“The Social Construction of an Aesthetic Kind: “Foodie” and Foodies”

05 December 2018; 16:00-18:00

Senate House – Room 246

 

Abstract:

There is a small genre of think pieces about the term “foodie” which are designed to inform us that the word is problematic and that we ought to stop using it. But criticisms of the term “foodie” are unpersuasive. The term usefully functions to pick out an important aspect of contemporary life—a distinctive and recently emergent social role with an aesthetic dimension (i.e., an aesthetic social role or aesthetic person kind) like other such socially constructed social roles such as the dandy, the punk, and the hipster. Or so I shall argue in this talk.