At your service: The meanings and practices of contemporary bartenders

Abstract

Focusing on the differences between the devices and dispositions of cocktail and neighborhood bartenders, this article examines how service industry jobs become cultural intermediaries. Unlike other types of bartenders, cocktail bartenders engage in forms of professionalization to make legitimacy claims and use interactive service work to add value to their products. They possess autonomy and exclusivity over their work in the sense that they control the conditions of entry and legitimacy for a niche within the drinks industry. The conditions that construct this niche are the same that allow bartenders to emerge as cultural intermediaries. They simultaneously bridge and extend the divide between production and consumption. A comparison between the attitudes (dispositions) and practices (devices) that bartenders use to add value to their products and services illuminates the distinctions between positions in this service profession and reveals the selective manner in which cultural intermediaries emerge in contemporary service industries.

The contemporary geographies of craft‐based manufacturing

“…Craft production is about being engaged with materials, production processes, and communities (Gauntlett, ; Price, ). As a result, work in these new craft‐based manufacturing sectors is increasingly seen as “cool,” desirable, and as a meaningful alternative to unsatisfying and uncreative work in other sectors (see Neff, Wissinger, & Zukin, ; Ocejo, , , ). This represents a distinct shift from the common perception of manual labor as the domain of “boring” and repetitive tasks undertaken by unskilled workers (Carr & Gibson, ; Hall & Jayne, ).…”

“…As craft is rarely a source of full‐time income, Dawkins () suggests that the ability to become a craft producer may rely on a certain level of privilege and cultural capital. For these workers, engaging in craft work is less about a pay check, and more about living a certain lifestyle and realizing a personalized vision of the “good life” (Dawkins, ; Ocejo, ; Warren, , ; Warren & Gibson, ). A consistent observation regarding craft producers is that they have a genuine passion for their work and that being a craft producer forms a key part of their self‐identification (Dawkins, ; Paxson, ; Warren, ).…”

Spaces of vernacular creativity reconsidered

“…Evidently, this depiction of a particular group of people who collectively constituted a creative class was exclusive, ruling out those who pursued creativity in less circumscribed ways. Recently, the orbit of those belonging to the creative class has expanded to incorporate those from the traditional professions of barbering and bartending who, under conditions of gentrification, are being revalued in way that recognise the creative elements that they always practised (Ocejo, 2012). Nevertheless, the durable if fluid construct of the creative class continues to perpetrate a limited notion about who and what is 'creative'.…”

The Transformation of Occupations: A Case Study of Professionalism in Cocktail Bartending

“…Some bartenders work at sports bars and dive bars; others, however, are employed at high class, expensive cocktail lounges. This research will focus on the craft, or cocktail, bartender  , for though they lack self-regulation in the form of formal accreditation, research suggests that they may possess many other markers of professionalism (Ocejo 2011;2012;Wondrich 2007).…”

“…A second study by Ocejo (2012) examined the position of a craft bartender as a cultural intermediary. Cocktail bartenders become cultural intermediaries when they influence their guests' taste by offering only particular cocktails and spirits.…”