Evaluative Authority without Monopoly: Food Criticism and Moral Distinction in the Digital Age

• In Event: Sociology of Culture Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 1. Digital Publics & Algorithmic Culture(s)

Abstract

This paper examines how evaluative authority is reconfigured in cultural fields following the erosion of institutional monopolies of judgment. Focusing on food criticism in Brazil — a domain characterized by late institutionalization and rapid digital transformation — the study investigates how journalistic critics respond to the emergence of new evaluative actors operating on digital platforms. Since the mid-2000s, blogs and later social media have enabled non-professional actors to publicly evaluate restaurants, challenging the historical concentration of gastronomic judgment within newspapers and specialized magazines. While prior research has documented the decline of journalistic monopolies and the expansion of participatory evaluation online, less attention has been paid to how dominant critics actively reproduce authority under conditions of intensified competition. Drawing on qualitative analysis of interviews with journalistic and independent critics, archival restaurant reviews, jury composition lists from major national gastronomic awards, and public position-takings published in newspapers and online magazines, this paper analyzes struggles over the right to judge and the criteria through which authority is defined. The findings show that journalistic critics’ authority does not disappear with the loss of exclusive control over evaluation. Instead, it is reasserted through a diversification of legitimizing resources. As independent critics increasingly mobilize technical vocabularies and claims to objectivity similar to those of established critics, authority can no longer rest solely on institutional affiliation. In response, journalistic critics shift the terrain of distinction toward moralized forms of professionalism, emphasizing restraint, ethical conduct, and participation in restricted circuits of consecration such as national awards. By demonstrating how evaluative authority is displaced from technical expertise toward moral and ethical claims, the paper contributes to debates in the sociology of culture and valuation by showing how dominance persists not through exclusion alone, but through the strategic redefinition of legitimate criteria of judgment in digitally transformed cultural fields.

Author

• Camila Crumo, University of São Paulo