Cultural Intermediaries and the Reproduction of White Space in the Market “Place”

• In Event: 4161 - Uncovering the Ordinary: Everyday Mechanisms of Racism and Resistance

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the connections between the work of cultural intermediaries and structures of race/racisms in the craft beer, wine, and spirits industry. Cultural intermediaries are “tastemakers” and taste legitimizers within markets. Examples are sales representatives, marketers, event specialists, and brand ambassadors. Even though the original concept of the cultural intermediary was developed to address how social inequalities are reproduced through taste construction, there is a lack of work that addresses how they reproduce dominant class structures and how they draw on traditional strategies of maintaining power to do so—specifically in regards to race. I draw on data from in-depth/semi-structured interviews with 30 participants paired with over one year of ethnographic data to critically explore how cultural intermediaries in the craft beverage industry draw on certain cultural elements which reproduces an environment where histories, values, and aesthetics centralize and normalize a white experience of the social world. On top of providing empirical evidence showing how C.I.s can imbue consumer spaces with meanings of whiteness, I also advance a theoretical understanding of how white spaces are reproduced beyond the producer (institution) vs. consumer (agent) binary. My analysis contributes to broader conversations around how racial hierarchies are re-produced throughout everyday/seemingly mundane practices.

Author

• Erik Tyler Withers, University of South Florida