1
BLUETHROAT MANUSCRIPT REVIEW HISTORY
MANUSCRIPT (ROUND 1)
Abstract
The advent of the Web makes a mass audience available to ordinary consumers. We offer a
theoretical account of the process of audience acquisition in terms of the accumulation of cultural
capital via public displays of taste. The paper focuses on fashion bloggers who acquire an
audience by iterated displays of aesthetic discrimination applied to the selection and combination
of clothing. This exercise of taste produces economic and social rewards for these bloggers. We
situate fashion blogging as one instance of a larger phenomenon that includes online reviews and
user-generated content, and extends to the consumption of food and home décor as well as
clothing. Throughout, the paper discusses how these instances of online consumer behavior can
be used to extend Consumer Culture Theory beyond a focus on the authentication of identity in
communities defined against the mainstream.
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
2
A new kind of consumer behavior has emerged online in the past decade. The Web has
made available to ordinary consumers the capacity to reach a mass audience, to ‘grab hold of the
megaphone’, to adapt Bourdieu’s (1999) metaphor. Courtesy of the Web, more consumers have
more opportunities to reach thousands of other consumers than ever before. This novel
phenomenon has not yet received much theoretical attention, in part because it does not readily
fit existing frameworks within Consumer Culture Theory (Arnould and Thompson 2005). We
develop Bourdieu’s idea of cultural capital to explain what some consumers have begun to do on
the Web and to show how CCT can be stretched to encompass what is happening online.
THE MEGAPHONE
Fashion blogs are an example of the Web phenomenon to be explained. Among the first
fashion bloggers to grab the megaphone was a 13 year old girl (Rosman 2009). By 2010 this
blogger had been profiled in the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, and other publications, and
her blog posts were read by tens of thousands. This blogger got hold of the megaphone by means
of her actions—not by birth or through institutional position. We document ten other fashion
bloggers, ordinary consumers all, who also built a sizable audience for their blogs, and argue that
a theory of cultural capital, suitably revised and updated to reflect possibilities inherent in online
consumer behavior, can provide an explanation for their success.
The phenomenon is not limited to the fashion context. Chocolate and Zucchini is a food
blog whose author was not trained as a chef and did not work for a food magazine prior to
starting the blog; she was employed in the computer field. Currently her posts may receive over
100,000 views. Tight Ass Little Apartment is a blog about interior design and home decoration.
This blogger was not trained in design or employed as a designer prior to starting the blog.
The phenomenon is not limited to blogging. Yelp.com, a site that hosts reviews of local
businesses, especially restaurants, each year deems some of its most active reviewers to be Yelp
Elite. A multi-year member of the Elite may post hundreds of restaurant reviews, receive
thousands of compliments, and be read by tens of thousands, without ever having owned a
restaurant, worked for a food publication, or been a chef. These online reviewers have got hold
of the megaphone, no less than the bloggers discussed earlier. Nor is the phenomenon limited to
blogging or online review sites. ‘User generated content’ on YouTube and elsewhere, such as
haul videos (Smith, Fischer and Yongjian 2011), also provides ordinary consumers opportunities
to grab the megaphone (Burgess and Green 2009; Snickers and Vonderau 2009).
On the other hand, blogs aren’t always written by consumers and need not concern
consumption, and online behavior consists of much else besides consumers grabbing hold of the
megaphone: social media, content that goes viral, avatars in virtual worlds, and so forth all
represent phenomena beyond the remit of this paper (Boellstorff 2008; Jenkins 2006; Miller
2011). The megaphone phenomenon, as treated here, is specific: it occurs when ordinary
consumers, lacking professional experience and not occupying an institutional position, post to
the Web about consumption, and acquire a mass audience for these posts.
All of the examples given represent consumer behavior. The blog posts, reviews, and
user-generated content of interest are primarily concerned with consumption objects: fashion,
food, home décor. Consumer bloggers achieve an audience that historically was only available to
institutionally located professionals (McCracken 1986), but they achieve this audience by means
of publicly consuming: choosing, evaluating, and engaging with clothing (in our focal example),
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
3
or with food and decor, and posting accounts of this consumption that garner a large audience of
strangers.
This new consumer phenomenon, made possible by the Web, is under-motivated from the
standpoint of existing theory. During the period studied, anyone who wished to share their
thoughts with others could do so on Facebook or other social media sites. Hence, when an
individual chooses instead to generate content for a mass audience of strangers, the phenomenon
can’t be understood as sharing (Belk 2010). Moreover, the fashion bloggers studied generally
don’t display clothes they sewed by hand, or authentic crafts, but mass-marketed, branded goods;
likewise, food bloggers do not only show meals cooked from scratch, and online reviewers do
not only write about craft breweries, artisan bakeries, and the like. Hence, the phenomenon can’t
readily be understood as prosumption (Campbell 2005). One could label the phenomenon
electronic word of mouth and call these bloggers opinion leaders or market mavens (Kozinets et
al. 2010; Feick and Price 1987), but this obscures what is new and different about their consumer
behavior: ongoing communication by ordinary consumers to a mass audience of strangers.
The megaphone phenomenon also does not square with Consumer Culture Theory as
typically pursued. Here a central tendency has been to focus on marginalized or liminal
consumers: for example, users of herbal and homeopathic medicine (Thompson 2004), rave
attendees (Goulding et al. 2009), fans of indie film and music (Arsel and Thompson 2011), or
attendees at the Burning Man festival (Kozinets 2002). A unifying theme in such CCT work has
been how marginalized consumers pursue an identity project defined in opposition to mainstream
society (Thomas, Schau and Price 2011). In the prototypical CCT study, consumers are shown to
resist the hegemony of marketplace meanings and to seek authentication of their identity within
an alternative community (Arnould and Price 2000; Arsel and Thompson 2011). Everyday and
widely accepted marketplace meanings, as these operate in a mainstream setting, have been
neglected, as have relationships among strangers occurring outside the boundaries of a shared
community.
Online consumer behavior, specifically the democratization of the megaphone, is ideally
situated to provide an expanded perspective on consumer culture. The democratization of the
megaphone is a process whereby ordinary consumers achieve success as conventionally defined
in mainstream society. The successful bloggers we studied are not marginalized, do not define
themselves in opposition to the mainstream, and are not committed to resisting marketplace
meanings. They break in to the fashion system rather than breaking free of it. Moreover, these
bloggers achieve success in terms of strangers—they gain an audience rather than affiliate with a
community. Finally, because the megaphone phenomenon involves the social prominence of
select individuals relative to masses of other consumers, it allows for a more sociological
theorization than is typically seen in ethnographically focused CCT research.
CULTURAL CAPITAL: ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT
The idea of cultural capital predates online consumer behavior by decades. Bourdieu
developed it “in the early sixties to account for the fact that, after controlling for economic
position and social origin, students from more cultured families not only have higher rates of
academic success but exhibit different modes and patterns of cultural consumption and
expression in a wide gamut of domains” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 160). Because we are
adapting the idea of cultural capital to study online consumer behavior, we begin with an account
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
4
of its original meaning, in the Parisian society of the 1960s studied by Bourdieu, and then trace
its subsequent evolution in Bourdieu’s own work and later in consumer research.
Origins of Cultural Capital
Let Alain and Jean attend the same preparatory school, and let Alain’s father be a
professional while Jean’s father owns an engineering business. Let their family income be
identical, and likewise, their fathers’ level of educational attainment (although the degrees
received may be different). Assume each grows up in a large apartment in a well-regarded
Parisian neighborhood. In terms of conventional indicators, Alain and Jean would therefore be
on a par with respect to socio-economic status. Bourdieu’s contribution was to note the potential
significance of one key difference: suppose further that Alain grew up surrounded by paintings
and sculpture, and had a piano in the house, on which he had to learn to play classical pieces,
while in Jean’s case, money was spent instead on furnishings and high end appliances, and the
music heard was popular songs on a phonograph.
Bourdieu’s thesis was that Alain would grow up endowed with a greater amount of
cultural capital, and that this difference in cultural capital would give Alain an advantage over
Jean in multiple social contexts. Because of the centrality of aesthetic judgment in the French
elite schools of that era (Bourdieu 1988, 1996), his endowment would lead to better performance
in prep school for Alain, admission to a more prestigious degree program at the next level, and a
head start for Alain in acquiring a high socioeconomic position for himself. Alain’s trajectory
would in turn be enhanced by his capacity to exercise the sort of taste in cultural activities
expected and respected among fellow Parisians who already held a high socioeconomic position.
We take cultural capital back to its origins to develop how problematic this idea becomes
once it is separated from its original context (Lamont 1992). An objection raised early in the
diffusion of Bourdieu’s ideas was that cultural capital might only be meaningful within a
possibly unique milieu: Parisian society, with its emphasis on high culture in schooling, and the
particular kind of social stratification seen in France 50 years ago. Evidence was not long in
coming that American schools did not reward familiarity with high culture or art objects in the
same way, nor did cultural knowledge appear to be so crucial to social preferment in American
or British contexts (Halle 1993; Lamont 1992; see Goldthorpe 2007 and Silva and Warde 2010
for British accounts).
For consumer researchers, this critique of the insularity of cultural capital was checked by
Holt (1998), whose contribution was to detach cultural capital from high culture and art objects
in general. Holt focused not on differences in what objects were owned, or on consumption of art
per se, but on how consumers with different social backgrounds would consume the same
product categories differently, in accordance with their differing amounts of cultural capital. Holt
supported his account of cultural capital by sampling and interviewing two groups of individuals
in a college town, selected such that education and occupation, own and father’s, was relatively
high or low. Consumption styles and preferences of the high group were then attributed to the
possession of ample cultural capital, while the different styles and preferences in the low group
were traced to its lack. Holt’s methodology of distinguishing high from low levels of cultural
capital by sampling from different social positions was subsequently followed by Berger and
Ward (2010), Bernthal, Crockett and Rose (2005), Henry (2005), and Üstüner and Holt (2010).
Unfortunately, using Holt’s sampling procedure, both Alain and Jean would have to be
scored as ‘high cultural capital’ consumers—in direct contradiction of the Bourdieusian account
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
5
given earlier. To measure cultural capital by sampling different social positions is to risk
collapsing the separation divined by Bourdieu: that cultural capital represents something other
than social and economic position. It is therefore possible that the particulars of Holt’s (1998)
account of how cultural capital shapes consumption in America (as, for instance, the concern
among HCC for authenticity over abundance, and their disdain for mass-marketed brands) reflect
the tastes of a particular group, rather than issuing from high levels of cultural capital per se.
Cultural Capital and Habitus
A difficulty shared by both Bourdieu’s original account and by Holt (1998) is that what is
described is not so much different levels of cultural capital, as the word ‘capital’ is
conventionally used, but differences in cultural endowment. Alain essentially inherits his cultural
resources through his family, while Jean is sunk from the start—he was born into the wrong
family, as were Holt’s LCC. Conceptualized as an endowment, cultural capital becomes difficult
to distinguish from ‘to the manner born’: a summary label for all the differences in taste and
preference associated with higher versus lower social positions. This endowment
conceptualization can’t be used to explain how a young fashion blogger, who in the beginning
lacks economic and social position, grabs hold of the megaphone.
The endowment character of Bourdieu’s initial conceptualization of cultural capital is
captured in his term ‘habitus’, which reflects dispositions instilled from birth in the course of
growing up in a particular kind of family occupying a specific social location. When cultural
capital is treated as an endowment, habitus and capital become theoretically and ontologically
inseparable. One’s habitus reflects the particular capital structure—cultural, economic, and
other—of the family in which one was raised, and one’s trajectory since. Under Bourdieu’s
account of habitus, if one didn’t grow up surrounded by paintings reflecting a sophisticated
appreciation of art, one can’t ever relate to paintings and to other instances of elite culture with
the same ease and savoir faire as another consumer that did enjoy those advantages of birth.
If cultural capital is the outward manifestation of a habitus, it is difficult to see how it can
illuminate Web 2.0 phenomena. We highlight this gap to unfreeze ideas about Bourdieu’s
contribution. It is not at all clear how cultural endowment could be an explanatory factor for
fashion bloggers who rise from obscurity to prominence in a matter of a few months; or for
online reviewers who become recognized as Elite and read by a mass audience; or any of the
other instances in which the Web allows ordinary consumers to command the megaphone. We
next show how Bourdieu responded to criticisms levied against this originally static conception
of cultural capital, and how scholars such as Thornton (1996) and Arsel and Thompson (2011)
have built on this revised conceptualization to study instances of contemporary consumption
outside the kind of social stratification seen in the Parisian context.
Field-Specific Capital
In response to criticisms of its static character (Lamont 1992; Schatzki 1996), Bourdieu’s
thinking gradually evolved away from a reliance on the concept of habitus toward a reliance on
field, and a conception of field-specific capital (Swartz 1997). In turn, his thinking became less
focused on social position within society as a whole, and more concerned with how individuals
maintained or advanced their position within specific fields. Bourdieu had been criticized early
on for unduly proliferating the number of capitals: “in addition to economic, cultural, and
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
6
symbolic capital, we have linguistic capital, social capital, academic capital, scholastic capital,
credentialed cultural capital, capitals of authority and consecration, university, scientific and
artistic capital … As the number of capitals increases, the metaphorical currency undergoes
inflation and its value declines accordingly” (DiMaggio 1979, 1468-1469). Perhaps in response,
Bourdieu gradually ceased to speak of ‘cultural’ capital, or of any type of capital, replacing these
with either ‘specific capital’ or ‘[name of field] capital’ (Bourdieu 1998, 1999, 2008).
As we read the follow-on literature, this later evolution in Bourdieu’s thinking has not
been fully incorporated in consumer research. Instead, the convention has been to quote
definitions from Bourdieu’s earlier taxonomic essay (Bourdieu [1983] 1986). Here Bourdieu
attempted to fix the number of capital types at three (economic, social, and cultural) and divided
cultural capital into three subtypes (institutionalized, objectified, and embodied), with only the
latter mapping onto the earlier endowment usage—what Alain possessed and Jean did not. The
extent to which this neat categorization was set aside by Bourdieu in subsequent work has gone
largely unrecognized. However, Bourdieu’s evolution away from his earlier positions is crucial
for rethinking cultural capital in the context of Web 2.0 and the democratization of the
megaphone.
The emerging and more dynamic conception of field-specific capital can be seen in this
later account (Bourdeu and Wacquant 1992): “A capital does not exist and function except in
relation to a field ... We can … compare a field to a game … [and] picture each player having in
front of her a pile of tokens of different colors, each color corresponding to a given species of
capital … players can play to increase or conserve their capital … A species of capital is what is
efficacious in a given field, both as a weapon and as a stake of struggle, that which allows its
possessors to wield a power, an influence, and thus to exist … instead of being considered a
negligible quantity” (98-101). Here there emerges a conception of capital that could explain why
some bloggers are able to grab the megaphone and acquire a mass audience: in the later
Bourdieu, a consumer can put her tokens at risk to amass more. Capital can be invested and
accumulated.
The key change that marks the later Bourdieu’s thinking is that field-specific capital can
now be approached as both input and output: ‘as a weapon and as a stake of struggle’. This
evolution has the effect of rejuvenating the money metaphor underlying references to ‘capital’.
One of the factors that distinguish money from some other kinds of resources is that it can be
invested to generate more of itself, with the amount of money returned a function of the risks
taken. In the struggle for economic position, money can serve as both the weapon used and the
stakes at issue. The later Bourdieu makes it possible to consider whether there exist other kinds
of resources that are not money, but that can behave like money. Cultural capital would then
point to a resource, having something to do with cultural matters, which can be used as a weapon
to win a struggle, and also awarded as the stakes to those winning that struggle. Bourdieu’s later
work thus moves away from a static account in terms of capital endowment. Habitus drops out of
the picture, except to explain initial endowments of capital, endowments whose amount can now
increase drastically after one embarks on the struggle for the stakes available within a particular
field.
Cultural capital can’t any longer mean growing up surrounded by paintings and a piano—
except in the specific fields of art and music, where cultural capital gives a name to the fieldspecific capital effective there. But what is it, then? A partial solution to this conundrum can be
found in research by Thornton (1996) on dance clubs and Arsel and Thompson (2011) on
alternative music (see also Goulding et al. 2009). In place of field-specific capital, Thornton
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
7
introduces the idea of sub-cultural capital, and gives as an example DJs working the club scene.
These DJs’ subcultural capital is not a function of any kind of habitus—as a youth scene, dance
clubs are positioned in opposition to participants’ birth and upbringing. Although Thornton
makes it clear that subcultural capital is not an endowment but something that club DJs amass,
she does not explain how individual DJs go about acquiring this capital.
Arsel and Thompson (2011) are likewise concerned with hipness and the alternative or
independent music scene. Their innovation is the concept of field-dependent cultural capital. The
particular struggle in which the participants in Arsel and Thompson (2011) are engaged is a
contest for authenticity and for the protection of their identity investments in the alternative
music field, investments perceived as under a devaluing assault from a commercialized
mythology of the hipster. Thornton (1996) had similarly seen subcultural capital as a resource for
authentication, achieved by clubbers via differentiation from a despised (and fictive) mainstream.
For these authors, cultural capital becomes a resource for drawing boundaries that include
desired people and objects and exclude shunned or scorned others (Lamont 1992).
A limitation, from the standpoint of attempts to understand how some fashion bloggers
grab the megaphone, is that Arsel and Thompson (2011), like Thornton (1996), are primarily
concerned with the outcomes of possessing a stock of subcultural or field-dependent capital. As
they unpack the history of individuals’ acquisition of it in the indie field, cultural capital is
shown to be acquired as a concomitant of institutional position, or as a secondary consequence of
acquiring social capital. For example, ‘Debbie’ and ‘Amy’ acquire their cultural capital as a
result of working at a radio station, or as an agent booking bands. Their institutional position
increases the number of social connections each has to members of the local community who
share a taste for this particular kind of music. Cultural capital is gained not by some action
undertaken or personal capacity developed, but because taste becomes increasingly calibrated to
those of others in the indie community as an individual acquires a high degree of social capital
there. It would appear that anyone holding the same institutional position (booking agent, DJ,
etc.) or possessing the same level of acquired social capital would perforce have the same level
of cultural capital. To that extent, cultural capital again disappears as a distinct theoretical
construct; in acquisition and outcome it becomes indistinguishable from institutional position
and social connections within the indie community.
Dynamic Cultural Capital
To summarize, recent work in consumer research that uses Bourdeusian ideas has severed
the link between cultural capital and habitus. Family and inherited social position cease to be the
source of cultural capital, which becomes something acquired rather than something endowed.
Despite this detachment from habitus, in current accounts such as Arsel and Thompson (2011),
cultural capital remains a passively acquired concomitant of something else. There is still no
evidence that an individual can amass cultural capital except indirectly, by obtaining some social
position; nor have specific practices been identified by means of which cultural capital can be
directly increased. This is the theoretical opportunity that fashion blogging represents, in
company with other instances of the democratization of the megaphone.
The discursive practices whereby that megaphone is got hold of are the focus of the
empirical portion of the paper. Here is an example from a blog post:
Found the perfect gray socks while shopping at Uniqlo in Tokyo with my mom/favorite
shopping partner (she's always down to stop randomly to eat and shares my love for
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
8
finding wearable things in unlikely places). Vaguely sheer and just the right length. This
sounds extremely trivial, and sort of is, but I've been looking for something like them
forever now (FT 05/12/10).
The problem to be explained is how this post came to be read by over 30,000 people. This
blogger began as an ordinary consumer holding no industry position and without privileged
access to the fashion system by way of family connection. In the space of two years she broke
into the fashion system and now enjoys economic and social rewards not available to ordinary
consumers (Table 1). Our thesis is that this fashion blogger accomplished this trajectory by an
iterative process of investing cultural capital, which she repeatedly put at risk by exercising and
public displaying her taste in clothing.
FROM TASTE TO CAPITAL
Taste
We propose that public displays of taste judgments are the currency in which cultural
capital is accumulated. Courtesy of the Web, today any individual consumer can attempt to
amass cultural capital by exercising and displaying taste. What makes online consumer behavior
relevant to theorizing cultural capital is the opportunity the Web provides to display one’s taste
to a potentially large audience, and by virtue of the audience gained, to increase one’s capital,
and thus one’s capacity to invest further in taste judgments. Taste judgments, and the means to
display them publicly, thus offer a solution to the problem of evolving the idea of cultural capital
beyond a passive formulation in terms of endowment or institutional position. Taste judgments
do not require family, an institutional position, or a pre-existing stock of social connections, nor
is any of these required to make a Web posting.
Consumer research generally, and CCT specifically, is no stranger to the concept of taste
(Bayley 1991; Falk 1994; Gans 1999; Gronow 1997; Holt 1998; Johnston and Bauman 2010;
Lynes [1955] 1980). But past treatments of taste have been such as to obscure the potential
connection between taste and a dynamic model of cultural capital. Following Holt (1998), taste
in American consumption has been primarily treated as a means to affiliate with a group and to
signal that identification. The focus has been on the formation of taste communities, rather than
an individual’s exertion of taste leadership. As Arsel and Thompson (2011) put it, consumers
learn to calibrate their tastes to a field, community or group with which they identify. Likewise
in Holt (1998), members of the social elite find one another and recognize one another based on
their shared tastes (e.g., for movie directors), even as non-elite and elite members are repelled
from one another by their differences in taste (regarding a $22 couch purchase). This is taste as
preference rather than taste as judgment power and aesthetic discrimination, as developed in
Gronow (1997). It is the difference between taste as a device for affiliation, versus taste as a
standard for discriminating the laudable from the pedestrian.
One reason that these two senses of taste have not been teased apart in past consumer
research is that Bourdieu’s own work encompasses both meanings of taste, as seen in this oftcited remark, reproduced in Arsel and Thompson (2011): “Taste classifies, and it classifies the
classifier. Social subjects, classified by their classifications, distinguish themselves by the
distinctions they make” (Bourdieu 1984, 6). As we read him, Bourdieu deliberately plays on the
two meanings of ‘distinction’, here and throughout Distinction, making this word refer
sometimes to difference and boundary while at other times pointing to elevation and prestige.
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
9
The double meaning of distinction corresponds to the double meaning of taste. Taste can be used
to draw boundaries, as in ‘do you like what I like?’ But taste can also function as a claim of and
a denial of status, as in “he has a lot of taste … all of it bad” (Bayley 1991, 77).
To keep the two meanings straight, we will refer to distinction-between versus
distinction-over. Taste as distinction-between draws boundaries, creates groups, and fosters
solidarity. It is local in its operation and acts to cluster like-minded individuals and sequester
them from others with different tastes. Taste as distinction-over asserts preferment, claims status
for one above others, and sustains hierarchy. It operates at the societal level and can raise select
individuals to positions of prominence. Rather than grouping individuals together into an Us
apart from a Them, taste as distinction-over elevates select individuals over the mass.
Bourdieu’s key insight as a consumption theorist was that taste in goods reflects and
shapes diverse social arrangements. Bourdieu’s limitation, for our purposes, is that his detailed
accounts of taste typically emphasize inherited dispositions deployed within a relatively fixed
and traditional social hierarchy. His work encompasses but does not focus on the difference
between taste as preference and taste as judgment, and does not clearly separate taste
communities from taste leadership. Prior accounts in consumer research have successfully
imported Bourdieu’s account of taste aimed at distinction-between, and developed how taste can
be pressed into service as a boundary marker between groups, providing a basis for affiliation
and community. The opportunity presented by online consumer behavior is the occasion it
provides to look at taste in the service of distinction-over, taste as an agent of social mobility,
taste as a resource for climbing a hierarchy. It is taste that enables some fashion bloggers to grab
the megaphone and it is taste that they deploy to amplify its volume.
Consider again the post on gray socks quoted earlier. Choosing to display those gray
socks is neither here nor there as far as taste as distinction-between is concerned. These gray
socks are not a badge of group membership. Likewise, the socks are not a marker or signal
inviting affiliation with other marginalized individuals over against a fictive mainstream. It is not
the display of gray socks on a fashion blog, but selection of a particular brand, length, and
opacity of gray socks to display—and choosing to pair them with leather shorts—that constitutes
a display of taste leadership. And this display can be recognized as taste leadership because it
attracts and holds a large mainstream audience.
Capital Accumulation
A theory of capital accumulation via the exercise and display of taste can now be
outlined. The possibility of such an accumulation, and thus the theory itself, is conditioned on the
availability of the Web. First, let taste as judgment power be variably distributed across
individuals, such that some individuals start out with a good deal more of it. Prior to the Web,
this greater judgment power possessed by some individuals could only be leveraged by those
who were already endowed with social position. One couldn’t obtain fashion clothing, or the
means to display one’s taste beyond the circle of one’s intimates, unless one also possessed
family wealth or some kind institutional position. Prior to the Web the fashion system, whether
in clothing, food, or home decor, was largely closed to ordinary consumers.
The theory next assumes that to gain an audience, and the greater the better, is an
outcome highly valued by large numbers of ordinary consumers. Prior to the Web, it was not
possible for an ordinary individual to gain access to the megaphone; but the Web would not have
changed behavior if ordinary consumers’ desire for audience was not already present. This
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
10
desire for audience has not been in the forefront of past explorations of consumer behavior,
which have tended to emphasize identity commitments, authenticity, and community (Arnould
and Thompson 2005). The desire for audience is manifest in people’s urge to thrust their face in
front of the tv camera at sporting events and other public places, or to wave wildly to attract the
camera. Likewise, the success of reality TV shows rest on the plentiful supply of individuals
who will do almost anything to enjoy a mass audience. Finally, as a valued good, once any kind
of audience is gained, behaviors that maintain that audience will be positively reinforced.
Given these assumptions, the core of the theory is that cultural capital can be
accumulated by iterated public displays of taste that are favorably received, i.e., which draw,
hold and grow an audience. The factor that elevates the successful blogger is her taste, her
greater degree of judgment power (Gronow 1997). Specifically, her aesthetic judgment in the
realm of clothing is both good and adventurous. It is good judgment insofar as an indefinitely
large number of other consumers, if exposed to a picture of exactly those gray socks worn
exactly that way with just that kind of leather shorts, will viscerally respond, ‘that looks good’
and ‘that looks right’. With the aid of the Web, such a display of taste can now win her an
audience. In turn, that favorable response will increase her capacity to exercise taste, and
encourage her to invest in further displays of it.
But the taste display has to be adventurous as well. As Bourdieu (1984, 91-92)
recognized, there is an element of bluff in taste leadership—it demands a certain kind of flair.
Any catalog picture will show attractive people wearing nice looking clothes correctly combined.
But fashion is not a matter of right or wrong according to an explicit and ascertainable
standard—fashion is not a dress code (Bayley 1991; Gronow 1997). Fashion doesn’t stand still,
so that in general, repeating what has already been done cannot secure attributions of
‘fashionable’, ‘stylish’ or ‘pleasing’, nor can staying within the confines of established selections
and combinations of clothing. To be received as a taste leader, and accumulate capital, the
blogger must take risks.
Consider the post reproduced in Figure 1, from a different blog. The picture is captioned:
“Everything I’m wearing is Vintage, except the Doc Martens. Those babies are fakes, and now
the black plastic is peeling away, which I kind of love.” This is not a claim of authenticity, but
rather a claim to be tasteful, in the form of a risky choice. Who knew that peeling plastic fakes
could look good, look right—be fashionable?
----------------------------------Figure 1 about here
----------------------------------Further insight into what is going on in this post comes from the recognition that
‘Vintage’ is not a stray capitalization error, but the name of a brand of clothing which, according
to the manufacturer’s web site, “is a premier streetwear brand that was born out of the free
thinking and creative spirit of the underground music and art cultures … [designed for] lyrical
wordsmiths, crate digging-vinyl loving deejays … fed up with the mediocre mainstream brands
from malls and major department stores.” The Vintage clothing brand, then, lays claim to the
heritage of the club, hipster or indie culture studied by Thornton (1996) and Arsel and Thompson
(2011), with which (real) Doc Martens shoes are also associated. But this blogger isn’t affiliating
with that community—certainly not by wearing peeling plastic fake Doc Martens. Nor is she
demythologizing some identity being thrust on her. Rather, she lays claim to a distinctive
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
11
personal style. She takes a risk, and invites her audience to make a judgment in response: “how
does this look?” She exercises taste and makes a display of it for public consumption.
The definition of what may be judged tasteful, right now, in any concrete instance, is
always radically incomplete; it is not something ‘that can be learned in school‘, to use
Thornton‘s (1996, 13) formulation. Rather, audience members with a passion for fashion
clothing know taste when they see it. Hence, each taste display by the blogger represents a risk.
The blog is an ongoing performance that could bomb at any time (Deighton 1992). That is why,
when successful, fashion blogging can be considered a form of taste leadership. The blogger isn’t
calibrating her tastes to an espoused community, as in Arsel and Thompson (2011), but further
developing the capacity for aesthetic discrimination in fashion clothing with which she began.
The element of risk also supports the description of these iterated taste displays as a
process of capital accumulation. It is because the blogger takes risks, and is judged tasteful more
often than not, that she may be said to accumulate cultural capital beyond what she started with.
Taste as judgment power can’t be learned in school, but it can be developed through repeated
exercise. A blogger accumulates cultural capital insofar as she succeeds again and again in being
judged fashionable, and as a result, develops more and more capacity to take fashion risks and
succeed. Per the metaphor of Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992), once a poker player has amassed a
large pile of chips she can play differently than one who has got only a small stake.
In what follows we document the accumulation of cultural capital in fashion blogging by
a text analysis of ten blogs. In light of the dynamic model of cultural capital introduced above,
the primary focus is on bloggers’ trajectories: the practices whereby these individuals
transitioned from being ordinary consumers to successful bloggers reaching a mass audience. A
secondary focus is on how the operation of cultural capital in fashion blogging differs from that
described in prior consumer research (Arsel and Thompson 2011; Holt 1998; Thornton 1996).
DOCUMENTATION
Blog Sampling
In October 2011 blogpulse.com estimated there were over 170 million blogs worldwide,
with 100,000 being added per day. Likewise, the blog tracking site Technorati.com indicates that
a majority of internet users read one or more blogs (Winn 2009). This is the sense in which the
advent of blogging makes a mass audience potentially available to ordinary consumers.
We sought out fashion blogs that had achieved a sizable audience, relying on seven
sources that purported to measure the top fashion blogs by audience (note to Table 1). Among
the selection criteria were that each blog had to be written by a consumer as a personal blog; thus
corporate, brand, or retail blogs were eliminated. In addition, the blogs had to be written by
amateur consumer bloggers only; in this way, we eliminated free-lance photographers’ and
journalists’ blogs that were used as a type of resume to troll for work. The initial cut left us with
27 blogs that appeared most often in the seven sources. Next, we eliminated blogs that were not
written by women, as women’s and men’s blogs were quite different, and blogs that were not
originally written in English, as translated blogs might not capture the original word choice and
nuance of the blogger. Finally, we excluded the single most famous young fashion blogger
(Rosman 2009), as possibly idiosyncratic. This yielded a final sample of ten blogs (Table 1).
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
12
----------------------------------Table 1 about here
----------------------------------Blog Analysis
We conducted an analysis of the discursive practices visible in these blogs (Fairclough
2003; Schatzki 1996; Schau, Muniz and Arnould 2009; Warde 2005), with an emphasis on
practices where taste was asserted and displayed. The method is historical, inasmuch as we treat
blog posts as primary sources, and examine their development over time (Sewell 2005). This
text analysis differs from netnography in that it does not apply an ethnographic frame (Kozinets
2007, 2009). It corresponds instead to a neglected element within the fourth theme in Consumer
Culture Theory, associated by Arnould and Thompson (2005, 875) with the analysis of literary
texts and aesthetic objects (McQuarrie and Mick 1996; Scott 1994). Because the focus of the
paper is on the process whereby a consumer gains a mass audience, and because the blogger’s
posts are the proximal source of the audience gained, the practices visible in bloggers’ posts,
especially those in which taste in clothing is asserted or displayed, constitute the evidence base.
Two of the authors independently analyzed published blogger posts and follower
comments for each blog (‘follower’ is an Internet term of art and is not meant to imply any
theory of leadership: www.google.com/support/blogger /bin/answer.py?answer=104226). Both
the images and the words of current posts were examined for taste practices. That is, what did the
bloggers choose to discuss and not discuss? What kinds of words and phrases were used and
avoided? What was the content and style of the pictures displayed? Each blog was studied until
the researchers felt they had a good understanding of the characteristic practices of the blog; this
usually entailed studying 20 to 40 current posts. The researchers also analyzed every comment
sent in by followers of the blog to the current posts; on average, between 40 and 200 comments
were attached to each current post. Practices in these comments were examined, and also the
blogger’s practices in responding to comments.
The next step in the data analysis was to go back to the blogger’s original posts at the
inception of the blog. Each blog contained archives of every post, so we returned to the very
beginning of each blog and again examined 20 to 40 archived posts, noting differences and
similarities in early versus later blogging practices. The comments to these posts were also
examined, but they were much fewer in number (between 0 and 50). The third step was to
examine posts in the “middle” of the blog – those situated at a time between the first and current
posts. If blogs had been running for more than two years (Table 1), we sampled posts and
comments from multiple periods in the middle of the blog in order to get a sense of its
progression over time. The final analysis focused on marketing efforts and examined the
practices the blogger used to discuss marketing tactics and comments from followers in response.
Quotes from this sampled content are provided verbatim, so many lack proper spelling and
punctuation; quotes are labeled with the blog source (i.e., abbreviated blog code from Table 1)
and date of publication.
BLOGGERS’ TRAJECTORY
Initial Position
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
13
Table 1 documents the initial position of the ten bloggers who were studied in depth for
this research. All began blogging as ordinary consumers outside of the fashion system described
by McCracken (1986). None was a former insider or fashion professional; there were no exmagazine writers, ex-designers, or the like, and no family connections to the fashion system were
uncovered. At the outset, none of these fashion bloggers held an institutional position analogous
to the DJs, booking agents, and musicians studied in Thornton (1996) or Arsel and Thompson
(2011). Hence, with respect to economic, social, and institutional position, at the time of launch
these ten individuals appear indistinguishable from the millions of other consumers who make up
the market for fashion clothing.
Early posts confirm the impression of an ordinary consumer using the blog as an online
journal for personal disclosure, as described in some of the initial scholarship on blogging
(Hodkinson 2007; Kretz and de Valk 2010; Reed 2009).
just got home from teddys, decided to not go to the after party, we had a great night as it
is. me, z and deb went, paparazzi snapped pictures of us all night long...they are so
clueless… the gastineau girls were chillin at a table by themselves, still a foreign concept
that the mom and daughter party together. random other models and celebs partied really
hard… cant help but love la! time for bed as hollywood continues to party (BIA
03/25/07).
This post, with its casual focus and lack of attention to spelling and punctuation, describing a
night on the town with friends, would pass unnoticed on Facebook or any other social media site.
This is important in that it emphasizes the under-motivated character of fashion blogging:
anything that can be posted on a blog could have been posted on one’s personal page at a social
media site. The key difference is that with a blog, one can potentially reach an indefinitely large
audience of strangers.
However, evidence that these bloggers may never have intended their blog to be only a
personal journal online can be found in the titles (Table 1), which are rhetorically stylized and
replete with complex, allusive forms of wordplay : ‘Fashion Toast’, ‘Style Bubble’, ‘Childhood
Flames’. Wordplay is a device used by mass advertisers to attract consumers by means of
aesthetic appeal (McQuarrie and Mick 1996). We infer that these bloggers constructed
rhetoricized blog titles to accomplish the same goal.
Transition to Taste Practices
Posts to these ten blogs soon cease to resemble private social media posts aimed at
friends and begin to transition toward public displays of taste. Sometimes taste is visually
presented, as in the Frassy post reproduced in Figure 1; in other cases, taste judgments are
offered verbally:
Surely the only reason to like Laquan Smith is his work. I have to say from his previous
collections his New York Fashion Week debut has really stepped it up a gear and with
these beautifully sculpted underwater-inspired designs, notes of McQueen and
Balenciaga vaguely resonate in a collection that looks to be supremely sleek, finished
superbly as well as showing a clear amount of ambition… I personally think NYFW
could do with even more unique voices in addition to the city's 'new gen' that is currently
being galvanised by the likes of the Mac x Milk initiative (SB 04/12/10).
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
14
Holt (1998, 15) describes the rendering of such taste judgments as connoisseurship,
defined as: “the development of finely grained vocabularies to tease out ever more detailed
nuances within a category, the expression of opinionated and often eclectic evaluations of
alternatives, and the ability to engage in passionate appreciation of consumption objects meeting
one’s calculus of “quality” within a category.” Multiple elements of Holt’s definition are
recognizable in the Style Bubble post, including finely grained vocabularies (“sculpted
underwater-inspired designs”), opinionated and eclectic evaluations (“stepped it up a gear,”
“more unique voices in addition to the city’s new gen”), and passionate appreciation (“supremely
sleek, finished superbly”). This blog post asserts a strong point of view regarding what is, and
what is not, fashionable: an assertion of taste. Thus, the blogger risks her credibility by
celebrating this designer over other possible candidates. Such claims of taste can be displayed by
posting about any topic germane to the fashion world, such as opinions on specific fashion
products (e.g., feathered shorts, cross-shaped rings), viewpoints on particular brands, designers,
collections, models, and retailers, and also commentary on conventional media outlets, such as
Vogue, and even other fashion blogs. A large portion of the verbal content of these fashion blogs
ultimately takes this form.
It does not appear that this blogger is attempting to build a community of like-minded
individuals by naming one designer rather than another. This is in contrast to the participants in
Arsel and Thompson (2011), who want to like what others in the indie community like, and who
thus calibrate rather than assert their tastes. Fashion blog posts follow a different path, with many
examples of distinction-over: assertions that this is fashionable, this is tasteful, this looks right.
This is also in contrast to Holt (1998), where only those holding a pre-established social and
economic position could perform as connoisseurs. Rather, in fashion blogging we find
individuals exercising connoisseurship in the course of a trajectory toward an economic and
social position that was lacking when they began. Here it appears that aesthetically
discriminating taste judgments lead to an advantageous social position, rather than a privileged
social position producing a particular kind of taste judgment.
The maturation of these blogs over time is visible in a second respect. Just as bloggers
begin by sharing moments in their personal life, in the style of an online journal, early in the blog
they also adopt a dialogic stance or community orientation toward those who browse the blog.
Initially the blogger is thrilled to receive comments and answers questions and suggestions with
her own comments, or in her next post, as this example from Fashion Toast illustrates:
Thank you so much for all the kind words and congratulations! I'm going to answer all
the questions in that post today, just want to make sure I address them well. One of you
mentioned that headbands/scarves would be fun and it inspired me to dig up one of my
favorite vintage silk scarves today. Kind of adds a more boho element to the leather skirt
(FT 02/25/08).
Seeming eager to please, bloggers will ask their followers what they would like to see on the
blog. Likewise, early in their trajectory bloggers will also provide all sorts of personal
information in response to questions, such as weight, height, and ethnicity, and tell where to find
specific fashion items.
The early interaction between blogger and follower, then, is consistent with the treatment
of virtual communities in Mathwick, Wiertz and de Ruyter (2007), who conceptualize
computerized discussion forums as sites for the accumulation of social capital. This is defined in
Putnam’s (1995) terms, as a collective possession from which all may benefit, and not in terms
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
15
of Bourdieu‘s (1986) definition of social capital, as connections an individual can use to gain
preferment. Mathwick et al. (2007) go on to show how norms of reciprocity play a key role in
producing collective social capital within an online community.
Fashion bloggers begin in the same vein, behaving as if the blog were a collective good
from which all can benefit through the accumulation of information about fashion clothing, and
where all can take a hand in shaping the content that appears on the blog. Initially, then, the blog
proceeds as if a virtual community was going to be constructed, with a norm of reciprocity, per
Mathwick et al. (2007), and with the blogger acting simply as one participant among others. But
this complex of behaviors soon disappears as the blogger begins to build an audience.
As her audience grows larger, the blogger’s behavior changes. She stops interacting with
her followers. She avoids answering specific questions, ignores suggestions for posts, and
refuses to address issues raised in comments. Interestingly, this doesn’t bring the growth in
audience numbers to a halt. In fact, we observe follower comments to become more uniformly
positive as the blogger ignores her followers more and more. As bloggers gain autonomy from
their followers’ desires and wishes, they appear to be perceived as more tasteful and more
worthy of an audience.
An important contribution of early research on online consumer behavior was to establish
the existence and reality of virtual communities (Muniz and O’Guinn 2000; Rheingold 2000;
Schau and Gilly 2003). It has even been argued that “community is the true ‘killer app’ of
cyberspace” (Jarrett 2003, 339). However, this analysis of fashion blogging suggests that
community is not the only thing that consumers seek online. The bloggers studied didn’t affiliate
with or construct a community—they built an audience.
Why might a consumer choose to join an audience rather than a community? Perhaps
access to taste leadership is valued no less than community. What bloggers offer is not a badge
of group membership or instruction in sending appropriate identity signals, but an exemplar of
taste. Bloggers are engaged in an enterprise of distinction-over: in their posts they show forth a
combination of clothing, a look, a style, that may never have occurred to the consumer reading
the blog, but which nonetheless strikes her favorably. Bloggers establish themselves as among
the better sort—leaders, not fellow members of a community. This taste leadership may be what
makes a blog valuable to other consumers.
We observed a third transition as blogs developed over time. From the beginning, these
individuals were oriented toward fashion clothing, much of which is expensive or hard to obtain.
This creates a problem: how can an ordinary consumer display taste by selecting and combining
garments when these items cost far more than an ordinary consumer can afford, if she can obtain
them at all? A solution to this dilemma, and arguably a key factor enabling fashion blogging to
flourish, was provided by Polyvore.com. This website provides software that allows anyone to
put together different outfits, using real fashion clothing and accessories for sale in stores, by
capturing images posted anywhere on the web. Thus, in the beginning, a blogger of little means
can showcase her taste and aesthetic discrimination by her selection of specific items from a vast
marketplace of fashion goods. Bloggers in our sample “borrowed” fashion pictures from
hundreds of brand web sites for free at the inception of their blogs to create fashion wish lists and
to allow them to comment on the latest styles and runway shows.
As time goes on, however, this ‘curator’ role is not enough to satisfy followers, who seem
to prefer to see the blogger as a tastemaker—someone who can actively execute her own style
rather than passively selecting and combining others’ styles. Thus, all of the bloggers in our
study, save one, progressed from curating others’ pictures to taking pictures of themselves
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
16
modeling a unique look (Figure 2). This self-modeling receives high praise from followers.
Conversely Knight Cat, the one blogger who never reveals her own image, shows the cost of
remaining in a curator role. Knight Cat did not achieve the number of followers of some other
blogs, and the blogger has not become an industry insider to the same extent. She has third-party
paid advertising on her site, but does not receive the invitations, free clothing, sponsorships,
designing opportunities, or publicity of the other nine blogs (Table 1). Her refusal to move from
curator to model, by not showing her followers how she styles herself, appears to limit her
success in the fashion blogging field, in spite of her very frequent and well-regarded posts.
----------------------------------Figure 2 about here
----------------------------------We interpret the transition from curating to modeling as evidence that what blog
followers seek, and what bloggers provide, is exemplars of taste. Taste in clothing can’t be fully
grasped and appreciated on the rack, as it were, but only when clothing is worn—taste is of the
body (Falk 1994). When worn by a person, clothing becomes a look, a style, an exhibition of
taste; splayed out on a web page, it may just be clothes. Bayley (1991, 143) notes that “We think
of our clothes as we think of our bodies: more so than other possessions, they are an extension of
our self” (Belk 1988). This suggests that one can’t really judge the tastefulness of clothing
choices until these clothes are seen on (some) body. Bloggers’ urge to make taste displays, and
followers’ demands for taste leadership, drives these bloggers from curating to modeling.
Once the transition to modeling is made, the taste imperative drives a further progression
in the imagery presented on these blogs. In the beginning, the photos of themselves posted by
bloggers appear similar to snapshots that ordinary consumers have shared among themselves
since long before the advent of social media. Eventually, the bloggers train themselves or their
friends to take professional-looking photographs of themselves as models. Part of the growing
professionalism of the blogger’s pictures comes from better training and equipment, but much
comes from reflecting on and consciously copying the poses and settings found in traditional
fashion magazine ads. For example, Figure 3 shows the changing style of images on Karla’s
Closet. On the left is a typical image from earlier in the blog which shows a series of small,
blurry cropped pictures of the blogger modeling her clothing choices. On the right is an image
from a later post; the photograph is large, clear and well-lit, taken at a closer range, and conveys
both clothing detail and setting. This progression in image quality and style is common across
the blogs we examined.
----------------------------------Figure 3 about here
----------------------------------This progression can be viewed as the logical consequence of a commitment to aesthetic
discrimination. Aesthetically pleasing clothes can’t look their best unless effectively
photographed. As soon as the blogger begins to be photographed modeling clothes, she must deal
with the visual and aesthetic vocabularies already established by the fashion system in which
both she and her followers are culturally situated. This forces a professionalization of the
imagery shown on the blog, both in terms of the caliber of the photography and in the staging of
shots. At the same time, the blogger is accumulating cultural capital, which enhances her ability
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
17
to make aesthetic discriminations, and amplifies the demand for photography that can support the
increasing sophistication of her displays of taste.
Blogger Outcomes
Both economic and social rewards accrued for these fashion bloggers (Table 1).
Economic rewards include gifts of luxury fashion merchandise, gifts of branded fashion clothing,
paid ad placements on the fashion blog, and paid sponsorship of their blog contests. Other paid
assignments included modeling branded clothing, designing clothes and accessories, and writing.
Their social position improves as they receive invitations to exclusive parties, runway shows,
designer open-houses, charity appearances, and mentions in the media. In short, by the time we
studied them, these bloggers had gained a role within the larger fashion system unavailable to an
ordinary consumer, no matter how involved she may be with fashion clothing.
McCracken (1986) describes the fashion system as composed of the designers and
manufacturers of fashion clothing and accessories, the magazines that promote such clothing in
editorials and advertising, and the social elite, especially celebrities, who engage in the vast
public relations machine of television and movie roles, special event appearances, and talk-show
and gossip magazine placements. These are the traditional, professional sources that govern the
determination of what is fashionable, also recognized by Bourdieu (Rocamora 2002). Bloggers
succeed in joining this system—they do not establish an alternative community on its margins.
Bloggers do not attempt to escape this marketplace through a commitment to prosumption, nor
do they do eschew mass-marketed, branded merchandise or the promotional system that
surrounds such merchandise.
A hallmark of any Bourdeusian capital is that it can be exchanged for other forms of
capital. It is precisely the fact that fashion bloggers begin with neither economic nor social
position, while ultimately attaining both, that allows us to attribute their success to the
accumulation of cultural capital. Making public displays of taste won these bloggers an audience.
This positive response to their initial displays of taste stimulated bloggers to develop their taste
further. They did this by taking risks and making taste ventures, while also upgrading their
presentation of taste judgments. These developments iteratively produced a positive response in
terms of a larger audience and a more favorable audience reaction (Figure 4).
----------------------------------Figure 4 about here
----------------------------------As their audience continues to grow, bloggers come to the attention of the promotional
element in the fashion system, which sends economic resources their way, in terms of gifts of
merchandise, money for ad placements, and so forth. These resources, which fuel further taste
ventures, act to increase the blogger’s audience, which maintains the flow of resources, thus
setting up a positive feedback loop. As their audience grows, bloggers also gain access to more
and more prominent insiders within the fashion system, which lends bloggers more prominence,
which again maintains or enhances the size of their audience among ordinary consumers, while
also reinforcing the audience’s perception that the blogger is a taste leader. This favorable
audience response leads to more invitations to participate in the fashion system, again setting up
a positive feedback loop. The two feedback loops cross over and reinforce one another by means
of the blogger’s attained audience. Having and growing an audience makes bloggers valuable to
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
18
marketers and to fashion insiders alike, and the interest of both acts to enhance her audience size
and its approbation for her, which recharges each of the feedback loops (Figure 4).
Countless ordinary consumers, highly involved with fashion, dream of such success, but
it is unavailable to all but a few. It is poignant to read this very early post from one of the
bloggers:
I’ve always loved fashion, I like to dream big, so I thought why not just put it out there?
Here’s some of my wildest fashion dreams:
1. Walk a runway during fashion week. I dunno, I always wanted to be a model, hence
maybe why I take tons of pictures of myself! …
2. Hang with the big kids. Joe Zee seems like a nice and cool guy, maybe we could
collaborate? Anna Wintour wants to have lunch? Sure! I can be there!! (I have a couple
of ideas for her anyway).
3. Style an Editorial. We’re still in dreamland, right? …
4. Launch my own fashion line with funding. And a production team to oversee it all
coming together. And show at fashion week. And then be on the front page of Women’s
Wear Daily (WIW 05/06/09).
Collectively, across the ten bloggers (with the exception of the magazine front cover), these
dreams were realized. What marked out these individuals for this success was their taste in
clothing, their willingness to risk public display of that taste, and their commitment to taste
ventures that further developed that taste. Blogging allowed them to accumulate cultural capital
from the small seed with which they began, which was simply their ability to make aesthetic
discriminations that were judged suitable by, and sufficiently novel to be of interest to, a mass
audience of other consumers. Taste as judgment power fueled these bloggers’ success.
MAINTAINING AN AUDIENCE
Misrecognition of Boundaries
Having gained an audience, bloggers are motivated to hold on to it. In this respect, the
bloggers we studied had an initial advantage over Vogue and other institutionally sanctioned
fashion outlets on the web that also compete for audience attention. Since clothing is an
extension of the self (Bayley 1991), believable taste in clothing requires that the blog follower,
an ordinary consumer, be able to see herself in the taste displays she encounters on the Web.
This may not be possible when the clothes are worn by a supermodel in a setting impossible for
that ordinary consumer to attain. By contrast, a blog follower can look at the taste display of
another ordinary consumer, such as the bloggers studied, and believe ‘I could look good in that’.
However, once a blogger gains a mass audience, and enjoys access to the fashion system,
she is no longer truly an ordinary consumer. This poses a threat of loss of audience, and hence
of her newly gained position. One possible solution would be for bloggers, after they achieve
some degree of success, and begin to cease to be ordinary consumers, to actively misrecognize
their changed status, and engage in practices that deny the existence of boundaries that would
separate them from followers. We observed two discursive practices that fit this description:
feigning similarity and self-deprecation. These are labeled in figure 4 as relationship practices.
Feigning similarity. Bloggers feign similarity with their followers by referring to
mundane and ordinary aspects of their lives that downplay the glamour and rarity of being a
fashion insider, with its special access and privileges. Here, for example, the blogger complains
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
19
about her small closet while posting about her attendance at London’s Fashion Week and the
‘gifting’ of clothes to her by designers:
I leave for Fashion Week on Thursday. I am so excited to be back on The
Strand...probably stumbling all over the place on the impossibly unpredictable
cobblestones of Somerset House. Also looking forward to seeing some of the most
inspiring people I know. And best yet, I have some exciting clothes coming my way …
So I hope to see you there!
By the WAY: Have you noticed the size of my wardrobe in these photos?! Have you seen
how painfully SMALL it is? About a quarter of my clothes fit in there, the rest are folded
in piles that are forever circling my room: from my desk, to the floor...and I have even
resorted to under my bed. It is a distressing situation! … One day I'll have the walk-in
wardrobe that I actually have vivid dreams about at night (F 02/14/10).
Note how the blogger says she hopes to see her followers at Fashion Week, even though the
event is attended by invitation only. In this way, she maintains similarity with her followers by
deliberately misrecognizing their inability to join her at the event.
Self-deprecation. A related practice, which again serves to make the blogger appear less
distant, is to express self-deprecation and self-ridicule, and to downplay accomplishments. For
example, in the Frassy post (above), the blogger states that she will be stumbling all over the
cobblestones, implying that she cannot walk in high heels. The blogger at Style Bubble uses a
similar tactic when posting about attending the opening of a new Louis Vuitton store:
Art aside, question on my mind was whether the store is 'homely' enough (well I'm going
by Marino's cue and translating ‘Maison’ quite literally...) to go in and browse, as I do
with say Dover Street Market, without feeling like a freaky fraud - like I do when I go
into a lot of Bond Street stores... or actually a lot of LV stores (SB 05/28/10).
This self-deprecating language suggests she is not sure she actually belongs at these stores, and
allows her to maintain distinction-over (I am invited to preview luxury brands) while denying
any distinction-between herself and followers (I feel nervous shopping at upscale stores, same as
you).
In this next example the blogger insults her own appearance during an announcement of
her involvement in premier fashion events:
Already looking a lil' haggard … I've been running around like a chicken with its head
cut off the last couple of days- finishing projects for school and finalizing plans for
Fashion Week … Anyway, I'll be in New York from the 12th-16th, attending shows and
Chictopia's Social Influence Summit as well as the IFB's Evolving Influence Conference.
Hope you see some of you there! (CF 2/11/10).
This post exhibits self-deprecation (“looking haggard”) and feigns similarity (“see you there”).
In summary, we infer that followers perceived the fashion bloggers to be just like them,
only luckier. Unlike the unobtainable, unapproachable supermodels, socialites, or celebrities in
fashion magazines, bloggers were real people in the consumer’s own world, virtually displaying
how to wear fashionable items using themselves as models. This perceived similarity creates the
illusion that a consumer can trade places with a blogger at any time, fueling both heady fantasies
of seamlessly becoming a fashion insider and also cementing the connection to the blogger. In
the aggregate, this response helps to maintain an audience for the blog, and maintaining a sizable
audience is the linchpin of these bloggers’ access to the fashion system.
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
20
The self-deprecating language that appears in bloggers’ posts may concern physical
characteristics, bad habits, or embarrassing moments, but such deprecation never ventures into
the realm of fashion. Bloggers do not ridicule their own taste in clothing. A blogger might say
she has a small closet, but she would never say she doesn’t know what to pair together from her
closet. A blogger might say she stumbles in high heels, but she would never say she had trouble
figuring out which brand and color of heels to buy. Self-deprecation and feigning similarity
emerge as strategic practices that misrecognize the blogger’s actual social position vis-a-vis her
followers.
What is theoretically interesting about the strategic practices of feigned similarity and
self-deprecation is that these are used by fashion bloggers to deny boundaries and misrecognize
distinction-over. This contrasts with past discussions of cultural capital, in which taste is
exercised to exclude others and to enforce distinction-between. As discussed earlier, in Arsel and
Thompson (2011) individuals who had acquired cultural capital through their institutional roles
in the independent music community were able to use this resource to reject unwanted
identifications—to draw and maintain boundaries to protect their distinction-between (‘I am not
that media caricature of a hipster’). Similarly, in Thornton (1996) subcultural capital functions as
a resource for drawing boundaries (Lamont 1992); that is, for determining who is an authentic
participant in the club scene and who is a wannabe from the scorned mainstream. By contrast,
bloggers’ cultural capital issues from their success in drawing and holding an audience, and
continued success in that endeavor requires misrecognition of the boundaries that separate
blogger from follower. Fashion blogging thus reveals how cultural capital can operate in
unsuspected ways to efface rather than enforce boundaries.
Although misrecognition of social position is a central idea in Bourdieu’s own work
(Bourdieu 1991), in his examples misrecognition typically takes the form of substitution-up, as
when a student in the Paris of Bourdieu’s day (and his examiner) misrecognizes his exam
performance as due to intellectual merit, rather than to a mere affinity of shared tastes and social
background (see the extensive analysis of the entrance exam essays used to select students for
elite schools in Bourdieu [1996]). Fashion bloggers show the reverse form of misrecognition, a
kind of substitution-down, in which they deny their factually privileged position relative to
followers. The motivated misrecognition of boundaries by fashion bloggers provides another
instance of how online consumer behavior provides a fertile setting for working with and
extending Bourdieu’s ideas.
Authenticity
Authenticity has been extensively investigated in cultural sociology as well as consumer
research (see chapter 2 in Johnston and Baumann [2010] for an integrative review). As a rule,
authenticity is sought in the uncommon and in opposition to the mainstream (Thornton 1996).
Thus Holt (1998) defines a quest for authenticity as avoidance of market-constructed meanings,
along with resistance to mass culture and attempts to mask or disguise its influence (Beverland
and Farrelly 2009; Campbell 2005; Rose and Wood 2005). Holt (1998) further asserts that a
strong concern with authenticity in consumption is a sign of high cultural capital, such as when
HCC consumers drink microbrewery beer or shop at small artisanal retailers. Arsel and
Thompson (2011) similarly find that greater amounts of cultural capital make demythologization
more effective and facilitate rejection of meanings imposed by mainstream culture so that the
authenticity of one’s consumption choices can be maintained.
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
21
In this vein, prior consumer research on blogging had found the incorporation of
commercial products—the kind of mass-marketed brands routinely supplied to bloggers for
promotional purposes—to undermine a blogger’s success by rendering the blog inauthentic in the
eyes of followers (Kozinets et al. 2010). By contrast, we did not find followers to demand
authenticity of fashion bloggers. Each fashion blog is the site of many commercial messages and
each photo is captioned with a list of all the brands worn. Many different brands are endorsed in
each post, including retailers and online shopping sites; most of these brands are well-known,
mainstream fashion brands, rather than artisanal or craft brands. Often, the items displayed on
the blog are sponsored or gifted by fashion manufacturers, as freely admitted by bloggers. Yet
we could find only a handful of negative comments by followers concerning overt marketing
efforts, across all blogs and all posts examined, and across the multi-year period. Instead,
followers’ comments are typically strongly positive, such as this comment posted to Fashion
Toast regarding a ring that was “gifted” by a jewelry designer looking for publicity:
You are so stylish and I love your blog and I don't begrudge you any of the freebies
you receive! I can only imagine the time and effort you put into this blog - you
deserve all the good things that come your way... Plus I enjoy looking at you wearing
the shiny new things! (FT 05/18/10).
One reason why the commercialization rampant on these fashion blogs does not produce
the jarring effect found by Kozinets et al. (2010) may have to do with the nature of women’s
fashion clothing—a category that is highly involving to consumers (Phillips and McQuarrie
2010). Authenticity may well be more important when a blog is all about the blogger, her person,
her true self; intrusion of marketing efforts then becomes a transgression, as Kozinets et al.
(2010) found. Fashion blogs instead represent a display of taste, and fashion products and their
brands are intrinsic rather than extrinsic to the taste asserted. The appearance of free gifts on the
blogs becomes a ratification of the blogger’s taste leadership, not a violation of trust.
Another reason may be the effectiveness of the misrecognition practiced by the blogger.
If a follower is living vicariously through a consecrated blogger (Bourdieu 1991), then the
blogger’s receipt of invitations, gifts and deals simply reinforces this consecration. That is,
unusual privileges and a bounty of gifts serve to confirm the blogger’s taste leadership.
Consumers accept all sorts of overt marketing in these blogs without scorning any lack or loss of
authenticity. This is consistent with the idea that mainstream taste leadership, and not
authentication of an oppositional identity, defines what fashion bloggers offer.
The contrast between the practices of fashion bloggers, understood as cultural capitalists,
and the concern for authenticity attributed to HCC consumers in Holt (1998) and in Arsel and
Thompson (2011) and Thornton (1996), calls into question any intrinsic association between
cultural capital and such practices as resistance to marketplace meanings and disdain for massmarketed brands. Rather than being a hallmark of possession of large amounts of cultural capital,
a commitment to microbreweries, craft brands, artisans, independent film, alternative music, and
so forth may only constitute a taste cluster—not taste leadership. Bloggers, as it were, emerge as
doubly inauthentic, misrecognizing their social position relative to followers and embracing
mainstream marketplace meanings. However damaging to community such inauthenticity may
be, it did not impede their acquisition of a mass audience or undermine their claim to taste.
DISCUSSION
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
22
We adapted Bourdieu’s idea of cultural capital to provide an explanation for a novel
phenomenon observed in online consumer behavior: the acquisition of a mass audience by an
otherwise ordinary individual consumer. Past accounts of cultural capital in consumer research
had treated cultural capital as a derivative of economic, social, or institutional position (Arsel and
Thompson 2011; Holt 1998; Thornton 1996), while Bourdieu’s account originally treated
cultural capital as an endowment received from the family (Bourdieu 1984). We built on
Bourdieu’s later formulations to make cultural capital more analogous to financial capital:
something that can be invested, risked, and accumulated (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992).
Cultural capital was theorized to accrue from iterated exercises of taste, displayed publicly, that
are favorably received.
The fashion bloggers we studied began with a modicum of taste as judgment power—an
extra capacity to make aesthetic discriminations in the realm of clothing—combined with a
willingness to venture a public display of these taste judgments. These aesthetic discriminations
were such as to find favor with large numbers of other consumers. The blogger’s experience of
having her taste favorably received, combined with the opportunity to iterate these displays of
taste, increased her capacity to make taste discriminations, her willingness to venture a public
display of her taste, and the likelihood that these new taste displays would be favorably received.
It is via this process of accumulation that bloggers’ seed capital—their taste—matures into
cultural capital. Under this dynamic account, fashion bloggers act as cultural capitalists,
amassing more and more capital as they continue to make venturesome displays of taste. Once
these taste displays have acquired a large enough audience, bloggers’ cultural capital becomes
convertible into economic and social capital, as bloggers begin to be assimilated into the
established fashion system. Audience acquisition then becomes self-reinforcing, as multiple
positive feedback loops involving elements of the fashion system come into play.
The present research is unusual in that it makes the Web a causal factor in its theorization
of consumer behavior. Past consumer research has tended to treat online consumer behavior as
an analogue of some corresponding offline consumer behavior, and to conceptualize the Web
simply as a new location where pre-existing consumer phenomena unfold much as before. Thus,
marketplace communities can be established online same as offline (Muniz and O’Guinn 2000),
norms of reciprocity govern online communities same as offline (Mathwick et al. 2007), and
consumers’ postings online correspond to word of mouth offline (Kozinets et al. 2010). No new
theory is required to account for the fact that consumer behavior has moved online.
By contrast, a focus on consumers’ newfound capacity, courtesy of the Web, to acquire a
mass audience requires a new theorization. Ordinary consumers did not have access to such an
audience prior to the Web. For consumers, there is no offline equivalent of a verbal-visual blog,
a Yelp restaurant review, or user-generated video content. Prior to the Web only professionals
holding an institutional position could publish their writing or disseminate video. Ordinary
consumers were confined to participation in their immediate social networks and communities;
they could not acquire a mass audience of strangers for their acts of consumption. As a
consequence, the urge to seek out an audience, and the value some consumers place on having a
large audience of strangers, has not been theorized in consumer research.
We developed a theory for explaining consumers’ audience acquisition and maintenance
practices by adapting Bourdieu’s ideas about cultural capital. Our adaptation of Bourdieu’s ideas
concerning cultural capital was eased by tracking an evolution in Bourdieu’s own thinking over
the 40 years that he worked with this concept. The key adaptation was to separate cultural
capital from inherited social position on the one hand and institutional role on the other: to make
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
23
it something acquired rather than something endowed or conferred. The effect of this change
was to tie consumers’ cultural capital more tightly to their capacity for aesthetic discrimination—
their taste in the sense of judgment power—with respect to some relevant category of consumer
good; here, fashion clothing. Much as Bourdieu, in keeping with the Continental tradition, was
wont to define capital as accumulated or materialized labor (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 118),
we re-defined cultural capital, in the consumption sphere, as the precipitate of favorably received
displays of taste. Cultural capital in online consumption accumulates from the iterated exercise
of taste. It is manifest as (better) taste, with ‘better’ defined in terms of the extent to which an
audience for it can be acquired and maintained.
The effect of this adaptation of Bourdieu is to highlight the role of taste in consumption,
even as it shifts the emphasis away from existing theorizations of how taste operates in
consumption. Current conceptualizations focus on what might be called the horizontal operation
of taste: the ways in which taste preferences group consumers together and serve to divide an Us
from a Them. The emphasis has been on the clustering action of taste—how what is acclaimed
and what is disdained function to draw boundaries and preserve distinction-between. Our focus
on mass audiences shifted the focus to the vertical operation of taste: the fact that judgment
power—the capacity to make aesthetic discriminations that can win an audience—is unequally
distributed. Because judgment power in the domain of clothing is unequally distributed while
being widely valued, it provides an opportunity to distinguish oneself as one above the rest. This
action of taste to produce distinction-over conforms to a sociological perspective that may be set
against more ethnographic accounts that emphasize the authentication of identity in community.
Although we reconceived the sources of cultural capital in consumption, and the
processes by which it can be acquired, we held constant certain of the outcomes of possessing
cultural capital, notably its convertibility into economic resources and social connections.
Absent some such link, it would be difficult to establish that what was found in fashion blogging
was in fact cultural capital, and not some other thing. The one change in outcomes, relative to
past discussions of cultural capital, was the focus on acquisition of an audience. Gaining a mass
audience for one’s acts of consumption was treated as analogous to bolstering one’s social
position or rising in a hierarchy. This is consistent with the thrust of Bourdieu’s sociology,
which foregrounds the pursuit of social position over the quest for identity, and of reputation
over community.
FUTURE RESEARCH
The Limits of Authenticity
At this juncture in CCT work researchers have learned a great deal about consumers’
pursuit of identity projects, the role of community in supporting identities formed in opposition
to the mainstream, and the ways in which authenticity can be claimed or disputed (Arnould and
Price 2000; Arnould and Thompson 2005; Thomas, Schau and Price 2011). Much less is known
about practices consumers may engage in to improve their social position, how mainstream
success is pursued through acts of consumption, or the processes whereby an ordinary consumer
can gain preferment over others. The present research suggests that there may be spheres of
consumption where authenticity is not central, identity projects are subsidiary, and community
bonds are neglected in favor of the attainment of social position. These spheres offer
opportunities to expand the compass of Consumer Culture Theory.
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
24
In understanding why authenticity does not appear to play a central role in fashion
blogging, a concluding observation by Thornton (1996, 104-105) may be relevant: “[among the
subcultures studied] there is a double articulation of the lowly and feminine: disparaged other
cultures are characterized as feminine and girls cultures are devalued as imitative and passive.
Authentic culture … remains the prerogative of boys.” If this observation can be generalized
beyond the British club scene of the 1990s studied by Thornton , it provides one explanation for
the minimal role played by authenticity in the present study: a ‘double articulation of the lowly
and feminine’ could not readily emerge in a study of female fashion bloggers whose followers
were primarily other women. Future CCT work might examine whether a concern for
authenticity varies in accordance with the manner and degree to which a product category is
gendered. The more general task for future research is to develop a framework that accounts for
situations where authenticity will be a salient factor in consumption, and for whom, versus
situations where authenticity will not be as pertinent.
Another possible explanation for why identity projects and authenticity did not emerge as
fundamental constituents of fashion blogging may be the decision not to interview bloggers. Our
rationale for that decision was that to have conducted an ethnography of bloggers in the standard
way would have been to ask them to put down the megaphone to explain how they got hold of
the megaphone—to have studied what bloggers say they do rather than what they actually did
(see the discussion of method in Boellstorff 2008, 60-86). In focusing on what bloggers did, we
were influenced by Bourdieu’s skepticism concerning how much could be learned about cultural
phenomena from interviews with the acculturated (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 40-42, 144145).
It may be that the larger theoretical importance of blogging, online reviewing, user
generated content, and related forms of online consumer behavior is that these now allow for a
cultural analysis of consumption that is not tied to a specifically ethnographic methodology.
Thus, blogging allows for an analysis of consumers’ visual representations in a manner that has
not heretofore been readily possible. In times past, a researcher literally had to visit consumers in
person, in their home, to capture visible evidence of their taste (Holt 1998, 2002); now the Web
makes available a wealth of such visual displays of taste, from a broad and diverse population of
consumers. An aesthetic perspective may be critical to understanding these visual consumer
texts, in keeping with the fourth CCT theme articulated in Arnould and Thompson (2005), a
theme that now appears to be at some risk of being eclipsed by the dominant ethnographic
emphasis on identity and authenticity.
Taste Goods
Taste displays leading to the accumulation of cultural capital should be evident in other
categories and contexts as well. One task for future research is to set a bound on the kinds of
consumer behavior where a dynamic conception of cultural capital founded on taste as judgment
power can be explanatory. As a first cut, taste itself may only be relevant where, per Thornton
(1996), ‘things that can’t be learned in school’ are central. When knowledge that can be learned
in school provides relevant expertise, or when professional and institutional experience is
important, taste may not be pertinent. Put another way, wherever Becker’s (1993) idea of human
capital can provide an adequate explanation for consumer behavior, cultural capital, whether
statically or dynamically conceived, may not have explanatory power (Ratchford 2000).
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
25
Within this first limit, a second limit may be glimpsed: not all taste judgments can
produce cultural capital, or put another way, taste is a much more inclusive concept than cultural
capital. Whereas taste is present anywhere that an aesthetic discrimination can be made, the
exercise of taste can only accumulate cultural capital in circumstances where preferment is
possible. That is, taste leadership, rather than simply taste clustering, must be possible for
cultural capital to come into play. In this study taste leadership was manifest as the acquisition
of a mass audience.
A third limit confines the applicability of a dynamic conception of cultural capital. This
research does not gainsay the continued pertinence of a static notion of cultural capital wherein
large amounts of it come into one’s possession as a family endowment or as a concomitant of
institutional position, education, or occupation. High levels of taste—taste that will be ratified by
large numbers of those one regards as social peers— can be produced as a result of being born
into or acquiring a favorable social position. We argued simply that the reverse sequence, in
which the exercise of taste itself leads to a higher social position, is also possible, and found an
anchor case for this trajectory in fashion bloggers’ acquisition of a mass audience online.
Pulling together these threads, a dynamic conception of cultural capital may be most
applicable to three broad categories of consumer goods: fashion, as studied here; food, including
restaurants (Johnston and Bauman 2010); and home decor, including all visible aspects of the
presentation of the abode, both interior and exterior (Lynes 1980). These domains are offered in
Bourdieu (1984, 78) as sites for the operation of cultural capital in everyday life, and these three
spheres have provided much of the material for post-Bourdeusian scholarship on taste (Bayley
1991; Falk 1994; Gronow 1997; Warde 1997).
Notable by their absence are music, literature and art. Outside of the Parisian context
initially studied by Bourdieu, appreciation for the fine arts, or for one type of art over another, no
longer appears to serve as a primary means to social preferment (Gans 1999, 20). Rather, these
products function as aides to taste clustering, including class-based taste clusters, as developed in
Holt (1998). In extracting the idea of cultural capital from high culture products, we aim both to
acknowledge some of the most incisive criticisms of Bourdieu’s project (e.g., Lamont 1992), and
further what might be called the Americanization, or perhaps the postmodernization, of
Bourdieu’s idea of cultural capital begun by Holt (1998). Cultural capital, especially when
dynamically conceived, provides an explanatory theory concerning certain kinds of consumer
behavior where taste is formative—it need not be about (high) culture per se, nor is it a synonym
for knowledge of cultural things such as can be acquired in school.
Stepping back from specific product categories, a key goal in adapting Bourdieu’s ideas
was to move beyond the early taxonomic account of Bourdieu (1986), with its exhaustive and
mutually exclusive specification of three forms of capital and three sub-types of cultural capital.
Holt (1998) had already bracketed and set aside objectified cultural capital as of limited utility in
a postmodern context. We continued his critique by suggesting that ‘authentic’ product
categories defined against the mass market might not be reliable indicators of a high level of
cultural capital either, but might only reflect taste clustering. Institutionalized cultural capital, or
educational capital, is difficult to defend against Becker’s (1993) simpler account of education
and experience in terms of human capital. We retrieved the remaining subtype, embodied
cultural capital, and re-cast it as a dynamic rather than static notion, something that could be
actively accumulated, rather than being a derivative of family upbringing or a mere concomitant
of institutional position.
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
26
In this same vein, a task for future research is to examine further what Bourdieu called
the ‘rates of exchange’ and ‘modes of conversion’ among types of capital. Arsel and Thompson
(2011) intriguingly showed how dynamically acquired social capital could be converted into
embodied cultural capital, while we showed how cultural capital, accumulated through public
displays of taste, could be exchanged for both economic rewards and social connections. As part
of this effort it may be worthwhile to re-examine the role of social capital in consumption,
building on sociological research concerning taste (Erickson 1996; Lizardo 2006). It has long
been noted that Bourdieu’s conception of social capital lies at a far remove from that of Putnam
(1995), and that these two do not exhaust the definitions of social capital on offer (Baron, Field
and Schuller 2000). There is an opportunity for future research to evolve conceptions of how
social capital operates in consumption as we undertook to do with cultural capital. Likewise, the
exact relationship between symbolic capital—a more recent formulation introduced by
Bourdieu—and cultural capital remains to be ascertained (Ustuner and Thompson 2011).
CONCLUSION
Muniz and O’Guinn’s (2000) innovative treatment of the existence and prevalence of
community in consumption marked a swing of the pendulum in social history. As originally
conceived by German sociologists such as Tonnies, the marketplace was portrayed as the
antithesis of community and in fact, the agent of its destruction. Following Muniz and O’Guinn,
much CCT work has been concerned with how consumers construct and participate in
communities, including virtual communities (Mathwick et al. 2007). That work has served as a
much-needed corrective to individually-centered and purely psychological accounts of
consumption, and to dysphoric assertions of consumer anomie in the marketplace. But the gist of
the present research is that consumers do not only affiliate with communities—they may also
seek positions in society, and these positions may not only shape, but be shaped by, and even
attained by, acts of consumption.
With the advent of the Web, it is important to recognize that the social reality of
consumers includes relationships with strangers as well as participation in communities, and that
one way consumers desire to relate to strangers is to gather them together into an audience for
acts of consumption. While identity may be constructed in communities, and authenticity may be
defined in opposition to the mainstream and the marketplace, preferment is achieved relative to
large numbers of strangers. All these processes are important for understanding the social and
cultural construction of consumer behavior, and Consumer Culture Theory can and should
extend to include them all.
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
27
REFERENCES
Arnould, Eric J. and Linda L. Price (2000), “Authenticating Acts and Authoritative
Performances: Questing for Self and Community,” in The Why of Consumption:
ContemporaryPperspectives on Consumer Motives, Goals and Desires, eds. S
Ratneshwar, David Glen Mick and Cynthia Huffman. London: Routledge Press, 140163.
____________ and Craig J. Thompson (2005), “Consumer Culture Theory (CCT): Twenty
Years of Research,” Journal of Consumer Research, 31 (March), 868-82.
Arsel, Zeynep and Craig Thompson (2011), “Demythologizing Consumption Practices: How
Consumers Protect Their Field-Dependent Identity Investments from Devaluing
Marketplace Myths,” Journal of Consumer Research, 37 (February), 791-806.
Bayley, Stephen (1991), Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, New York: Pantheon.
Baron, Stephen, John Field and Thomas Schuller (2000), Social Capital: Critical Perspectives,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Becker, Gary Stanley (1993), Human Capital: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, With
Special Reference to Education, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Belk, Russell W. (1988), “Possessions and the Extended Self,” Journal of Consumer Research,
15 (September), 139-168.
_________ (2010), “Sharing,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (February), 715-34.
Berger, Jonah and Morgan Ward (2010), “Subtle Signals of Inconspicuous Consumption,”
Journal of Consumer Research, 37 (4), 555-69.
Bernthal, Matthew J., David Crockett, and Randall L. Rose (2005), “Credit Cards as Lifestyle
Facilitators,” Journal of Consumer Research, 32 (1), 130-45.
Beverland, Michael B. and Francis J. Farrelly (2009), “The Quest for Authenticity in
Consumption: Cues to Shape Experience,” Journal of Consumer Research, 36
(February), 838-56.
Boellstorff, Tom (2010), Coming of Age in Second Life, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre (1984), Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
__________ ([1983] 1986), “The Forms of Capital,” Handbook of Theory and Research for the
Sociology of Education, John. G. Richardson (ed.), London, UK: Greenwood, 241-58.
__________ (1988), Homo Academicus, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
__________ (1991), Language and Symbolic Power, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
__________ (1996), The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power, Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
__________ (1998), Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action, Stanford: Stanford University
Press.
__________ (1999), On Television, NY: The New Press.
__________ (2008), Sketch for a Self-Analysis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
__________ and Loïc J. D. Wacquant (1992), An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Burgess, Jean Elizabeth and Joshua Benjamin Green (2009), YouTube: Online Video and
Participatory Culture, Cambridge, England: Polity Press.
Campbell, Colin (2005), “The Craft Consumer: Culture, Craft and Consumption in a Postmodern
Society,” Journal of Consumer Culture, 5 (1), 23-42.
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
28
Deighton, John (1992), “The Consumption of Performance,” Journal of Consumer Research, 19
(December), 362-372.
DiMaggio, Paul. (1979), “Review Essay: On Pierre Bourdieu,” American Journal of Sociology,
84(6), 1460–74.
Erickson, Barbara H. (1996), “Culture, Class, and Connections,” The American Journal of
Sociology, 102(1), 217–251.
Fairclough, Norman (2003), Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research, New
York, NY: Routledge.
Falk, Pasi (1994), The Consuming Body, London: Sage Publications.
Feick, Lawrence F. and Linda L. Price (1987), “The Market Maven: A Diffuser of Marketplace
Information,” The Journal of Marketing, 51 (Jan), 83-97.
Gans, Herbert J. (1999), Popular Culture & High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste,
New York: Basic Books.
Goldthorpe, John H. (2007), “Cultural Capital: Some Critical Observations,” Sociologica, 2, 122.
Goulding, Christina, Avi Shankar, Richard Elliott, and Robin Canniford (2009), “The
Marketplace Management of Illicit Pleasure,” Journal of Consumer Research, 35 (5),
759-71.
Gronow, Jukka (1997), The Sociology of Taste, Routledge: London.
Halle, David (1993), Inside Culture: Art and Class in the American Home, Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Henry, Paul C. (2005), “Social Class, Market Situation, and Consumers’ Metaphors of
(Dis)Empowerment,” Journal of Consumer Research, 31 (4), 766-78.
Hodkinson, Paul (2007), “Interactive Online Journals and Individualization,” New Media and
Society, 9(4), 625-50.
Holt, Douglas (1998), “Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption?” Journal of
Consumer Research, 25 (June), 1-25.
__________ (2002), “Why Do Brands Cause Trouble? A Dialectical Theory of Consumer
Culture and Branding,” Journal of Consumer Research, 29 (June), 70-90.
Jarrett, Kylie (2003), “Labour of Love: An Archeology of Affect as Power in E-Commerce,”
Journal of Sociology, 39 (4), 335-51.
Jenkins, Henry (2006), Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture, New
York: NYU Press.
Johnston, Josee and Shyon Bauman (2010), Foodies: Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet
Foodscape, New York: Routledge.
Kozinets, Robert V. (2002), “Can Consumers Escape the Market? Emancipatory Illuminations
from Burning Man,” Journal of Consumer Research, 29 (June), 20-38.
____________ (2007), “Netnography 2.0,” Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in
Marketing, Russell W. Belk, (ed.), Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 129-42.
____________ (2009), Netnography: Doing Ethnographic Research Online. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage
____________, Kristine de Valck, Andrea C. Wojnicki, and Sarah J. S. Wilner (2010),
“Networked Narratives: Understanding Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Online
Communities,” Journal of Marketing, 74 (March), 71-89.
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
29
Kretz, Gachoucha and Kristine de Valck (2010), “Pixelize Me! Creating Online Identities on
Fashion Blogs through Explicit and Implicit Brand Association,” Research in Consumer
Behavior, 12, 313-29.
Lamont, Michèle (1992), Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and
American Upper-Middle Class, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Lizardo, Omar (2006), “How Cultural Tastes Shape Personal Networks,” American Sociological
Review, 71 (5), 778-807.
Lynes, Russell (1980 [1955]), The Tastemakers: The Shaping of American Popular Taste, New
York: Dover Publications.
Mathwick, Charla, Caroline Wiertz, and Ko de Ruyter (2007), “Social Capital Production in a P3
Community,” Journal of Consumer Research, 34 (April), 833-49.
McCracken, Grant (1986), “Culture and Consumption: A Theoretical Account of the Structure
and Movement of the Cultural Meaning of Consumer Goods,” Journal of Consumer
Research, 13(June), 71-84.
McQuarrie, Edward F. and David Glen Mick (1996), “Figures of Rhetoric in Advertising
Language,” Journal of Consumer Research, 22 (March), 424-438.
Miller, Daniel (2011), Tales from Facebook, Cambridge, England: Polity Press.
Muniz, Albert M. Jr. and Thomas C. O’Guinn (2001), “Brand Community,” Journal of
Consumer Research, 27 (March), 412-32.
Phillips, Barbara J. and Edward F. McQuarrie (2010), “Narrative and Persuasion in Fashion
Advertising,” Journal of Consumer Research, 37 (3), 368-92.
Putnam, Robert D. (1995), “Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital
in America,” Political Science and Politics, 28 (4), 664-84.
Ratchford, Brian T. (2001), “The Economics of Consumer Knowledge,” Journal of Consumer
Research, 27 (4), 397-411.
Reed, Adam (2009), “My Blog is Me: Texts and Persons in UK Online Journal Culture (and
Anthropology)” Ethnos, 70 (2), 220-42.
Rheingold, Howard (2000), The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier,
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rocamora, Agnes (2002), “Fields of Fashion: Critical Insights into Bourdieu’s Sociology of
Culture,” Journal of Consumer Culture, 2 (3), 341-62.
Rose, Randall L. and Stacy L. Wood (2005), “Paradox and the Consumption of Authenticity
through Reality Television,” Journal of Consumer Research, 32 (September), 284-96.
Rosman, Katherine (2009), “Fashion’s Secret Helpers,” Wall Street Journal, September 11.
Schatzki, Theodore R. (1996), Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity
and the Social, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Schau, Hope Jensen and Mary Gilly (2003), “We Are What We Post? Self-Presentation in
Personal Web Space,” Journal of Consumer Research, 30 (December), 385-404.
__________, Albert M. Muniz, Jr., and Eric J. Arnould (2009), “How Brand Community
Practices Create Value,” Journal of Marketing, 73 (September), 30-51.
Scott, Linda M. (1994), “Image in Advertising: The Need for a Theory of Visual Rhetoric,”
Journal of Consumer Research, 21 (September), 252-273.
Sewell, William H. (2005), Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation,
Chicago: University of Chicago press.
Silva, Elizabeth and Alan Warde (2010), Cultural Analysis and Bourdieu’s Legacy: Settling
Accounts and Developing Alternatives, London: Routledge.
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
30
Smith, Andrew N., Eileen Fischer, and Chen Yongjian (2011), Value Creation in Brand-Related
User-Generated Content on YouTube,” paper presented at the Association for Consumer
Research Conference, St. Louis, October.
Snickers, Pelle and Patrick Vonderau (2009), The YouTube Reader, Stockholm: National Library
of Sweden.
Swartz, David (1997), Culture & Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, University of
Chicago Press.
Thomas, Tandy Chalmers, Hope Schau and Linda Price (2011), “Consumption Community
Dimensions,” paper presented at the Association for Consumer Research Conference, St.
Louis, October.
Thompson, Craig (2004), “Marketplace Mythology and Discourses of Power,” Journal of
Consumer Research, 31 (June), 162-80.
Thornton, Sarah (1996), Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital, Middletown,
CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Üstüner, Tuba and Douglas B. Holt (2010), “Toward a Theory of Status Consumption in Less
Industrialized Countries,” Journal of Consumer Research, 37 (1), 37-56.
____________ and Craig Thompson (2011), “How Marketplace Performances produce
Interdependent Status Games and Contested Forms of Symbolic Capital,” Journal of
Consumer Research, forthcoming.
Warde, Alan (2005), “Consumption and Theories of Practice,” Journal of Consumer Culture, 5
(2), 131-153.
__________ (1997), Consumption, Food & Taste, London: Sage Publications.
Winn, Phillip (2009), “State of the Blogosphere: Introduction,” www.technorati.com, August 21.
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
31
Fashion
Blog
Fashion
Toast
Code for
Citation
FT
Karla's
Closet
KC
Childhood
Flames
CF
Age
25
18
16
Table 1
Characteristics of Fashion Blogs Sampled
Date
Economic Capital:
a
Audience
Paid Opportunities b
Started
November
30,726
• Modeling contract with RVCA
2007
• Free “gifted” products
April 2008
March 2008
13,417
10,859
Social Capital:
Inclusion Opportunities b
•
•
•
Paid advertising
Sells clothing on separate site
•
•
•
Designed a signature handbag
for COACH
Free “gifted” products
Paid advertising
Sells clothing on separate site
Paid advertising
Sells clothing on a separate site
•
Exclusive invite to New
York Fashion Week
•
Exclusive invite to New
York Fashion Week
Exclusive invite to
Chictopia's Social Influence
Summit
Exclusive invite to IFB’s
Evolving Influence
Conference
None
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Knight Cat
SW
15
Style Bubble
SB
24
August
2008
March 2006
10,484
•
Paid advertising
•
7,418
•
Editor for DazedDigital.com
(after establishing blog)
Judge for Benetton contest
Designed a signature shirt for
Borders & Frontiers
Free “gifted” products
Paid advertising
Free “gifted” products
Paid advertising
•
•
•
Because I'm
Addicted
CH
21
July 2007
5,785
Exclusive invite to New
York Fashion Week
Featured in Vogue
Invite to tour American
Apparel factory
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Fashion show invites/
backstage passes to Gucci,
Daydream Nation, Versace
Invite to Louis Vuitton
store opening
Exclusive invite to London
Fashion Week
Face printed on Forever21
shirt
Featured in Teen Vogue
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
32
•
•
The Stylish
Wanderer
F
The Clothes
Horse
KNC
What I Wore
BIA
Frassy
WIW
September
2007
3,596
•
21
June 2008
2,049
25
January
2007
1,418
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
21
27
March 2008
791
•
•
•
•
•
Modeling contract with
American Apparel
Free “gifted” products
Paid advertising
Sells clothing on a separate site
Free “gifted” products
Paid advertising
Sells clothing on a separate site
Book published by Ballantine
Books/Random House called
Recipe for Style
Free “gifted” products
Paid advertising
Free “gifted” products
Paid advertising
Sells clothing on other site
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
and WWD
Invite to Grammy party
Exclusive invite to IFB’s
Evolving Influence Conf.
Exclusive invite to New
York Fashion Week
Writer for Chicopia (after
establishing blog)
Named “blogger of the
week” by IFB
Featured in Teen Vogue
Invite to IFB charity event
Featured in Lucky
Exclusive invite to London
Fashion Week
Featured in Vogue
Note. The sources from which these ten were culled were: Konector.com, Delicious.com, http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/
2010/feb/21/10-best-fashion-bloggers,http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/7037668/Britains-best-fashion-bloggers.html,
www.signature9.com/style-99, Independent Fashion Bloggers’ “Blogger of the Week,” and Teen Vogue’s “Blogger of the Moment.”
a
The number of followers of each blog was derived in May 2010 from Bloglovin, which is a website that allows a reader to keep track
of their favorite blogs by gathering all new posts and keeping them on a common platform. The Bloglovin’ website provides a running
list of ‘top fashion blogs’ based on number of followers.
b
These examples of social and economic capital were uncovered in the blog analysis and are not intended to be exhaustive.
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
Figure 1
Post from Frassy Blog (04/16/10)
Everything I'm wearing is Vintage, except the Doc Martens...those babies are fakes, and now the black
plastic is peeling away, which I kind of love. The city is beautifully sunny today. I'll be outside all day
reading Victorian Literature.
POSTED BY AUDREY LEIGHTON
at 6:23 AM 42 comments
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
Figure 2
Post from Childhood Flames Blog (11/14/09)
A little something from New Yoak City
Lately, that little voice that whispers, "You need this" whenever I do some 'harmless' online window
shopping has been reduced to next to nothing. However, when I first saw this Oak coat back in
September, that voice was loud and clear. Drapey, asymmetric goodness with extra long sleeves AND
pockets? What more can a girl ask for? After cursing myself for missing out on getting one for myself
then in September, the lovely Miss Laia helped me get my hands of one when Oak restocked them
earlier this month.
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
Figure 3
Images from Karla’s Closet Blog Over Time
(04/28/08 and 06/09/10)
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.
4
Figure 4
Feedback Loops Linking Bloggers’ Cultural Capital, Bloggers’ Audience, and the
Fashion System
Promotional
Elements
Favor
+
Audience
+ Blogger
Cultural Capital
Relationship
practices
FASHION
SYSTEM
Taste
Prominent
insiders
Note: Plus signs indicate an increase. The model provides a snapshot of a dynamic process that
iterates over time. At the outset a blogger’s capacity to exercise taste gains her an audience, and
their favor increases her cultural capital, which facilitates further taste displays. This is the first
feedback loop. Once her audience has increased past some threshold, access to it becomes
valuable to the fashion system. In the second loop, prominent fashion insiders (e.g., a magazine
editor) now act to include the blogger, which tends to increase her audience further, with knockon effects on her cultural capital. Likewise, the promotional element also desires audience
access, so it sends gifts and payments to the blogger, which creates a third feedback loop, with
knock on effects on both cultural capital and inclusion by fashion insiders. Finally, the blogger
engages in relationship practices to maintain her audience.
This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only.