A Wine Flight of Gendered Sociology: Vignettes of (Apparent) Trivialities

Abstract

This paper discusses the genderedness of wine through a focus on seven illuminative vignettes. Academic studies about wine, women and men have approached the subject by focussing on professional wine worlds, gendered wine consumption, and more general patterns of the genderedness of wine. Here I discuss what sorts of boundaries wine builds and breaks, and what kinds of taboos and threats are connected to wine-gender relations. What emerges from my approach is a cultural gendered sociology of wine, inspired by Mary Douglas. The boundaries discussed are more than symbolic, they are often deeply embodied, too. Yet the symbolic level is where meaning of wine-gender relations is constructed, recognised, and acted upon, in terms of powerful taboos to do with sexuality, gendered bodies, human reproduction, and gender boundaries. I argue that a deep understanding of why and how wine continues to be gendered cannot be gained through only researching forms of industry and social discrimination, and strategies of survival and success. To explain the enormous power of wine and gender and wine’s genderedness, a deep cultural sociology is needed.