Keep Culture,Lose the Reductionism: Exploring Contemporary Cultural Spaces as Sites of Power Maintenance and Resistance

Personal Reflexive Statements

Erik T. Withers. My initial interest in social inequalities and cultural spaces began years ago when I worked in the beer/wine section of a large-scale grocery store in Chicago, IL. It did not take long before I noticed very prominent trends in how meanings of race, ethnicity, gender, and social class were woven throughout the expectations, narratives, and practices of the culture of fine wine and craft beer. These trends became even more apparent when I took a job as a wine/spirits wholesale sales representative. I saw how race, ethnicity, gender, and social class (most prominently) were such a big part of how the products of the industry are sold, marketed, and consumed. Most concerningly, I noticed how this is often done in ways that honor and glorify white, Anglo, upper-class, heteromasculinity and delegitimize nonwhite, non-Western, and underprivileged people and communities. I also noticed that I (a white, hetero, cisgender male) was often treated with more validity than my more accomplished counterparts of minority status, particularly women. I eventually took this area of inquiry with me into graduate school, and it became the topic of my dissertation. I hope this special issue serves to bring these topics even further along and serves to illustrate the ways that social inequalities persist and are challenged in the often taken for granted corners of life we occupy. Thank you to all involved (particularly the contributors) for this opportunity.

Manuel A. Ramirez. Growing up in a predominantly Latinx and immigrant community but attending predominantly white public schools across town, I learned early on about cultural reductionist arguments of skill and aptitude. Because I was a Cuban American man, some of my white peers stereotypically assumed I was talented only in some things, namely, playing baseball, rolling cigars, and participating in the drug trade. While I did take up baseball, for me and my neighborhood friends, the sport was about community-building just as much as it was about chasing dreams to uplift our families. Beyond the baseball field were more spaces where we celebrated our culture—panaderías, barberías, and in my case my mom's peluquería. There, we discussed improving ourselves, staying out of trouble, and reflected on why we were expected to be in trouble in the first place. Ironically, while school tried to tell me who I was and who I could be, it was my cultural surroundings that taught me the critical thinking skills necessary to push through. My research and activism are for my family, my friends, my community, and those who may not be around anymore, but who I carry around with me in my heart everywhere I go.

Scholarship on culture and social inequalities has had a turbulent past at best. One does not have to search long before coming across works which argue that marginalized groups face oppression because their culture is flawed. Arguments like these took a stronghold in the 1960s when works such as the Moynihan Report and Oscar Lewis’ “Culture of Poverty” thesis posited that poor Black, Mexican, and Puerto Rican communities were at fault for their own oppression because they were stuck in a tangle of flawed cultural practices. These arguments have informed policy and served as a foundation for many mainstream viewpoints today. However, they are inherently flawed for many reasons, for instance, they do not account for how culture works in ways that advance the interests of the social groups in power and also how culture can be used as a way to combat social inequalities.

Culturally reductionist arguments such as these are not behind us by any means. Take, for instance, Lawrence Mead’s (2020) since redacted argument that poor minority communities are impoverished because of their failure to adopt European individualized culture. And, the late University of North Carolina Wilmington Sociology and Criminology Professor Mike Adams who rose to mainstream fame by tweeting racist and sexist hate messages where (for instance) he Blamed Black male culture and Women’s and Gender studies programs for causing racism and sexism. Despite the past and present efforts of academics to pass off culturally reductionist and racist explanations of social inequality as objective science, we should not entirely dismiss the significance of culture and cultural spaces when studying social inequalities. Rather, culture can be thought of as a mechanism through which inequality is enforced, experienced, and dismantled. At the same time, spaces that are constructed in ways that privilege some and oppress others, such as schools (Lewis 2001), workplaces (Evans 2013), art museums (Embrick, Weffer, and Dómínguez 2019), and leisure spaces (Harrison 2013), are maintained through and reinforce dominant culture. Cultural spaces are arenas where the interests of those in power are advanced, navigated, and contested via material and nonmaterial forms of culture. Therefore, cultural spaces are important sites to interrogate the boundaries of social categories such as race, class, and gender and their corresponding power structures (e.g., white supremacy, neoliberal capitalism, patriarcy, colonialism, etc).

As we write this (summer 2020) the United Sates and world at large are under increasingly turbulent times. The COVID-19 virus has uprooted our sense of normalcy, and the future of our schools, jobs, and livelihoods are uncertain. The killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, in addition to numerous other white vigilante and police murders of Black and Latinx people has sparked a wave of widespread civil unrest and has strengthened one of the largest social movements of modern times (#BlackLivesMatter). There are large scale callings for the removal of public monuments that celebrate national figures with links to slavery and racism, defunding and abolishing the institution of policing, ending evictions, and canceling rent. Amid all of this turmoil, the U.S. president, almost daily, spreads highly contested, false, and divisive messages to the public (Barrett-Fox 2018; Finley and Esposito 2020). At the root of all these events are debates surrounding social inequalities, and all of these events are cultural in nature. Our worldviews, narratives, values, and the outlets that we get our information from all shape the way we navigate and experience these events.

In this introductory article to the special issue of Humanity & Society titled “Inequalities in Contemporary Cultural Spaces,” we explore the overarching research question: What can be learned about the connection between culture and social inequalities by exploring contemporary cultural spaces? This collection of articles offers evidence that shows how cultural spaces are arenas where culture works in ways that advances the interest of groups in power, offers a way for people to navigate their social positions, and provides means for social change. These works further illustrate some of the ways that culture affects how people experience and navigate their daily lives. We will first set out to address some of the recent ways that culture and inequality have been studied in tandem. We will then summarize some new trends in how culture and inequalities are being conceptualized together and will then end with a “road map” of the contributions provided in this special issue.

Past and Current Conceptualizations of Culture and Inequality

In the 1980s and 1990s, scholarship on culture and inequalities began to shift the attention away from culture as the cause of inequalities (Lewis/Moynahan) and toward investigations centered on the role that culture has in the social construction of inequalities. Works such as Swidler’s (1986) “Culture as Tool Kit” argument explored how culture is deployed by people as they construct “strategies of action.” This view of culture sees people as strategic actors, which contrasts earlier deterministic cultural arguments. Bourdieu’s work in the 1980s and 1990s shed insight on the ways that culture is socialized and embodied by people. To Bourdieu (1984), culture is converted into capital through the adoption of certain tastes, preferences, and dispositions. Bourdieu contended that inequalities are made to seem natural through the adoption and socialization of these ways of doing things that are only accessible to the affluent. And lastly, Michele Lamont’s work on social boundaries focused on the cultural mechanisms of the construction of boundaries (for a review, see Lamont and Molnar 2002). Works such as these contributed to how many scholars investigate the intersection of culture and inequalities today.

These past works have served as a springboard for much of the current scholarship on the topics of culture and inequality. There are many new trends in how these current works investigate the relationship between culture and inequalities; however, we will focus on three here due to their relevance to this special issue: space and place, embodiment, and performativity. Many current works use deep inquiries into how space and place reproduce inequalities. Spaces are usually thought of by social scientists as physical locations, and a space becomes a social place when cultural meanings are attached to it (Tuan 1977). Take, for instance, Sarah Mayorga-Gallo’s (2018) work on multiethnic neighborhoods and dog ownership where she finds that interactions among dog owners in public spaces serve to strengthen intraracial relationships and reinforce boundaries between interracial neighbors. Jessica Sherwood’s (2010) work on elite country clubs is another example of work on culture and space. Sherwood exposes how country clubs function as spaces where cultural capital and social networks are secured for white upper-class men. This is mostly done through shared discourses and ideologies among members in these spaces which she calls “the dominant inequality ideology” (p. 128). The study of space and place has also recently taken a digital turn where scholars have begun to investigate how inequalities are reproduced and challenged in online spaces. For instance, Graham and Smith’s (2016) work on #BlackTwitter shows how race can be challenged within online spaces, and Brunsma, Kim, and Chapman’s (2020) piece on online discussion boards dedicated to the band “Phish” exposes how white racial interests are advanced through interactions between fans in virtual forums. Works on space and place are increasingly important in showing how the seemingly innocuous places we occupy through our daily social lives can be sites of social inequality reproduction and contestation.

Another trend in recent work on culture and inequalities investigates how culture is embodied by people and inequalities are maintained through commonly understood ways of thinking, believing, and acting. Social inequalities persist through a set of racialized, gendered, and class-based tastes, preferences, and expectations that make oppressed groups appear as culturally deficient to groups in power. Furthermore, this “habitus” (Bourdieu 1984) is also practiced through dis-tastes where practices that are associated with oppressed groups become undesirable or discredited. The term “racial” or “white habitus” is a key concept from within this frame. The racial/white habitus can be understood as an embodied racial disposition that is the result of structural and cultural conditions (Perry 2012). Take, for instance, the work of Bonilla-Silva, Goar, and Embrick (2006), which argues that white’s racially segregated lifestyle, leads to a socialization process where they develop positive views of whites and negative views of racial others. This trend investigates how culture is embodied and practiced in ways that lead to the maintenance of social hierarchies and uncovers how culture and inequalities develop through the socialization process.

The last trend in current research that we will discuss here interrogates the performative nature of culture and sees inequalities as being achieved through the way we collectively “do” our social identities. Identities such as gender and sexualities are seen as in a constant state of production and in a sense always being “done” (West and Zimmerman 1987). This trend is generally focused on the deconstruction of privileged social categories (such as masculinity, heterosexuality, and whiteness) and interrogates the ways that identities such as these are always in a state of achievement and not the result of biology or social determinism. Another aspect of this frame is that minority groups are limited by the dominant group and are expected to perform in oppressive ways. Take, for instance, Darwin’s (2018) work on gender and craft beer. Darwin illustrates the “omnivorouseness of gender” and shows how men can maintain their masculinity by choosing a large variety of styles of craft beers to consume, while women must stick to only a limited selection of styles in order to perform in ways that coincide with commonly recognized forms of femininity. Works such as this offer ways to consider how social categories and identities are in a constant state of production and are a product of interaction and expectations.

These are only three trends in the current scholarship on culture and inequality, but we focus on them because of their relevance to the articles in this issue. Together these unique frameworks show how the construction, reproduction, and maintenance of culture is a nuanced process that interacts with inequalities in a number of ways.

Layout of the Issue

In this issue, we offer a snapshot of the current state of how culture and inequalities are being investigated in tandem. Combined, these pieces of scholarship capture a glimpse into the multitude of ways that people experience and navigate inequalities in their daily lives. In “Unapologetic Blackness in Action: Black Celebrities, Cultural Spaces, and Embodied Resistance,” Shaonta Allen and Brittney Miles examine how Black celebrity activism in digital spaces challenges existing racial power structures. The authors find that unapologetic Blackness as a tactic of embodied resistance can mobilize anti-racist politics within online spaces and promote social movement building within sites of popular culture. Allen and Miles’ work shows that online spaces, including those focused on popular culture and entertainment, can be important sites of resistance which continue a legacy of anti-racist activism among Black celebrities. Allen and Miles' article contributes to our understanding of how Black people deploy mechanisms of resistance within the very sites of popular culture production (e.g., social media) that often suppress their voices and visibility.

The next set of articles explore how racialized minority groups use cultural spaces to contest social inequalities. Juan Jose Bustamante and Alejandro Gradilla’s article illustrates how lowrider culture and artistic expression among Chicana/os can serve as a cultural and spatial mechanism of resistance against cultural exclusion from white art spaces. Bustamante and Gradilla find that their participants challenge cultural and institutional exclusion by building cultural narratives and spaces dedicated to a lowrider aesthetic. With “Set Trippin’: An Intersectional Examination of Gender Dynamics among Gang Members,” Lea Marzo examines the experiences of Black women gang members in San Diego, California. Marzo maintains that gang culture can act as a form of resistance against the patriarchal, racist, and economic structural violence that Black women experience. Gang membership, identity, and culture provided avenues for Marzo’s participants to challenge social inequalities within their communities. Marzo finds that hypersegregation, lack of employment and education opportunities, and insufficient mental health resources leads to a shared “Black extraordinary adolescent trauma” that bonds gang members who develop tools to navigate the structural violence they are forced to experience.

The final set of articles, “Gendered Expectations, Gatekeeping, and Consumption in Craft Beer Spaces” and “Minimum Wage Connoisseurship,” show how consumer culture offers arenas where existing inequalities surrounding social class and gender are experienced in new ways. Maggie Nanney, Nathaniel G. Chapman, J. Slade Lellock, and Julie Mikles-Schluterman show how cultural consumption practices in male-dominated arenas such as craft beer culture can reinforce gender inequality by privileging the knowledge and experiences of men while invalidating the knowledge and experiences of women. The authors find that spaces within American craft beer culture maintain elitist constructions, hegemonic forms of masculinity, and exclusionary practices against women. Brian Ott finds that spaces within the specialty coffee industry promote “minimum wage connoisseurship,” in that workers’ minimum wage is supplemented with cultural and social capital. Ott argues that although workers receive some benefits from becoming cultural gatekeepers to an extent, this phenomenon ultimately benefits the economic interests of the specialty coffee industry at the expense of its workers.

Going far beyond cultural reductionist arguments and expanding on current trends in the study of culture and inequality, the contributors to this special issue explore the nuance of contemporary cultural spaces to illustrate some of the ways power can be reproduced or challenged within cultural spaces. As social scientists, we must not ignore the significance of culture and cultural spaces. Contemporary cultural spaces hold the capacity to advance the interest of dominant groups while also holding the potential for resistance. With this in mind, social scientists can push the trajectory of social science research away from the reductionist and racist perspectives that are still all too present and toward building a humanist science dedicated to eradicating social ills.