At the same time, however, food insecurity remains a significant concern especially among lower-income residents, who have lived in these neighborhoods and patronized local food stores and restaurants for a long time. Although these residents may welcome some changes in their foodscape, particularly those that improve access to affordable, healthy, and culturally appropriate food, evidence suggests that they feel excluded from the new developments and experience them with ambivalence, if not resentment (Joassart-Marcelli and Bosco 2020). Their apprehension over current changes in their neighborhood’s food scene is also reflected on social media where fears of gentrification and lost sense of place are commonly expressed. Persistent economic hardships and social tensions put into question the democratic and cosmopolitan posture that the majority of new businesses adopt.
Taste then becomes a way for newcomers and longer-term residents to relate to each other and to place. As discussed in chapters 2, 3, and 5 of this volume, these encounters may forge connections, but they may also exacerbate difference rooted in broader socio-spatial processes associated with class, race, and ethnicity that shape cultural understandings of “good food.” New food businesses take a particularly active part in both reflecting and molding taste and shaping the social and cultural character of place. The type of food they sell, the way they present themselves, the values they seem to support, and the aesthetics they embrace are all central in producing a foodscape that is more or less inclusionary.
In this chapter, we intersect literature on gentrification with research on taste and food to investigate how taste and place relate to each other in ways that reproduce social distinctions based on class, race, and other factors. In particular, we explore how new food spaces and practices are represented and promoted in Barrio Logan and North Park—two urban neighborhoods of San Diego that are characterized by different stages of gentrification. Our goal is to highlight the role of taste, as a social, cultural, and emotional construct, in contributing to gentrification and displacement—what we call the taste of gentrification.
We begin with a review of theoretical research on the social construction of taste, including Bourdieu’s work, and argue for the benefit of inflecting this scholarship with a place perspective. Next, we turn to debates within the gentrification literature and discuss the significance of food and taste in reconciling theoretical differences between political-economic and cultural approaches. Using mixed methods, we then combine mapping with analysis of qualitative data from various media sources, including social media and local food publications and news outlets, to explore the key elements of the taste of gentrification, as well as how and where it is produced.
Place and the Social Production of Taste
Although taste has long been understood as a social construct, its relationship to place remains poorly theorized. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1984) provides us with a solid theoretical foundation to study the social construction of taste. According to him, taste serves as a way for the upper class to distinguish itself from lower social groups. Even though good taste appears to come naturally to social elites, it is developed through socialization and cultivated by a rigid set of norms. This notion of taste is particularly applicable to the realm of food, which is so rich in symbolism. In contrast to the working class who by necessity favor heavy and filling food, those with higher socioeconomic status are free from the worldly concerns of biological sustenance and have the leisure to enjoy food aesthetically. The settings, ingredients, presentations, table manners, and timing of meals all contribute to creating a sense of sophistication denied to the lower classes.
Bourdieu’s work has been criticized for privileging class over other forms of social difference (Sloan 2004). In a postmodern context where individual identities are seemingly less constrained by socioeconomic attributes and more fluid than in the past, many scholars have argued that class has become less relevant in understanding taste and culture (Ollivier 2008). Today, people use lifestyles, including food, fashion, décor, travel, and music, to define their identities and reveal their good taste in new ways (Binkley 2007). Lifestyle practitioners embrace unique diets and exotic ingredients that relate to their ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and other aspects of identity. For example, the recent popularity of turmeric, which was named “spice of the summer,” “ingredient of the year,” and “the world’s healthiest food” in 2016, illustrates the way food defines identities in fluid ways. Typically associated with immigrants from southeast Asia who use it for cooking and medicine, turmeric has now become popular among cultural elites and health-conscious urbanites who enjoy it in “gold lattes” and “anti-inflammatory stir-fries,” revealing very different identities or values. The ostensible cultural openness to a much greater variety of food has been described as “omnivorousness” and “cosmopolitanism” (Johnston and Baumann 2010). The idea of omnivorousness has been applied to cultural studies of music, art, and food and refers to the rejection of overt snobbery and the espousal of eclecticism as signals of social status (Peterson and Kern 1996). Similarly, cosmopolitanism emphasizes a preference for ethnic and international cultures (Beck 2006). Both have been facilitated by globalization, immigration, and a new kind of cultural politics that has made identities less rigid and more malleable through individual lifestyles and experiences. In that context, food is providing individuals, especially those with economic means, with more freedom to express various aspects of their identities.
Bourdieu’s work has also—perhaps unfairly—been criticized for its emphasis on the representational aspect of taste over its more active role in shaping class relations (Sloan 2004). As Bourdieu noted, taste is not static but negotiated. For example, when luxury or exotic food commodities become more affordable, the upper class must redefine taste to maintain its distance from the vulgarity and tastelessness of the lower classes. Taste itself becomes contested, appropriated, manipulated, and guarded in ways that are constitutive of class relations. In that context, practices often become more important than objects of consumption. Although cosmopolitanism and omnivorousness threaten the exclusiveness of upper-class behavior, distinction is reproduced through consumption of food described as “authentic,” “communal,” “locally produced,” and “ethically sourced.” Cultural elites are therefore not literally omnivorous, but instead pick and choose food carefully to navigate the fine line between the authentic and the vulgar and maintain their social position.
In the large body of research influenced by Bourdieu’s work on taste, little attention is given to the role of place (Cheyne and Binder 2010). We argue that a place perspective may be useful in generating a broader understanding of how taste is produced—one that acknowledges social difference beyond class and the active role of taste in (re)producing these differences. By “placing” taste within the material settings and geographic imaginaries where it is formed, acquired, and enacted, we aim to draw attention to the intricate and co-constitutive connections between taste and place. In particular, we highlight how food and understandings of good taste have an impact on place, while at the same time, place contributes social and cultural meanings to particular foods and influences the formation of taste. As Urry (1995) argues, the significance of place is heightened in a postmodern context where aesthetics and sensory experiences are an important aspect of consumer cultures. An aesthetically stimulating restaurant, for instance, is a place that broadens the role of food in the pursuit of postmodern lifestyles and the expression of cosmopolitan tastes. In other words, there is an increasingly important dynamic relationship between taste and place in ways that tend to reproduce social difference.
Within that place-based framework, it is also useful to think about taste as an embodied