Interview with Olivier Assouly. The economic conversion of creativity and taste

Olivier Assouly is a lecturer and head of research at the IFM and has concentrated his work on the symbolic production of norms of taste (aesthetic, social, ideological and political), in the physical sense but mostly in the aesthetic sense. He has published Les Nourritures divines. Essai sur les interdits alimentaires (Actes Sud, 2002) and edited the collective work Goûts à vendre. Essais sur la captation esthétique (IFM/Regard, 2007). This interview was carried out on the publication of his book Le Capitalisme esthétique. Essai sur l’industrialisation du goût (Cerf, 2008) (Aesthetic capitalism. An essay on the industrialisation of taste), that highlights the role of taste and its creativity the corollary of taste, in the development of capitalism and as a spur to consumption.