Pinot Noir, Human Identity, and the Quest for Interconnectedness
Jennifer Smith Maguire
My plenary contribution considers Pinot Noir in terms of what its cultivation, vinification, and appreciation might tell us about the conditions needed for human flourishing. Following the Sociologist Norbert Elias, I understand ‘identity’ as a figuration: a profoundly social phenomenon, realised through the process of grappling with the basic human problems of interdependence (with the physical world, with others, with ourselves). In deploying this Eliasian conceptualisation of human identity in previous analyses of biodynamic and natural wine, I have developed the notion of vina aperta to characterise both a disposition of wine makers and intermediaries, and a media frame through which particular wines—of which Pinot Noir is often taken as the exemplar—are esteemed for their ‘processual thingness’ that is constituted through intended and unintended outcomes of humans’ interdependent relations with the world, others, and themselves. My concern is thus with the ways in which Pinot Noir affords a domain through which people can experience deeply meaningful forms of sensuous immersion and access tangible experiences of interconnectedness.
Jennifer Smith Maguire is Professor and College Associate Dean of Research (Sheffield Hallam University, UK). Her research focuses on the intersection of processes of cultural production and consumption in the construction of markets, tastes and value, often through the lens of the production and intermediation of ‘natural’ and biodynamic wine. Typically focused on media analysis and interview-based research, her explorations of natural and biodynamic wine makers and intermediaries has spanned data collection in France, South Africa, Australia, China, the US, and the UK. Jennifer’s authored and co-authored research on wine has been published in such journals as Consumption, Markets and Culture, Journal of Consumer Culture, Journal of Wine Research, and Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change, and she is co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Wine and Culture and Towards an Eliasian Understanding of Food in the 21st Century: Established Foundations and New Directions.