Strategies of Middle-class Distinction and the Production of Inequality in Food Media Texts: Good Food and Worthy Food Culture in Mainstream Broadsheet Journalism
Strategies of Middle-class Distinction and the Production of Inequality in Food Media Texts: Good Food and Worthy Food Culture in Mainstream Broadsheet Journalism

Summary/Abstract: This article examines discourses connected to distinction and the middle class in the journalistic context of organic and local food. The analysis investigates how good food and worthyfood culture are understood in the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. Through discourse analysis, the article asks how economic or cultural privilege is made visible or invisible in the texts, and do these strategies utilize middle-class ideals in legitimizing hegemonicfood culture.This article focuses on a) discursive strategies employed in upholding class-related inequality and b) the aesthetics through which middle-class culture is portrayed as legitimate.The analysis introduces four discourses present in the data: Reassurance of equality, Cultural strategies of distinction, Authenticity, and Nostalgia. The article concludes that thesediscourses secure the hegemony of contemporary middle-class food culture that relies ondepoliticized understandings of food practices as being merely manifestations of individuallifestyle in contrast with relating to cultural or economic resources.

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