Are we all cultural intermediaries now? An introduction to cultural intermediaries in context

The term ‘cultural intermediaries’ is good to think with: it has been a productive device for examining the producers of symbolic value in various industries, commodity chains and urban spaces, highlighting such issues as the blurring of work and leisure, the conservatism of ‘new’ and ‘creative’ work, and the material practices involved in the promotion of consumption (e.g. Bovone, 2005; Entwistle, 2006; McFall, 2004; Moor, 2008; Negus, 2002; Nixon and Crewe, 2004; Smith Maguire, 2008; Wright, 2005). In addition, cultural intermediary research offers an important complement to the study of cultural production, within which questions of agency are typically focused on consumers, and questions of power on institutions. The concept of cultural intermediaries usefully prioritizes issues of agency, negotiation and power, moving the everyday, contested practices of market agents to the fore for the study of the production of culture (Garnham, 2005; Havens et al., 2009; Smith Maguire and Matthews, 2010). Generally, research on cultural intermediaries has followed two different (although not incompatible) directions: cultural intermediaries as exemplars of the new middle class, involved in the mediation of production and consumption (following e.g. Bourdieu, 1984, 1996); and cultural intermediaries as market actors involved in the qualification of goods, mediating between economy and culture (following developments in actornetwork theory and new economic sociology, e.g. Callon et al., 2002; Muniesa et al., 2007). Engagements within and between these streams of work have resulted in conceptual developments: for example, du Gay’s (2004) discussion of devices and dispositions, and Cronin’s (2004) elaboration of multiple regimes of mediation. Nevertheless,

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