Elias le Grand’s research while affiliated with Stockholm University and other places

This article addresses the legitimation of taste in cultural fields by examining the role of generational dynamics in the field of fine wine. In the last decade, ‘natural’ wine has become an increasingly influential category in the fine wine field. The article explores how legitimating media institutions in this field represent natural wine, particularly as regards to the symbolic properties of cultural taste. The empirical material consists of articles published in two leading US wine magazines, VinePair and Wine Spectator. The analysis shows that natural wine was represented as a contested category whose aesthetic qualities were only partially legitimated. Moreover, generational and age-coded categories were deployed to construct oppositions between natural wines and other fine wines, as well as between their respective proponents. The aesthetic characteristics of natural wine were associated with emerging forms of cultural capital that partly challenged established aesthetic standards in the fine wine field connected to traditional highbrow cultural capital. Contestations over natural wine are therefore indicative of symbolic struggles over cultural taste in the fine wine field. In conclusion, the article contributes to research in cultural fields by analysing the relationship between generational classifications and contestations over aesthetic standards in the legitimation of taste.

The devilish has long been integral to myths, legends, and folklore, firmly located in the relationships between good and evil, and selves and others. But how are ideas of evil constructed in current times and framed by contemporary social discourses? Modern Folk Devils builds on and works with Stanley Cohen’s theory on folk devils and moral panics to discuss the constructions of evil. The authors present an array of case-studies that illustrate how the notion of folk devils nowadays comes into play and animates ideas of otherness and evil throughout the world.Examining current fears and perceived threats, this volume investigates and analyzes how and why these devils are constructed. The chapters discuss how the devilish may take on many different forms: sometimes they exist only as a potential threat, other times they are a single individual or phenomenon or a visible group, such as refugees, technocrats, Roma, hipsters, LGBT groups, and rightwing politicians. Folk devils themselves are also given a voice to offer an essential complementary perspective on how panics become exaggerated, facts distorted, and problems acutely angled. Bringing together researchers from anthropology, sociology, political studies, ethnology, and criminology, the contributions examine cases from across the world spanning from Europe to Asia and Oceania.

This paper explores the role of moralization processes and classification struggles in public contestations over gentrification. Focusing on representations in news media, the paper examines recent public reactions centering on a “hipster café” in London’s East End. The analysis shows that the hipster, typically associated with trendy, youthful middle-class people, is a contested figure who some actors attempt to cast as a folk devil blamed for the increasing social polarization and displacement of working-class people following gentrification. But largely misrecognized in this debate is the intensification of neoliberal policies in contributing to these processes. Moreover, dominant representations portray the hipster figure as contributing to the vibrancy and economic development of gentrified districts. Lastly, it is argued that the public contestations over gentrification and the hipster figure involve forms of class politics about the moral hegemony to legitimate particular narratives about who has the right to the city.

The analysis of social types, such as the stranger, the marginal man and the folk devil, has a long, significant history in sociology and related fields. Although the social type concept currently enjoys a rather marginal status, in recent years the related concept of figure has been increasingly deployed in research. This article contends that Bourdieu’s work on classification and social differentiation can offer fruitful tools for a renewed focus on types and figures. To this end, it advocates a critical approach to the study of social types and figures in which they are conceived as social identities tied to classificatory struggles over meaning, value, recognition and resources between differentially positioned actors. The article also attempts to clarify the distinction between types and figures and discuss how they can be applied in research. The main arguments of the article are developed through a critical reading of key contributions to research on social types and figures as well as through the discussion of two empirical studies.

This article explores how representations of the ‘hipster’ in newspapers and on blogs are bound up with processes of class distinction in contemporary Britain. The analysis demonstrates that the hipster is a contested middle-class social type who is the object of both denigration and prestige. The hipster is typically represented as a young person associated with the middle-class fraction of the cultural intermediaries who is engaged in a particular set of reflexive and trendy consumption practices, often performed in gentrified urban spaces and linked to the creative industries. The article suggests that the disputed status of ‘hipster cool’ is indicative of shifting class distinctions in cultural taste and classificatory struggles within the middle class between generational groupings that involve questions of authenticity. Such contestations are reflected by the increasing legitimacy of emerging forms of cultural capital rooted in popular culture and embraced by young people, and the waning symbolic power of traditional highbrow culture associated with an older generation of middle-class people. It is also argued that the classificatory struggles over hipster tastes and lifestyles have a spatial dimension as bound up with the public controversies and social anxieties linked to gentrification in neoliberal Britain.

Critiquing neo-tribal research for discounting the role of social differentiation and overstating the inclusive and non-hierarchical aspects of neo-tribal communality, this chapter attempts to extend the neo-tribe concept to incorporate processes of exclusion, hierarchy and symbolic boundary formation as well as acknowledging the continuing influence of class relations. To this end, it firstly draws on Durkheim’s, Goffman’s and Collins’ writings on rituals and collective effervescence, to discuss how neo-tribal gatherings have a hierarchical and excluding character. Secondly, the chapter discusses recent research influenced by Bourdieu and studies on ‘alternative’ food consumption to conceptualise how neo-tribal formations can be connected to class-based forms of cultural hierarchy.

This paper aims to link two fields of research which have come to form separate lines of inquiry: the sociology of moralisation and studies on class identity. Expanding on recent papers by Young (2009, 2011) and others, the paper argues that the concepts of ressentiment and respectability can be used to connect moralisation processes and the formation of class identities. This is explored through a case study of the social reaction in Britain to white working-class youths labelled ‘chavs’. It is demonstrated that chavs are constructed through moralising discourses and practices, which have some elements of a moral panic. Moreover, moralisation is performative in constructing class identities: chavs have been cast as a ‘non-respectable’ white working-class ‘folk devil’ against whom ‘respectable’ middle-class and working-class people distinguish and identify themselves as morally righteous. Moralising social reactions are here to an important extent triggered by feelings of ressentiment. This is a dialectical process where respectability and ressentiment are tied, not only to the social control of certain non-respectable working-class others, but also to the moral self-governance of the moralisers.

We live in a world that is increasingly characterised as full of risk, danger and threat. Every day a new social issue emerges to assail our sensibilities and consciences. Drawing on the popular Economic Social and Research Council (ESRC) seminar series, this book examines these social issues and anxieties, and the responses to them, through the concept of moral panic. Revisiting Moral Panics begins with a commentary by Charles Critcher followed by twenty four contributions from both well-known and up-and-coming researchers and practitioners that address panics ranging from those surrounding the 2011 English riots to fears over ‘feral families’ in New Zealand. There are four parts: Gender and the family; Moral Panics in our time?: Childhood and youth; The State, government and citizens; and Moral crusades, moral regulation and morality. Each part is rounded off with an Afterword from a practitioner that lends a critical comment. Revisiting Moral Panics is a stimulating and innovative overview of moral panic ideas. It also provides a masterclass in their applicability, or otherwise, to contemporary anxieties and concerns.