Search results

Purpose: This paper adopts a practice-oriented approach to address gaps in existing knowledge of the significance of cultural producers’ and intermediaries’ practices of taste for the construction and organization of markets. Using the example of the cultural field of “natural” wine, I propose how taste operates as a logic of practice, generating market actions in relation to the aesthetic regime of provenance.

Methodology/approach: The paper sets out the conceptual relationship between aesthetic regimes and practices of taste. The discussion draws from interpretive research on natural wine producers and cultural intermediaries involving 40 interviews with natural wine makers, retailers, sommeliers, and writers based in New York, Western Australia, the Champagne region, and the Cape Winelands.

Findings: Three dimensions of how taste is translated into action are examined: as a device of division, which establishes a fuzzy logic of resemblance; as a device of operation, which provides an intuitive platform for shaping the means of production; and as a device of coordination, which enables an embedded experience of trust.

Originality/value: The paper’s discussion of dispositions, affect, intuition, and pattern identification provide new insights into the translation of taste into action, and the macro-organization of markets. I argue for attention to how cultural producers and cultural intermediaries are mobilized through their habitual sense of taste, shifting the focus away from consumers to those whose market actions are largely self- and peer-referential. This is important for understanding processes of market development and value construction.

Previous research suggests that constructions of legitimacy play a central role in the development of markets, yet little attention has been given to how that legitimacy is constructed through the material practices of market actors. This paper aims to address this gap via an examination of cultural intermediaries in the fine wine market of Shanghai.

An interpretive thematic analysis was carried out on data from 13 semi-structured interviews with fine wine intermediaries based primarily in Shanghai (5 wine writers/educators; 5 sommeliers/retailers; 3 brand representatives).

The dimensions of the legitimation of wine were examined, identifying three key themes: the legitimacy of intermediaries as experts; the legitimacy of a particular mode of wine consumption; the legitimacy of the intermediaries as exemplars for not-yet-legitimate consumers. These findings suggest that cultural intermediaries’ personal, consuming preferences and practices are significant to the formation of a new market, and that they must negotiate potential tensions between interactions with legitimate, not-yet-legitimate and illegitimate consumers.

Limitations with regard to generalizability are discussed with regard to potential future research.

The focus on cultural intermediaries and dimensions of legitimation can be used to examine the case of other emerging markets to anticipate the pathways to institutionalizing new forms of taste and consumption practices.

The paper offers an empirical insight into the market dynamics of distinction in the Shanghai wine market and conceptual insight into the importance of cultural intermediaries as exemplar consumers.

The aim of this exploratory study is to investigate the benefits of “New World” wineries using family heritage as a legitimate marketing technique. “Old World” regions have been leveraging off the often long association the wineries family has in wine making to assist in generating wine sales. This marketing initiative is now being applied to “New World” wineries with increasing success.

This exploratory study investigated three wineries including their web sites, print media and consumer responses. The case studies had to include wineries that were family owned and actively promoted and marketed their winery as having a strong family heritage link in Victoria, Australia.

The results of this investigation suggest that family heritage is a legitimate marketing technique for “New World” wineries to assist in wine sales. If a family link can be established, there is no reason why “New World” wineries cannot promote family heritage, even if the winery is relatively new or a family has not worked in the industry for an extended period of time.

This paper attempts to acknowledge that family heritage is important in creating a “story” for the winery to assist in wine sales generation. By examining “New World” wineries regarding family heritage usage, this paper suggests that it is a legitimate marketing technique that other authors have never explored.

Luxury has received attention from tourism researchers as an important element of the gastronomic tourism experience. With recent research suggesting food and wine tourism being connected to luxury, it is important to explore how gastronomic tourism experiences are marketed to create such perceptions and feelings of luxury. This chapter aims to understand marketing strategies that support luxury gastronomic tourism experiences. In contrast to the definition of luxury as a performance or a value, this research conceptualises luxury as an affect which is sensed and felt in gastronomic tourism experiences. How this conceptualisation translates into marketing practice is explored for a particular gastronomic region. An in-depth analysis of the website of a destination marketing organisation in the Hunter Valley gastronomic region of Australia shows that the gastronomic tourism experience is marketed as bucolic luxury using marketing strategies of connection, congregation and repetition, all of which channel and maintain the affect of bucolic luxury. The chapter contributes to the literature on luxury marketing in the tourism context by identifying marketing strategies that can augment the affect of luxury for the gastronomy tourist.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the vulnerability of individuals living with tri-morbidity and the complexity of care required to serve this patient group, moreover to consider how a life course approach may assist.

This paper uses a case study of a death of a young male adult experiencing homelessness and tri-morbidity in the UK and comparison of the mortality data for homeless adults in the UK with the general population. A synopsis of the mental health and health inclusion guidance for vulnerable adults is used.

This paper found the importance of considering a life course approach and the impact of negative life events on individuals living with tri-morbidity and also the role of specialist services to support the complex needs of vulnerable adults including the importance of multi-disciplinary working and holistic care.

The research implications of this study are to consider how individuals living with tri-morbidity fit in to evidence-based care.

The practical implication is to consider that those living with tri-morbidity have extra-ordinary lives often with a high concentration of negative life events. Therefore, an extra-ordinary approach to care maybe needed to ensure health inequalities are reduced.

This paper is an important case highlighting health inequalities, specifically mortality, in the homeless population.

This paper is an original piece of work, with real cases discussed but anonymised according to guidance on reporting death case reports.

This chapter reviews the conditions leading to the emergence of hybrid network structures involved in public service delivery, analyses opportunities for boundary-spanning by network members and frames these against different manifestations of leadership in such collaborative contexts. It addresses a gap in knowledge around leadership in hybrid networks, on the one hand, and around effectiveness of hybrid networks, on the other hand. Following an in-depth case-study of a hybrid network (local safeguarding children boards, LSCB) in England, UK, we advance a researchable proposition according to which, in turbulent times, the effectiveness of such networks is enhanced through one particular leadership type rather than others.

Sociology of sport in the United Kingdom is as old as the subdiscipline itself but was uniquely shaped by the prominence of football hooliganism as a major social issue in the 1970s and 1980s. While it remains a somewhat niche activity, the field has been stimulated by the growing cultural centrality of sport in UK society. This quantitative and qualitative development has been recognized in recent governmental evaluations of research expertise. Current research reflects this expanded range of social stratification and social issues in sport both domestically and on a global level, while the legacy of hooligan research is evident in the continuing concentration on studies of association football. Historically, this empirical research has largely been underpinned by figurational, Marxist/neo-Marxist, or feminist sociological theories, but there is now a greater emphasis on theoretical synthesis and exploration. As a consequence of the expansion of the field, allied to its empirical and theoretical diversity, there is a burgeoning literature produced by UK sociologists of sport that spans entry-level textbooks, research monographs, and the editorship of a significant number of specialist journals. The chapter concludes by noting the future prospects of the sociology of sport in the United Kingdom in relation to teaching, research, and relations with other sport-related subdisciplines and the sociological mainstream.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the decision process that the authors follow in applying mixed methods research to evaluate the benefits and costs of conducting sponsored clinical trials in a publicly funded New Zealand hospital.

A simultaneous parallel mixed method design was adopted. This design builds on a health outcomes study that involves a retrospective cohort study of changes in participants' health status and mortality rates. Although a team of medical researchers conducted that study (i.e. the current authors were not involved), it is one of the three strands of the current research as it forms the platform for the other two strands, namely the multiple stakeholder perception strand and the economic outcomes strand. In the multiple stakeholder perceptions strand, qualitative methods were used to explore the benefits and costs perceived by stakeholders. In the economic outcomes strand, quantitative methods were used to estimate the benefits and costs of clinical trials.

The economic outcomes strand and the multiple stakeholder perceptions strand are complementary. Each strand delivers dimensions to the analysis that are not apparent from the other.

The value of the paper lies in improved understanding of the process of mixed method research through communicating choices and decisions made in response to the challenges faced.