“What’s Authentic to Me,Doesn’t Mean It’s Authentic to You”: Relational Authenticity Work in the American Culinary Field

Abstract

Existing research illustrates that authenticity is a strategic accomplishment by cultural producers within commercial markets rather than a fixed attribute of objects, experiences, and spaces. This study examines how notions of culinary authenticity get discursively negotiated between cultural producers, consumers, and professional critics within the American culinary field. By analyzing popular food and restaurant blogs and social media forums, we find that actors engage in relational authenticity work in three distinct ways: by claiming to know more about a specific cuisine’s authenticity than others (“Knowing Authenticity”); by disputing the nature or value of culinary authenticity (“Questioning Authenticity”); or by rejecting culinary authenticity as well as the legitimacy of claims to the contrary (“Rejecting Authenticity”). We discuss how relational authenticity work operates as a dynamic form of claims-making shaped by the personal characteristics of the actors involved as well as competing authenticity claims circulating within a given cultural field.