event: 3551 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: 2. Consumers and Consumption

Abstract

Learning to taste is a process that is far from passively or automatically conferred by one’s social position. Though the type of action varies depending on an individual’s experiential position along a pliable pathway of aesthetic knowledge acquisition and appreciation, the skills and knowledge to perform taste are acquired with others rather than ascribed by others. This paper focuses on the actions of aesthetic connoisseurs as intermediaries between both production and consumption and learning and educating. Aesthetic connoisseurs facilitate the sharing embodied knowledge within and between local scenes. Using the craft beer scene as the unit of analysis, I uncover the necessary roles aesthetic connoisseurs play across local, translocal, and virtual scenes in order to show how embodied knowledge is transferred through both informal and formal means. The transferring of such knowledge is a necessary component for the construction, maintenance, and growth of cultural scenes.

Author

• Michael Ian Borer, University of Nevada, Las Vegas