Submitted Abstract
Owing to the fact that wine consumption is becoming ever more culturalised, I have adopted a micro-sociological approach to contemporary œnophile discursive practices, in Luxembourg, by concentrating on inherent normativity (moral and aesthetic) and ordinary appropriation (ethical and hedonistic). The context for this articulation is provided by wine tasting lessons ‘for beginners’.The analytical tools that food studies offer are pertinent for tracing the historical evolution of œnophile discursive practices – being singularised, aesthetic and reflexive –, viewed through their rationalisation processes (legislative regulation, scientific consolidation and media diffusion). Through this cristallisation, œnophily has brought about a governmentality of consumption ; its concrete institutionalisation, in the form of state-organised evening-classes, conveys a specific type of normativity.It will be shown that the publics of this institution – mainly male and affluent – have both ‘operational’ and ‘hedonistic’ motivations, thus enhancing a form of governmentality and an interior orientation of experiences. Appropriations of the œnophile normativity are reactive – either positively or negatively : interviewees adopt tactical usages of specific dispositions and of tactical courses of action, related to vertical differenciations (social trajectory and position), but also and mainly to horizontal ones (milieus, interactions and experiments carried out through various projects of subjectivation).These dispositions and tactics are linked to the domestic œnophile logics of action – which are active, strategic and hedonistic. Contrasting with the œnophile normativity (focusing on wine), ordinary discursive practices relate to preoccupations with one’s personal and social life, rather than to wine. Nonetheless, it is the aesthetic-based œnophile canonisation that contains essential prerequisites of subjectivation, even if it is appropriated in a hedonistic, socio- or egocentric way. This shows the consubstantial and flexible interweaving of norms and pleasure, leading to a personal and social empowerment (with a potential that is mainly ethical, but also distinctive), via the discursive usage of one particular food item.Key wordsMicro-sociology – food – normativity – appropriation – wine – discursive practices – cultural practices.