Elite Authenticity

Know about the book -

Elite Authenticity is written by Gwynne Mapes and published by Oxford University Press. It's available with International Standard Book Number or ISBN identification 0197533477 (ISBN 10) and 9780197533475 (ISBN 13).

This is a book about how people talk and write about food - in the New York Times, on social media, in restaurants, and around the dinner table. Using multimodal critical discourse analysis, Mapes focuses in particular on how "authenticity" proliferates in these various examples of "elite food discourse," and how it is used by stakeholders to simultaneously claim and deny social prestige. By emphasizing things like simplicity, historicity, and locality/sustainability (among others), people downplay their eliteness on the grounds of "good taste" and responsible consumerism. Ultimately, this work is a critique of that ways in which contemporary food practices (re)inforce status competition and class hierarchy.