Theorising cultural intermediation

Since Bourdieu (1984) introduced the concept of cultural intermediaries, a wealth of empirical studies have deployed and refined the concept (O’Brien et al, 2011; Maguire and Matthews, 2012). Here, theory development is blighted not by the definition of culture or cultural intermediaries per se, but by the remarkable breadth of areas to which the concept has been applied. To pick on just a few of these, studies of cultural intermediaries have examined: critics and commentators of literature and other cultural products (Mee and Dowling, 2003; Doane, 2009); lifestyle advocates and consultants (Sherman, 2011; Truninger, 2011); cocktail bartenders (Ocejo, 2012); ‘long-haired company freaks’ (Powers, 2012); retailers of ‘retro’ (Baker, 2012); diplomatic missions (Giry-Deloison, 2008); children of immigrants (Aitken, 2008); medical translators and paraprofessional ethnic health workers (Fuller, 1995; Esteva et al, 2006); advertising practitioners (Soar, 2002; John and Jackson, 2011; Gee and Jackson, 2012; Kobayashi, 2012); and public relations officials (L’Etang, 2006; Schoenberger-Orgad, 2011). In all these applications, the role played by the various agents can be seen to be in line with the early usage of cultural intermediary to designate ‘the ethnic diplomat’ (O’Brien et al, 2011). This understanding aligns with Bourdieu's own assertion that such actors are responsible for the ‘production of belief ‘ (Kuipers, 2011: 583) and are thus able to exert ‘a certain amount of cultural authority as shapers of taste and the inculcators of new consumerist dispositions’ (Nixon and du Gay, 2002: 497).

Insofar as such intermediated consumption results in more efficient and culturally ‘proper’ consumption of the respective cultural products, then the integrity of cultural intermediation is not impaired by the breadth of its empirical application. In all these uses, however, the underlying theme appears to be that cultural intermediaries facilitate the production, distribution and/or consumption of cultural products (which includes material cultural goods and services, as well as customs, behaviours and other cultural manifestations). The object of this chapter, then, is to reconceptualise cultural intermediaries and cultural intermediation around a ‘value-chain’ analysis that takes account of the different stages of production and consumption in which practices of cultural intermediation are involved.

Conceptualising cultural intermediaries and cultural intermediation

Apart from intermediating various stages of production, thereby linking producers and consumers of culture, it is often argued that it is their straddling between economic and socio-cultural roles that makes cultural intermediaries unique (Woo, 2012).