5 Cultural Intermediaries

Dr. Gigy J Alex

About the chapter:

It gives a brief understanding about Cultural Intermediaries, and its various manifestations in our daily life. By analyzing the definition given by Pierre Bourdieu, it then moves on to various explanations given by prominent thinkers and cultural experts,

The Global age which depends upon the consumer culture is closely linked to the transformations that happen in the sociocultural fields, especially in the areas of production, dissemination and consumption of values and statuses. The idea of cultural intermediaries introduced by the French theorist Pierre Bourdieu refers to “sets of occupations and workers involved in the production and circulation of symbolic goods and services in the context of an expanding cultural economy in postwar Western societies.”1 In this category, Bourdieu includes, “producers of cultural programmes on TV and radio or the critics of ‘quality’ newspapers and magazines and all the writer-journalist writers.”2 In this study we look at the term Cultural Intermediaries from a critical perspective, analysing its critical definitions, and how they are evolving in the changing economic and social scenario.

Cultural Intermediaries are crucially involved in the production and dissemination of culture using various platforms. Social media plays a great role in this regard, especially where the accessibility and reach have increased to any extent. That is why we have high culture, low culture, hybrid culture, consumer culture, etc where there is a wide spectrum of different varieties of culture before us. This happens because of the spread of information communications technologies.

1. Critical Definitions

Pierre Bourdieu in, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984) describes cultural intermediaries as “a group of taste makers and need merchants whose work is part and parcel of an economy that requires the production of consuming tastes and dispositions.”3 Though Bourdieu started discussing this concept from the position of shapers of taste and promoters of new consumer culture dispositions with definite cultural authority, they are doing an active role in the economic flow of the system whereby they influence the disposition of people as consumers of cultural products.

Keith Negus defines Cultural Intermediaries as a “special occupational grouping linking production to consumption,”4 and that which gives an understanding regarding how culture is affected by economic practices, by reconsidering the interrelationship between economic and cultural practices.

This is further explained by Michel Callon, the French sociologist and writer, who dealt with the market relations established by the cultural intermediaries. He looks at the proliferation of market and new forms of competition in the market. He speaks about the “economy of qualities” which is more concerned with the circulation (movement) of products rather than the fixity of goods. He further says that markets are highly reflexive and they are organised around the structuring mechanisms of singularization of goods and the attachment of goods to the consumers.

Arjun Appadurai speaks about this in a similar fashion, when he compares the consumers of the modern society and pre-modern societies. When the modern consumers popularised the idea of spending for fashion and for being trendy, their ancestors preferred to regulate their spending habits. He opines that it is the “taste making mechanisms” that regulate the flow of goods, and also that the demands and expectations of our society are regulated by “ “appropriateness” fashion”.6 This is very similar to yet another argument that he makes in another context “. . . consumption in the contemporary world is often a form of drudgery, part of the capitalist, civilizing process. Nevertheless, where there is consumption, there is pleasure, and where there is pleasure, there is agency. Freedom, on the other hand, is rather a more elusive commodity.”

Mike Featherstone introduces this idea in his article “Theories of Consumer Culture” while explaining post modern consumer culture. Consumer culture is based on the diffusion of capitalist commodity production that led to the material culture in the form of “consumer goods and sites for purchase and consumption.”8 The satisfaction based on the commodities is exponential to “socially structured access in a zero sum game in which satisfaction and status depend upon displaying and sustaining differences within conditions of inflation.”9 He looks at the emotional excitement behind consumption and the pleasure the consumers derived when they spend in the cultural economy.

2. How the Cultural Intermediaries Perform?

The cultural intermediaries create several cultural codes in the market by influencing the production of goods, creating new affinities in the consumers, offering new preferences and choices, and thereby deliberately affecting the culture and economy. They are in the lower strata of the cultural hierarchies of intellectual production, and they give an ambivalent response to authority figures. They who legitimized the ‘not-yet-legitimate arts’, produce objectified images of the petit-bourgeois culture’ are the PR experts/ popularisers of the world. They, without high valued cultural credentials, have looked at a small area of human interaction where there is a great popular interest. Another feature of cultural intermediaries is that they work on the concept of mass production, by concentrating on culture and economy. Though they are considered as agents without any intrinsic value, they bring back life and mirth to dull institutional competitions. They help in the transmission of new cultural products and new modes of life style.

3. Cultural Intermediaries in the Current Scenario

In the global scenario, where relationships are strongly linked to one’s sociocultural dealings, where a thorough change in class structure has happened, there emerged certain changing trends in our tastes, in fields related to advertising, marketing, public relations, etc. Cultural Intermediaries are those sections who have “lower levels of education than average individuals of higher class origin, but have more cultural and social capital than the average middle-class member.”10 In the changing social scenario certain significant changes are brought about by the people who are employed in the production, marketing and circulation of culture and taste and their symbolic forms and it directs attention towards the ambivalences in dealing with production and consumption. Cultural intermediaries can be located in the space between production and consumption. They are involved in making certain congenial settings so that people who wanted to be there in the scene will definitely adapt to the changing scenario.

4. Who are Cultural Intermediaries?

When Pierre Bourdieu introduced the term Cultural Intermediaries he was looking at, “The new petite bourgeoisie comes into its own in all the occupations involving presentation and representation (sales, marketing, advertising, public relations, fashion, decoration and so forth) and in all the institutions providing symbolic goods and services . . . and in cultural production and organization which has expanded considerably in recent years.11 Cultural Intermediaries act as the linking channel between “disaffected, educated, bohemian middle class and the upwardly mobile, newly educated working class.”

They come in between artists and consumers of art (producers and consumers). Instead of a single directional transmission model of cultural production, cultural intermediaries stress at the multidirectional responsive transmission of cultural production. It also stresses at the cultural influence on economic; by re-evaluating the economic and cultural practices. In this way, cultural intermediaries are involved in a symbolic production which will lead to the commodification of goods and values. Therefore symbolic production is very much important to the work of cultural intermediaries. It is very much evident in marketing strategies, advertising imageries and promotional techniques. They influence the ordinary people through persuasion, marketing and construction of markets. They link the consumer with the product by helping them to locate a sense of identity with the product.

In the changing scenario where the reach of media has increased anyone can be a cultural intermediary. If it is the film industry, the actor, the PR person, the fans association members, or even the media persons who interview or talk about the actor, or sometimes an ordinary film critic or someone who watch a particular movie by the actor, who is writing an appreciation about the actor can work as a cultural intermediary. Everything involves in the production, circulation and distribution of values and services.

5. How active and creative are the Cultural Intermediaries as Cultural Producers?

For instance, to introduce a new product, let’s say coffee, a cultural icon (film star or model in the fashion industry) will speak about the taste and smell of the coffee, how as a celebrity using the aromatic coffee, he/she starts the day. Thus the consumer or the spectator links the coffee with the actor. Thus the advertisement of Nescafe forces us to link coffee with Deepika Padukone, the actor/celebrity. Coffee becomes a cultural icon, again a shift from the culture of coffee houses to ‘drinking coffee’ with a touch of sensuousness, that too when a popular public image bolsters, will get extra thrust. With the creation of new products; new needs, new markets, new marketing strategies are evolved, and thus cultural intermediaries interfere in our daily life explaining us the significance of each and every new product in the market. For eg. In an age where the cell phones are not just a telecommunication medium, but they are for selfies. A phone without a selfie camera is not promoted much. Thus to understand the changing dynamics of contemporary capitalism in the global world, a study of cultural intermediaries is essential.

6. Strategies of inclusion and exclusion adopted by cultural intermediaries

The cultural significance associated with mediation in commodifying the values and goods privileges certain occupations where as ignores certain other professions. By prioritizing culture and values associated with the mediation process professionals associated with mass media, journalism, cinema, entertainment fields are all categorised as the ambassadors of cultural mediation, whereas engineers, technicians and people from other such occupations are sidelined. There is prioritization involved again in these categorizations. The academic positioning of cultural intermediaries guarantees privileged status to certain set of people and thereby disregard a certain other group of people who work for the same cause in disparate terms and conditions. People, who are involved in various categorizations of occupations like managers, corporate executives, business analysts, and accountants, are also actively involved in the process of cultural mediation. In order to understand the link between production and consumption, we should look at the overall activities involved in the economic policies and practices of the business analysts and how they are operated by the accountants or office people who are working in the company that hosts a show or organizes a band. There is an underlying tie that connects the artists, cultural curators, managers, executives, analysts and accountants in to the institutionalised structures of production.

Though we consider cultural intermediaries as the producers, the real producers, for instance in the case of artefacts and curios live in remote rural areas, or sometimes people who are employed in the assembly line production have to face troubling working conditions. The intermediaries (cultural) develop a complete denial of such hardcore realities during the transmission of cultural values and commodities. Thus they encourage the distancing “between themselves and industrial manufacturing, storage and shipment of the symbolic items that they have a stake in ‘mediating.’”13 Here cultural intermediaries are involved in the performance a paradoxical action of knowledge revealing and knowledge concealing. As knowledge revealers they are involved in the circulation of symbols, images, and values through different products and commodities. As concealers, the marketing and advertisement strategies employed by intermediaries conceal certain vital facts and sometimes distort certain sour truths. Cultural Intermediaries by making use of Public Relations work and other marketing strategies, instead of bridging the gap between production and consumption has created a veneer of bonding between production and consumption.

Jennifer Smith Maguire and Julian Matthews in The Cultural Intermediaries Reader identify five interconnected segments dissected by Bourdieu in his essay Distinction. They are:

6.1. New Economic and social relations

Bourdieu’s analysis of new economy and new class relations is based on his observations about changing needs of the consumers, which happened as a result of the expansion of a consumer economy over the last century. New Economy arises as a result of the shift from production based or manufacturing based economy to a service based economy. This is a period of excessive speculation, and an age of increasing use and dependence on internet, which is also known as dot-com bubble. The increasing use of computer and internet led to expanding connectivity between people which later helped in establishing new class relationships. The technology that is rapidly expanding forced the companies and marketing people to establish new pattern of relationships which will effectively consider their customer services. The service provider-client relationship became more trustworthy in the age of new economy.

6.2. Variety of Jobs

The professionalization of various jobs led to their changing status and various new professions emerged as a result of it. Especially in most of the unstructured occupations and various sectors of artistic and cultural productions (new petite bourgeois occupations), by employing new marketing and management strategies were able to capture the attention of the public. They created new occupations related to various fields that include “psychology, vocational guidance, speech therapy, beauty advice, marriage counselling, etc.”14These techniques worked as catalysts between producers and consumers. In marketing fields related to advertisement, T.V, Radio, Internet and social media, various strategies were adopted to increase the demands or needs of the people. They became the rulers of the economy by creating new life styles, new fashion statements, health mantras and a new attitude towards life, and marketed it efficiently. Thus the cultural intermediaries and the new occupations created by them created an anxiety among the non-users. As it is described in The Cultural Intermediaries Reader, “The new petite bourgeois occupations are closely aligned with their new bourgeois counterparts: they accomplish the objective orchestration between production and consumption not only because it is their paid work to do so, but also because in so doing they assuage subjective anxieties about class mobility. Thus the new occupations reproduce both the consumer economy and the class positions of their practitioners.”

6.3. Taste makers

The new occupations using various agencies help in recasting the tastes, and employ cultural intermediaries work as taste makers. As explained by Bourdieu, taste makers function as a link or a ‘match maker’ between the products and consumers of the new economy. They help in creating a sense of taste in the consumers, and develop an ‘ethical retooling’ and valorises spending than saving. Cultural Intermediaries, especially those employed in advertising media and fashion business create new products and come up with new meanings and they frame their products such that these goods and products will create a fallacy in the mind of the people that certain goods and commodities go with their taste and it is status symbol of these people to use or exhibit certain particular brand of products. The outlook and attitude of people are affected by popular and social media and various social institutions.

6.4. Expertise and Legitimacy

Cultural Intermediaries should get their role as taste makers approved and rectified by an expert and legitimate body. By legitimising taste they establish themselves as apostles of taste and people as consumers, are matched according to their tastes. Thus by giving new definitions and legitimacy to taste and culture, they are able to achieve a dominant status in the current scenario; thereby giving more preference to changing consuming habits and casual life style. Even job titles got a thorough change, where we have more reliable and more stable that culturally link with the contemporaneity is available. As the new middle class lack an authoritative voice, this new attire, definitely help them to remain, trendy and professional. The traditional job of a PA is titled as Confidential Assistant, Bar Attendee of a star Hotel is named as Senior Captain, and Copy Writer is termed as Content Developer. With this advance in the people’s taste and appreciation skills, legitimacy is given to several restricted cultural forms.

6.5. Cultural Investments

Thus cultural Intermediaries invest a lot in the cultural capital by improving the tastes of the petite bourgeois and providing them a legitimate status. The individual practitioners’, who can be marketing people, advertisements companies, PR people, or fashion experts, express their temperament in their investment. They gain their profit through their occupational resources which they invest in cultural industries.

7. Features of Cultural Intermediaries

They are the gatekeepers of culture and values. They decide the commodities to be promoted, values to be circulated, and objects to be valued. Negus speaks about them during his observations on the arguments highlighted by Ettemma and Whitney. “Gatekeeping” is a phenomenon involved in media and society to regulate the flow of information. Kurt Levin used it for the first time in 1947 to describe a wife or mother as the person who decides which foods end up on the family’s dinner table. The gatekeeper decides the entry of each category through various gates. Lewin applied it originally for food, later adopted the very same technique to speak about selection of various types of news by a broadcasting channel. This is explained by Charles Whitney and James Ettemma speaking about the relationship between authors and publishers, where editors will be the gatekeepers who decide upon which authors’ books to be published. This process that happens on the publishing industry is applicable in every area of a capitalist society.

The diffusion of lifestyle agents into the market and into the life and culture of people is promoted by the growth of cultural Intermediaries which helped in pushing forward the creative industries. Here advertisement business is the highest bidder in this business of cultural mediation. “Advertising is a creative industry with an explicit stake in creativity. Agencies have a very considerable investment in talking up creativity, and in their own mediating role between advertiser clients and consumer targets. From the agencies’ point of view, creativity is their product, understood in this context as the capacity to invest goods and services with cultural associations that give them meaning and value.

Summary

Cultural intermediaries are thus involved in the cultural production through the interlinking of agencies, power negotiations, and through contestations in the global market. And this is favourable only through the presence of certain congenial conditions that can help in the introduction of certain market practices and goods, through the authoritative voices of the cultural intermediaries who legitimate values and services. Thus cultural intermediaries are directly engaged with the consumers and their changing perceptions regarding services and goods. This resulted in the development of a new kind of market known as the social market. This is how cultural intermediaries got engaged in the production and distribution of different categories of cultures that bifurcate vertically and horizontally, depending upon the values and services associated with each cultural production. A cultural intermediary expert considers each and every day as potent resources of new scopes of cultural productions. Thus cultural intermediaries impose a new duty upon the discipline Cultural Studies. As an academic discipline it should concentrate on looking at the economic and political conditions of marketplace which are going to influence the interventions of cultural intermediaries. It helps in adding a heterogeneous texture to the discipline, whereby the discipline tends to be culturally linked and socioeconomically promising.

Though cultural intermediaries have evolved a lot, they are still undergoing changes and further permutations depending upon the changing demands of the consumers. It affects the production, consumption and economic status of the people and spread around a whole arena of fashion, music, lifestyle, media, fitness, journalism, clothing, publishing industry, food and beverages. Though the increasing manifestations of cultural intermediaries helped in erasing the racial or regional barriers, it could further lead to the spread of various new types of other class distinctions. The growth and evolution of cultural intermediaries and various developments associated with its proliferation can be understood by linking it with the growth of multinational companies, and other institutions. Along with this development in market space, various other changes occurred in the professional scenario, including gendered categorizations of work, the emergence of new products in the market, the emergence of new careers, changing aesthetics of the consumers, more choices with regard to goods and products, easy choices regarding purchase and payment. Thus the industries, market and common man’s perspective are revitalised when cultural intermediaries flourished.

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