Sociogenetic Fields and the Fiction of Unity: Classed Taste and Regional Differentiation in Italian Food Consumption

Abstract

Bourdieu’s field‑theoretic model posits a structural homology between social positions and tastes for food, yet contemporary cultural‑sociological debates demonstrated that this framework often treats national food fields as monolithic, overlooking the historical sociogenetic processes that shape taste. The theoretical challenge, therefore, is to reconcile the Bourdieusian homology with the Eliasian sociogenetic insight that long‑term ‘civilizing processes’ produce spatially differentiated habitus and symbolic hierarchies. This article proposes a sociogenetic fields theoretical framework that integrates Bourdieu’s relational analysis with Elias’s sociogenesis of tastes, offering a resolve that retains the homology while embedding it in historically contingent spatial trajectories. To illustrate the framework, correspondence analysis of the 2021 Italian Household Budget Survey data maps expenditure across six occupational classes and the South-Centre/North macro‑regional divide. The findings confirm that class‑based tastes for food align with capital‑volume and capital‑composition dimensions, but the specific items embodying these dimensions differ regionally. By foregrounding the theoretical integration of field theory and sociogenesis, the study contributes a generalizable framework for cultural sociology.