Judgment is on the table: food critics in the face of the gears of the digital world

• Grant number: 23/07530-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: September 01, 2023
• End date: June 30, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Ana Paula Belem Hey
• Grantee: Camila Assunção Crumo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project aims to investigate the social construction of authority among Brazilian food critics, as well as the changes that the digitization of daily practices has been causing in this dynamic. The popularization of participative digital platforms (web 2.0), such as blogs, already represented a challenge to the symbolic monopoly formerly exercised by legitimate food critics (those hired by guides, magazines, and other periodicals in the gastronomy field) in the consecratory circuits of "good eating". The emergence of social media and the growth of its users sharpened the competition by making available to "independent" critics an elaborate digital infrastructure with intuitive interfaces and algorithms that connect, in an increasingly effective way, the appetite of interested users and the wide range of arbiters of taste aiming to judge gastronomic productions and producers. Through qualitative analysis, and based on an intersection between the sociology of food, digital sociology, and the sociology of consumption, this project intends to investigate the symbolic tools that, in this scenario, have been mobilized by journalistic critics to try to safeguard the legitimacy of their authority in the gastronomic field, as well as the strategies of newcomers, that is, independent critics, to subvert the traditional hierarchy of the "guardians" of the good culinary taste. The empirical basis will consist of a compilation of food periodicals, such as guides and magazines published between 2009 and 2023 (before and after Instagram was launched), and online reviews posted on social media both by journalistic and independent critics (especially those who have reached the status of "influencers"). Semi-structured interviews will also be carried out with both groups of critics and with chefs or administrators of restaurants that have won gastronomic awards. Finally, some restaurants will be visited along with the critics (as their guests). Drawing on these multiple inputs, the idea is to access the set of social coordinates (references, concepts, pre-notions, stereotypes, etc.) that govern the practices of the critics of each group, as well as the disputes for legitimacy that occur within the field, the strategies of distinction and classification of these agents regarding their peers, and also the type of recognition that the producers of the gastronomic field confer to the critics of each category. (AU)