Moral and aesthetic consecration and higher status consumers’ tastes: The “good” food revolution

Abstract

Research on the tastes of higher status groups has long prioritized analysis of aesthetic preferences. However, recent work has brought more attention to the moral dimensions of tastes. In this paper, we investigate the intersection of morality and aesthetics in tastes. Drawing on survey data and focus groups, we investigate how aesthetic and moral concerns operate in the domain of food, and meat specifically. A latent class analysis identifies four orientations to food that differ in their emphasis on aesthetic versus moral concerns. We identify classes that we label pragmatism, aestheticism, moralism, and moral aestheticism . These orientations toward moral and aesthetic concerns in food are associated with economic capital, cultural capital, age, political ideology, race, and gender. Respondents with higher social status are most likely to hold the moral aestheticism orientation, which simultaneously upholds moral and aesthetic concerns. Analysis of focus group data brings the nature of each of these four orientations into sharper focus. Further survey analyses show these four orientations predict high status aesthetic preferences and moral orientations beyond food, and they also predict the holding of symbolic and social boundaries related to moral judgments in food. We argue that research on high status cultural consumption must conceptualize and measure moral consecration alongside aesthetic consecration in order to better understand the social stratification of tastes.