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This article introduces the Themed Section of Media International Australia, ‘Tastes and practices in three Australian cultural fields: television, music and sport’, which presents selected findings of the 2014-2015 survey of Australian cultural practices conducted as part of the Australian Research Council project Australian Cultural Fields: National and Transnational Dynamics (DP140101970). It briefly discusses the social organisation of the production of consumption of Australia in the period between the national cultural policies Creative Nation (1994) and Creative Australia (2013). The Introduction then outlines the methodology underlying the Australian Cultural Fields survey that, in building on the approach of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, was developed to assess how far entrenched cultural hierarchies and inequalities have been displaced by broadened patterns of access to arts and culture. Of particular concern is the role of traditional and new forms of cultural capital in differentiating patterns of cultural consumption and participation across relations of class, gender and ethnicity, which the distinctive survey design and administration seek to capture in the Australian context. Bringing together the methods of Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) and Cluster Analysis, each article highlights specific aspects of the relations between cultural tastes, practices, and social positions in contemporary Australia via an engagement with contemporary debates in cultural capital theory. The contributions on television (by Tony Bennett, Modesto Gayo, and David Rowe), music (Ben Dibley and Modesto Gayo) and sport (Modesto Gayo and David Rowe) address the dynamics of these Australian cultural fields, while also indicating the significance of their research findings for studies of other nationally-constituted cultural fields, as well as the contested play of cultural capital within nations and in the transnational/global sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Via an analysis of taste and scholar-fandom, this article explores why certain kinds of cult television remain relatively invisible. It suggests that the academy concentrates on the 'now-ness' of television, leading to a focus on newer forms of programming as scholars aim to demonstrate how up-to-date they are. It is argued that analysis of 'momentary fandom' – that is, fandom predicated on ordinary and everyday viewing and which does not have an investment in cultural capital – would allow examination of a wider range of television forms and viewing practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The search for a social goodness function in economic systems is reviewed, especially in light of the fact that the economy is a subsystem of a biosphere that has its own rules for determining success, or at least for limiting feasibility. The frequent perversity of reductionist quantitative success indicators in economics (profit, quotas, GDP) is mainly attributed to the preanalytic vision of the economy as an isolated circular flow, and of homo economicus as an atomistic individual isolated from community, both social and biological. Specific examples of such perversity are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author explores computer gaming preferences of girls through observations of a games club at an all-girl state school in the United Kingdom. The author argues that gaming tastes are alterable and site specific. Gaming preferences certainly relate to the attributes of particular games, but they will also depend on the player's recognition and knowledge of these attributes. Players accumulate these competencies according to the patterns of access and peer culture they encounter The constituents of preference, such as access, are shaped by gender and as a result, gaming preferences may manifest along gendered lines. It is not difficult to generate data, indicating that gendered tastes exist, but it is shortsighted to separate such outcomes from the various practices that contribute to their formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]