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Michael Stugrin's essay is both theoretical and practical: he suggests that texts, when viewed as "structures ofperception," give us the "voices of the reality which they were part of and helped shape." He then proceeds to apply this theory to a number of spiritual texts popular during the Middle Ages to give us an idea of popular taste at that time. Such texts were structured in a highly affective way to affirm testimonies o f faith and to commemorate God's promises to men. But perhaps most importantly, these spiritual texts, along with such texts as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and countless prose treatises and sermons, provided medieval audiences with a way of "knowing" within the context of human experience in a time of great cultural stress.

The experience of discrimination based on caste, especially the stigma of untouchability, never formed a part of the socio-cultural and intellectual history of modern India. This article focuses on the life of Gurram Jashua (1895–1971) and re-reads the poignant and lived experience of untouchability on the basis of his seminal autobiography and other literary texts written in Telugu. This article argues that in ideas against caste prejudices, it is the themes of self-suffering and lived experience that provide a crucial impetus to the germination of protest. Through an analysis of Jashua's writings, especially Gabbilam, often called the Dalit Bible, this article attempts to capture and record the psychosomatic agony of living under the gaze of caste. With an untouchable whose rebellious spirit questioned the legitimacy of Hindu Brahmanical ideology cast as its hero, Gabbilam's revolutionary intervention subverted the content and form of the classical Telugu literary sphere. It was a socially and politically relevant text because in it, Jashua also engaged with anti-colonial nationalism and other issues of his time. Jashua remains peerless in his ability to express the dark realities of caste harnessed into a literary rhythm, as he continues to be read and admired even by non-Dalits.

Studies of transnational media flow and reception discuss audiences as cultural-linguistic groups that make idiosyncratic content choices, but say little to distinguish or explain their collective tastes. The literature on (inter)cultural consumption suggests that cultural preferences are more similar among societies that share a cultural or linguistic affinity than those that do not. Examining national acceptance of, and taste in, Hollywood films within a global sample of countries, this study quantifies the dissimilarities in genre preferences between the United States and importing countries based on 2002-2007 box-office sales. The analysis shows that genre taste dissimilarities are related positively to cultural distance between countries, and negatively to the English proficiency of the importing country. Furthermore, the economic attributes of the importer have no effect on taste dissimilarity. The analysis also shows that the genre tastes of individual countries have converged toward those of American audiences during these years.

In 1840, the General Committee for Public Instruction in Bengal, presiding over the 'Anglicist' educational policy enunciated five years earlier, declared, "the ultimate object which we have in view is to infuse into the student, possessed of talents and leisure, a taste for literature and science," all of which would "hasten the regeneration of the country." The Committee observed with satisfaction that English education was proving very popular with the middle classes, but also noted, "At present, education is for the most part appreciated only for the direct returns it yields." The Committee clearly hoped that over time education would come to be appreciated for other reasons. In the meantime, its instrumental value constituted a useful and even necessary inducement. A few years later, this same body reported many more students were entering and completing school, thus achieving their goal of attaining "the qualifications requisite to perform the mechanical duties of a writer [a clerk]." But, they continued, "our object to raise the character of the people by education and not by their purses is still far distant."

Music and literature are analysed in terms of liking different cultural genres following a three-step analytical strategy. First, the distributions of likes/dislikes of different music and literary genres are examined. Second, we examined how the genres are interrelated. Third, we investigated how interrelating genres condensed into different taste patterns can be explained by five background variables: gender, age, education, income and residential area. In addition, there is a short analysis of the connections among taste patterns across the two cultural areas. The results suggest clear social differentiation in tastes, both in music and in literature, in Finland. Age and especially gender proved to be at least as important as education in explaining musical and literary taste patterns in general and highbrow tastes in particular. Three major correlations representing 'highbrow', 'popular folk' and 'popular action' tastes across the two cultural areas were found, indicating clear homologies between musical and literary taste.

AbstractThe interaction between smell and taste has been widely confirmed in the literature. Exposure to a congruent olfactory stimulus enhances taste, increases palatability and the desire to eat, and promotes food consumption. In this paper, we use laboratory experiments to show that, in addition to its role in taste enhancement, olfaction also plays a role in taste induction. Using the phenomena of cognitive sensory integration and mental imagery, we explain how exposure to a real odor congruent with the expected taste produces a taste sensation for which there is no real taste stimulus. For example, exposure to the smell of vanillin, which is a sugar‐congruent odor, creates a taste sensation of sweetness, increases palatability and food cravings, and increases consumption of sugar‐free biscuits. The lack of exposure to the actual taste stimulus of sugar does not prevent the taste‐congruent odor from creating a taste sensation of sweetness, an olfactory sweetness. Odors are able to induce a taste sensation for which there is no real taste stimulus. The results of this research have implications for the marketing of dietary foods. Tastefulness, which is reduced by the absence of flavor, can be increased by congruent olfactory stimuli in the environment and have a positive effect on the sales of this product category.

This article contributes to the literature on the association between class position and cultural tastes by analyzing a unique historical data set and asking whether there were significant class differences in the consumption of music in the 19th century. Archival data from a publisher in Milan are used to analyze the characteristics of customers who purchased sheet music between 1814 and 1823. To avoid contemporary depictions of cultural hierarchies (e.g. 'highbrow', 'lowbrow' and 'omnivorous' tastes), we offer a new method for considering both the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of music consumption. Considering both the aggregate level of music consumption and the evolution of individual patterns over time, we find little evidence that musical tastes were aligned with class position. This finding calls for more research on the origins of the strong link between social structure and cultural preferences in general, or between class position and musical tastes in particular, which we witness today.

The 'omnivore' hypothesis currently dominates the academic literature on the social patterning of taste. It argues that cultural elites no longer resemble the traditional stereotype of an elitist snob. Instead, they are more likely to be 'omnivores' with broad tastes encompassing both elite and popular cultural forms. The omnivore hypothesis has inspired more than two decades of research and debate, without a clear resolution. In this article, we argue that progress in the omnivore debate has been impeded in part due to an elision of two distinct interpretations of the omnivore hypothesis: a strong interpretation, which holds that cultural elites are generally averse to class-based exclusivity; and a weak interpretation which holds that, while elites have broad tastes which encompass popular forms, they do not necessarily repudiate class-based exclusion. We demonstrate how drawing this distinction helps to clarify the existing empirical evidence concerning the omnivore hypothesis.

Water in Hispano-arabic Food and Cooking during the Middle-Ages

For Hispano-arabic physicians of the Middle-Ages, water was not only a natural element but the essential condition of health and civilization. The ancient philosophical doctrine regarding the function of water was further amplified : from hydraulics developed a theory of taste to be found in the agronomical literature ('Awwārn), cooking-books (Kitāb al-tābikh), as well as in Beyṭār's considerable pharmacopoeia. As a liquid, water is also capable of effecting decompositions and new mixings ; cooking thus becomes an alchimie process involving dessication (couscous), fermentation (bread) and the determination of suitable tastes for health and pleasure.

This research examines whether opposition between higher and lower forms of youth culture still contributes to the emergence of groups with different cultural tastes. Do youth at higher levels of secondary education (for example, pre-university education) tend to display 'omnivorous' tastes nowadays (Peterson, 1992), just as highly educated adults do? A sample of Dutch adolescents (N = 226) completed a questionnaire concerning their preferences in several cultural domains (music, film and television, light reading and literature, receptive cultural participation). Four groups or clusters representing cultural styles were identified: omnivores, moderate omnivores, a group interested primarily in popular culture, and a culturally disinterested group; each group comprised about a quarter of the sample. Whereas girls were overrepresented in the first two groups, boys were more common in the latter two groups. The two groups with omnivorous tastes appear to fit the profile of 'normal' youth. Otherwise, the four cultural groups could not be linked to specific youth subcultures.

AbstractRecent debates on musical taste have centred on the collapse of cultural boundaries between high art and popular culture. This paper examines Chinese hip‐hop as a unique case study to explore taste preferences in a relatively new popular cultural phenomenon in the understudied context of Eastern popular culture. Drawing from 42 interviews with Chinese young hip‐hop followers, the article examines musical taste preferences within Chinese hip‐hop and different modes of appreciation deployed by listeners. The findings reveal that young Chinese hip‐hop fans display cultural openness to foreign influences and genre mobility. The openness is employed as a marker of cultural capital for the Chinese middle class that values hybridity and innovation. However, even the most open‐minded individuals draw thematic hierarchies within hip‐hop through the unanimous rejection of vulgar and violent themes in favour of more serious and wholesome music. This rejection is framed as a strategy to authenticate hip‐hop within the broader popular culture arena while cultivating personal qualities of civility and wholesomeness that are highly valued in contemporary Chinese society. The paper contributes to the literature on musical taste preferences in cultural consumption by shedding light on the social relevance of cultural openness and music in contemporary Chinese popular culture.

This article explicitly connects a growing body of specific literature, the political ecology of conservation, to some of the often overlooked, main conceptual components emerging from political anthropology and geography (sources of legitimacy, governmentality, territoriality, or state making), political economy (commoditization, market integration, niche markets, or gentrification), and cultural studies of the environment (cultural transformations of nature, cultural heritage and landscapes, taste, and identity politics). All these concepts and literary fields are at the basis of the contemporary social analysis of conservation policies and their consequences. The article also provides an updated large bibliography on the concepts potentially relevant to a political ecology of conservation.Key Words: conservation, governmentality, taste, nature, commoditization of nature, territoriality

In the context of the modern information society, it is difficult to overestimate the educational and cultural potential of children's books. A carefully selected children's book is always a strong effective means of mental education and the formation of artistic and aesthetic preferences and tastes of the child. Children's literature can be used in the process of moral, economic, and environmental education. Children's literature is created specifically for children (preschool, primary school and secondary school age) and includes the best classical, folk, poetic and prose works.

Literature is a measure of a nation's spiritual development, as well as an expression of its spiritual and educational experiences. It is well known that fiction, which embodies a great social power, exerts an active influence on the expansion of human consciousness and the formulation of aesthetic taste. In the evolution of Arabic, Persian, Chinese, and Afghan literature, the progression of the narrative genre toward prose, the plot of the stories, and the compositional structure are analyzed. This article explores the issues surrounding the evolution of Arabic, Chinese, and Afghan narratives.