No Barrique, No Berlusconi: Collective Identity, Contention, and Authenticity in the Making of Barolo and Barbaresco Wines

Abstract

How does contention over authenticity unfold through social movement processes of mobilization and counter-mobilization? We address this issue by studying how the rise of modern winemaking practices embodied authenticity as creativity, how the success of the modernists triggered a counter-movement seeking to preserve traditional wine-making practices, and how the emergent traditional category was premised on authenticity as conformity to a genre. This counter-movement succeeded in a situation in which market forces seemed destined to displace tradition with modernity.

Keywords: organization theory