From Selling Tea to Selling Japaneseness: Symbolic Power and the Nationalization of Cultural Practices

Surak, Kristin

Abstract

This article investigates how institutions of cultural production become invested in the national meanings of their products and employ these associations for their own reproduction and expansion. The case I take is of the tea ceremony in Japan, from its pre-modern origins, through its capture by the organizational form of the iemoto system, and to its contemporary projection as a quintessence of Japaneseness. The ritual offers a particularly vivid illustration of the ways in which symbolic power can not only be periodized, first through its accumulation and then its routine exercise, but can also be successively articulated, at first with the state and then with the nation.

Citation

Surak, K. (2011). From Selling Tea to Selling Japaneseness: Symbolic Power and the Nationalization of Cultural Practices. European Journal of Sociology, 52(2), 175-208. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003975611000087

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2011
• Deposit Date: Feb 11, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 12, 2025
• Journal: European Journal of Sociology
• Print ISSN: 0003-9756
• Electronic ISSN: 1474-0583
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 52
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 175-208
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003975611000087
• Keywords: symbolic power, cultural fields, nationalism, Japan, tea ceremony