Bending Forward, One Step Backward: On the Sociology of Tasting Techniques (original) (raw)
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The Aesthetics of Taste: Eating within the Realm of Art
BRILL, 2023
When does eating become art? The Aesthetics of Taste answers this question by exploring the position of taste in contemporary culture and the manner in which taste meanders its way into the realm of art. The argument identifies aesthetic values not only in artistic practices, where they are naturally expected, but also in the spaces of everydayness that seem far removed from the domain of fine arts. As such, it seeks to grasp what artists – who offer aesthetic as well as culinary experiences – actually try to communicate, while also pondering whether a cook can be an artist
Taste as a social sense: rethinking taste as a cultural activity
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This article outlines what it means to see taste as a social sense, that means as an activity related to socio-cultural context, rather than as an individual matter of internal reflection. Though culture in the science of taste is recognized as an influential parameter, it is often mentioned as the black box, leaving it open to determine exactly how culture impacts taste, and vice versa, and often representing the taster as a passive recipient of multiple factors related to the local cuisine and culinary traditions. By moving the attention from taste as a physiological stimulus-response of individuals to tasting as a shared cultural activity, it is possible to recognize the taster as a reflexive actor that communicates, performs, manipulates, senses, changes and embodies taste-rather than passively perceives a certain experience of food. The paper unfolds this anthropological approach to taste and outlines some of its methodological implications: to map different strategies of sharing the experience of eating, and to pay attention to the context of these tasting practices. It is proposed that different taste activities can be analysed through the same theoretical lens, namely as sharing practices that generates and maintains a cultural understanding of the meaning of taste.
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This chapter reexamines foundational philosophical controversies about the meaning of taste and reflects on how tastes have been understood by sociologists. It argues these insights, while revealing the social patterning of tastes, have also obscured the extent to which tastes are bound up both with sensory experience and with the process of learning the management of the body and its responses to the world.. It concludes that, while the substantive weight of the sociological study of tastes has concerned itself with questions of the aesthetic and to the identification of different dispositions held by individuals and groups in relation to aesthetic judgment, there is value, in understanding contemporary cultures, to building up those accounts of taste which are more oriented to questions of the ascetic and to the role of restraint and training in the development and cultivation of tastes.
Welcome to the revolution: art history and the sensory turn
Discourses concerned with the sensorially embodied subject have emerged since the 1990s in various disciplines including history, anthropology, sociology, geography, film studies and literary studies. The purpose of this article is to bring the conversation regarding audiences’ embodied engagement in culture closer to art history by investigating the implications of, what has been termed, the ‘sensory turn’ for this discipline. One of the accusations lodged against art history by supporters of the multi-sensoriality of embodied human experience is its alleged ocularcentrism, the implication of which is a detached autonomous subject. In this article, the sensory turn is defined and contextualized, particularly in light of the body of criticism targeted at art history’s emphasis on the visual. The proposed ways in which art historians might usefully deal with audience’s embodied experiences of not only immersive installation works of art, but also artworks in traditional media, such as painting and photography, are teased apart. Keywords: sensory turn, art history, multi-sensorial subjectivity, embodiment
This article outlines what it means to see taste as a social sense, that means as an activity related to socio-cultural context, rather than as an individual matter of internal reflection. Though culture in the science of taste is recognized as an influential parameter, it is often mentioned as the black box, leaving it open to determine exactly how culture impacts taste, and vice versa, and often representing the taster as a passive recipient of multiple factors related to the local cuisine and culinary traditions. By moving the attention from taste as a physiological stimulus–response of individuals to tasting as a shared cultural activity, it is possible to recognize the taster as a reflexive actor that communicates, performs, manipulates, senses, changes and embodies taste—rather than passively perceives a certain experience of food. The paper unfolds this anthropological approach to taste and outlines some of its methodological implications: to map different strategies of sharing the experience of eating, and to pay attention to the context of these tasting practices. It is proposed that different taste activities can be analysed through the same theoretical lens, namely as sharing practices that generates and maintains a cultural understanding of the meaning of taste.
Against the Sociology of the Aesthetic
Cultural Values, 2002
I defend traditional aesthetics against sociological criticism. I argue that “historicist” approaches (a) are not supported by arguments and (b) are intrinsically implausible. Hence the traditional ahistorical philosophical approach to the judgment of taste is justified. Many Marxist, feminist and postmodernist writers either eliminate aesthetic value or reduce it to their favourite political value. Others say that they merely want to give a historical explanation of the culturally local phenomenon of thinking in terms of the aesthetic. As a preliminary, I point out that the conception of the aesthetic these theorists operate with is a straw man. In particular, Kant would have rejected it. I then point out that the empirical evidence does not support their historicist views. Most sociological theorists adduce no evidence, thinking their view obviously correct. Where evidence is adduced (e.g. by Bourdieu), the evidence has little connection with their general historicist conclusions. Lastly, I put pressure on the historicist view, first by appealing to the enormity of the error attributed to ordinary people, and second by appealing to the inevitability of pragmatic inconsistency by those who assert the view. I conclude that traditional philosophical aesthetics was right to be ahistorical.
The Blackwell companion to the sociology of …, 2004
In this chapter we consider the problems facing the sociology of culture with respect to taste. We focus primarily to the case of music and its various genres but also include comparisons with other objects of passion such as cookery and wine, or sport. The aim of our research on different forms of attachment was to steer the sociology of taste away from a critical conception that had become dominant, in which taste is conceived only as a passive social game, largely ignorant about itself. How, without endorsing the concomitant reduction of real practices to their hidden social determinants, can we incorporate sociology's contribution? Various studies have proved the overdetermined nature of tastes, their function as markers of social differences and identities, their ritualized functioning, relations of domination between high culture and popular culture, etc. ).
Tasting as a social practice: a methodological experiment in making taste public
Social & Cultural Geography, 2020
Based on fieldwork in the UK and Portugal, this paper considers the relationships between cultural analyses of taste and the embodied activity of tasting. As part of a wider project on the multiple ontologies of 'freshness', the paper conceptualises taste as an emergent effect of tasting practices. Drawing on evidence from a series of 'tasting events' (where research participants were recorded shopping, cooking and eating a meal with friends and family), the paper explores the multiple dimensions of taste concluding that even the most personal and sensory aspects of tasting food involve a social dimension which we interpret through the lens of practice theory. The paper identifies three specific dimensions of tasting as a social practice involving food's material and visceral qualities; the links between embodiment and emotion; and the contextual significance of family and social relations. Our findings contribute to recent debates about 'making taste public', even in the apparently private context of household consumption.