Poetics 92 (2022) 101654

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Poetics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/poetic

Moral and aesthetic consecration and higher status consumers’

tastes: The “good” food revolution
Shyon Baumann a, *, Emily Huddart Kennedy b, Josée Johnston a
a
Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Canada
b
Department of Sociology, University of British Columbia, Canada

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Research on the tastes of higher status groups has long prioritized analysis of aesthetic prefer­
Food ences. However, recent work has brought more attention to the moral dimensions of tastes. In this
Tastes paper, we investigate the intersection of morality and aesthetics in tastes. Drawing on survey data
Morality
and focus groups, we investigate how aesthetic and moral concerns operate in the domain of food,
Aesthetics
Social status
and meat specifically. A latent class analysis identifies four orientations to food that differ in their
emphasis on aesthetic versus moral concerns. We identify classes that we label pragmatism,
aestheticism, moralism, and moral aestheticism . These orientations toward moral and aesthetic
concerns in food are associated with economic capital, cultural capital, age, political ideology,
race, and gender. Respondents with higher social status are most likely to hold the moral
aestheticism orientation, which simultaneously upholds moral and aesthetic concerns. Analysis of
focus group data brings the nature of each of these four orientations into sharper focus. Further
survey analyses show these four orientations predict high status aesthetic preferences and moral
orientations beyond food, and they also predict the holding of symbolic and social boundaries
related to moral judgments in food. We argue that research on high status cultural consumption
must conceptualize and measure moral consecration alongside aesthetic consecration in order to
better understand the social stratification of tastes.

1. Introduction

What do higher status people prefer in their cultural consumption options? One robust finding in past research is that higher status
consumers are attracted to consecrated aesthetic choices (Bourdieu 1984). For example, a stereotypical high-status person listens to
music that is appraised by music critics, reads books that won literary awards, and eats in restaurants that are well-reviewed and
recommended by their high-status friends. Bourdieu (1984:466) demonstrated that members of dominant classes tend to have
internalized schemes of perception and appreciation that lead them to prefer consecrated cultural practices and goods that befit their
class position. Bourdieu’s insights about classed consumption remain broadly influential, especially as scholars affirm the ability of
social elites to consume a wide variety of consecrated cultural forms (e.g., Cattani, Ferriani, and Allison 2014; Johnston and Baumann
2015; Peterson 2005; Warde et al. 2007).
In Bourdieu’s (1984) analyses, “the aesthetic disposition” is a central concept, referring to the cognitive and perceptual schemes
that people with high cultural capital deploy when evaluating cultural consumption options. Bourdieu’s analysis goes beyond

* Corresponding author,
E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Baumann).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2022.101654
Received 16 June 2021; Received in revised form 3 December 2021; Accepted 3 February 2022
Available online 2 March 2022
0304-422X/© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
S. Baumann et al. Poetics 92 (2022) 101654

describing the relationship between class and cultural consumption to explain why certain cultural options are consecrated. Cultural
goods that become consecrated tend to hold aesthetic characteristics, such as those features that symbolize luxury or a distance from
necessity. Other scholars have highlighted additional aesthetic features. For example, Griswold (1987) argues that cultural objects that
possess “cultural power” will demonstrate multivocality, a valued aesthetic characteristic.
In this paper, we turn our attention to moral dimensions of consecrated cultural forms. Although Bourdieu (1984) did theorize the
moral aspects of cultural consumption, it is only recently that empirical research on high-status tastes has shifted the focus away from
strictly aesthetic dimensions of cultural consumption and toward moral dimensions (Carfagna et al. 2014; Friedman and Reeves 2020;
Hahl, Zuckerman and Kim 2017; Hanquinet 2018; Kennedy, Baumann and Johnston 2019; Kennedy and Horne 2020). These authors
identify the moral signaling or moral valence inherent in particular cultural options as important to understanding high-status tastes.
Just as higher status people are oriented to particular aesthetic features, they are likewise oriented toward socially-valued, moral
features within cultural consumption. We build ambitiously on this turn toward understanding the moral dimensions of high-status
tastes by using mixed methods and an abductive analytic strategy to propose and empirically support the concept of moral conse­
cration. Hitlin and Vaisey (2013, p.55) explain that one of the ways social scientists advance our understanding of morality is by
capturing how social groups define what is deemed to be moral. In this tradition, which reflects our own engagement with the concept
of morality, the emphasis is on identifying, “universal standards of right and wrong linked to concerns about justice, fairness, and
harm”. In this way, researchers can conceptualize “social arrangements along a dimension of how moral they are”, a dimension that, in
principle, ranges from immoral to moral.
We argue that in order to understand which cultural options have the most symbolic value, and are therefore most appealing to
higher status consumers, scholars should consider, conceptualize, and measure levels of both aesthetic and moral consecration. By way
of example, foie gras has been a high-status food option for a very long time, existing within the French tradition and typically being
perceived as expensive and refined (DeSoucey 2016). Foie gras is also, however, produced through a means of force-feeding fowl that is
now commonly viewed as a violation of animal welfare standards (Guémené and Guy 2004). In response to this change of view, some
high-end restaurants have removed foie gras from their menus (DeSoucey 2016). In foie gras, we see a case of an
aesthetically-consecrated cultural option that is lacking moral consecration. We can also think of veal as having a similar consecration
profile. Meanwhile, ethical, but refined, protein choices, like pastured heritage pork, free-range chicken and line-caught fish, have
moved onto high-end menus1. These patterns suggest that we should consider both the aesthetic and moral consecration levels of food
in order to fully understand high-status consumption.
Foods can reflect a range of aesthetic qualities and moral commitments but food is by no means the only consumption realm where
aesthetic and moral dimensions of cultural objects come together. In fact, we see both these dimensions in many cultural consumption
realms. For example, a novel such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale brings together highly-valued literary aesthetic qualities
with feminist ethics. Similarly, the television series Atlanta incorporates avant-garde narrative and visual qualities at the same time
that it employs story lines that discuss white supremacy and anti-Black racism. Such cultural objects are both aesthetically and morally
consecrated (e.g., Mead 2017; Morris 2018).
The turn toward understanding the moral dimensions of tastes raises important questions about the nature of high-status con­
sumption. In this article, we are interested in knowing whether classed cultural consumption preferences are oriented toward both the
aesthetic and moral characteristics of consumption options simultaneously, using the case of food. We also aim to understand whether
these concerns and preferences extend beyond the specific case of food, toward other cultural realms. And finally, we seek to estimate
whether these patterns influence how people interact, since, for tastes and preferences to matter for inequality, they must manifest in
social interaction (Erickson 1996). Accordingly, we ask, first, can we identify distinct orientations to food based on aesthetic pref­
erences and moral priorities? Second, are aesthetic and moral orientations in food consumption choices associated with social status
and other demographic measures? Third, are aesthetic and moral orientations in food transposable to cultural consumption more
broadly? And fourth, do aesthetic and moral orientations in food lead to drawing symbolic and social boundaries? In answering these
questions, we are attuned to different possibilities for how aesthetic and moral preferences may interact, including the possibility that
higher status people might lean toward aesthetic versus moral qualities, or vice versa, or they might prefer options that are consecrated
on both dimensions.
To answer our questions, we draw on original survey and focus group data we collected in order to investigate issues of taste and
morality in food, and particularly meat, as a category of food with salient aesthetic and moral qualities. We work abductively between
these sources, using the survey data to establish key patterns and associations involving social status and consumption preferences. We
use the focus group data to help illuminate and clarify those patterns and associations, and to highlight the social significance of classed
cultural consumption preferences. Through a latent class analysis, we identify four classes of people with specific orientations to the
aesthetics and morality of food. We examine the demographic correlates of these classes to establish connections between these orien­
tations and social status net of other demographic characteristics, and we also turn to our focus group data to enrich our understanding of
these orientations. We then assess how well these orientations can predict high-status aesthetic and moral preferences outside the realm
of food to establish the broader applicability of our analysis of moral consecration. Finally, we present evidence from our survey and focus
groups to show how aesthetic and moral preferences are foundations for both symbolic boundaries and social boundaries.

1
Although our focus is on moral consecration, the adjective “ethical” is most commonly used in the sociology of consumption to describe market
choices that seek to signal a commitment to justice, sustainability, animal welfare, or other higher-order concerns. Thus, we retain the word
“ethical” when describing products that make or are perceived to make moral commitments. In neither case are we trying to definitively label
anything moral / immoral, ethical / unethical.

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S. Baumann et al. Poetics 92 (2022) 101654

2. Aesthetics and Morals in High-Status Consumption

While the class-patterning of tastes has long been recognized, over time the conceptualization of the nature of the link between class
and tastes has evolved. Historically, high status was conveyed by consuming rarefied, highbrow things, conspicuously (Veblen 1899)
and with an eye to signalling social differentiation (Simmel 1957). Bourdieu’s classic work (1984) documented a pattern of stratified
class consumption in 1960s France where the dominant class possessed a high degree of cultural capital that afforded these consumers
an aesthetic disposition that oriented them toward consecrated forms of culture. Aesthetic consecration refers to the esteem and prestige
that accrue to cultural works and cultural producers through the collective recognition afforded by influential actors in a field.
Crucially, consecration is not a binary, but instead can be present along a spectrum from no consecration to a high level of conse­
cration. The theory of cultural capital, specifically that family socialization and formal education, through the habitus, shape aesthetic
preferences in adulthood, has received strong empirical support across many (predominantly Western) contexts (e.g., Holt 1998;
Nagel and Lemel 2019; Notten et al. 2012; Scherger and Savage 2010; Warde et al. 1999; Yaish and Katz-Gerro 2012). As an overall
organizing principle, what privileged people learn, perceptually at a practical level of consciousness, is to appreciate goods and
practices that signal a distance from necessity or a taste of luxury (Bourdieu 1984). From a Kantian perspective, the
non-instrumentality of cultural options is central to their aesthetic valuation; high-status tastes are oriented toward an appreciation of
aesthetics that uphold beauty for beauty’s sake (in whatever form beauty takes in a particular instance).
At the same time, past research has demonstrated that high-status tastes change over time in terms of which cultural options are
preferred. In the US context, DiMaggio (1982, 1992) and Levine (1990) show that consecrated aesthetic genres and objects have shifted
in response to societal changes. More recently, research on omnivorousness has shown that high-status tastes have broadened to
include aesthetic genres and objects that have been recently consecrated (Peterson 2005), while other work has illustrated how the
expression of cultural capital evolves over time to find new expressions (Friedman et al. 2015; Prieur and Savage 2013). Despite the
broadening of expressions of high-status tastes to include points of overlap with low-status tastes, cultural consumption remains
stratified by status (e.g., Bennett et al. 2009; Chan and Goldthorpe 2007; Flemmen et al. 2019a). These studies have some differences
regarding their arguments about the ways that social status and tastes are related, but they are united in a strong focus on the aesthetic
dimensions of cultural goods and practices for understanding high-status tastes.
Bourdieu (1984) discussed the importance of conceptions of moral worth in legitimizing class boundaries, and Lamont (1992)
expands on this observation through extensive interview research conducted with upper-class men in France and the United States. On
the basis of contrasts in the specific types of moral boundaries her participants drew, Lamont demonstrates the importance of moral
judgments for self-worth and the practice of drawing boundaries between in-groups and out-groups. More recent work has turned to
classed perceptions of the moral worth of opinions. This is the focus of De Keere’s (2020) analysis of survey data collected from Flemish
households. De Keere describes a moral space for issues, one that is structured by cultural and economic capital. Those with higher
economic and cultural capital shared a moral space characterized by egalitarian views on issues like climate change and immigration.
This matters for the construction of social hierarchies. As De Keere (2020: 2) argues, people, “gain access to class-specific privileges and
resources not only because they value the same cultural style or have a similar economic profile, but because they are governed by the
same moral dispositions.” In other words, moral beliefs play a role in the creation and maintenance of social hierarchies (see also,
Flemmen et al. 2019b). Recent work (Puetz 2021) finds that tastes, “operate as platforms from which people draw moral and esthetic
boundaries”. These boundaries demonstrate that moral and aesthetic criteria operate simultaneously.
We build on prior research that demonstrates how class stratification maps onto moral evaluations of people (e.g., Lamont 1992;
Puetz 2021) and moral evaluations of opinions (e.g., De Keere 2020) by turning our attention to perceptions of the moral worth of
cultural consumption choices. Prior work on class patterns in cultural consumption choices has focused primarily on the aesthetic
qualities of those choices, with some choices being aesthetically-consecrated, giving them high symbolic value. However, more recent
work suggests higher status consumers are also concerned with the moral qualities of the goods they prefer. For example, Atkinson and
Deeming (2015) find that British consumers with the most cultural and economic capital prioritize ethical consumption in food. In
work that seeks to develop an understanding of motivations behind moral preferences in consumption, Hahl et al. (2017) find that
high-status tastes are oriented toward lowbrow aesthetic consumption choices because their perceived authenticity can signal moral
worth for the consumers, which is especially valuable to reinforce high status when the legitimacy of that status can be called into
question. Building on this finding, Friedman and Reeves (2020) demonstrate that British elite tastes have changed over decades. In the
post-WWII period elites began to include everyday activities common across classes in their cultural repertoires. The authors argue that
these genres of leisure activities held moral qualities that allowed elites to signal “ordinariness” and “authenticity” to help legitimize
their elite status at a time when snobbery was morally suspect. In a similar vein, in her interviews with very wealthy New Yorkers,
(Sherman, 2019) finds that her economically-elite participants frame their consumption in moral terms. Specifically, these elite
consumers highlight the moral acceptability of their choices by tying them to perceptions of restraint, middle-class typicality, and
ordinariness.
Other work has begun to clarify how aesthetic and moral preferences relate to one another. In work that focuses on the moral worth
of cultural consumption choices, Hanquinet, Roose, and Davage (2014) suggest that “social reflexivity” is another dimension on which
art is evaluated and matters to higher status people, and that this dimension of art escaped Bourdieu’s notice. Hanquinet (2018)
expands on this idea to theorize that the moral dimensions of cultural consumption choices are inextricable from their aesthetic di­
mensions. And Kuipers et al. (2019:394) argue that these valuations are increasingly blurring after a general trend in the 20th century
of the “separation of aesthetic and moral ‘rationalities.’” Arfini’s (2019) case study of the production of “authentic” tortellini by
artisanal craftworkers illustrates concretely how the perception of aesthetic value is intertwined with the perception of moral value.
Moral dimensions of tastes have been investigated in the realm of ethical consumption. Carfagna et al. (2014) study the tastes of

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S. Baumann et al. Poetics 92 (2022) 101654

high cultural capital consumers in order to build on and update earlier work by Holt (1998). Whereas Holt identified a range of
aesthetic traits valued by high cultural capital consumers – including cosmopolitanism, naturalness, idealism, among others – Car­
fagna et al. (2014:175) identify an inversion of some of these earlier traits that reflect “how the severity and scale of global envi­
ronmental crisis has pervaded the American consciousness since the mid-1990s.” For example, a preference for cosmopolitanism and
idealism seems to have shifted toward a preference for localism and materiality, as high cultural capital consumers valued local
provenance, and small-scale, manual labor. Together these traits represent a moral orientation toward sustainability, which the au­
thors label the “eco-habitus.” They argue that high cultural capital consumers prefer cultural goods and practices that signal com­
mitments to achieving sustainability. While environmental sustainability is one kind of moral stance that can appeal to higher status
people, there are other moral concerns that cultural goods and practices can reflect and that higher status people can prefer.
Food is an ideal cultural realm for exploring a range of moral dimensions in cultural consumption. In a review of the “ethical
foodscape”, geographers Goodman, Maye, and Holloway (2010: 1782) write of the ubiquity of ethical food: “the good food ‘revolution’
– from foods defined variously as healthy, low-carbon, fairly traded, local, organic, free-range, cruelty-free, natural and/or slow – has
no doubt come to a supermarket shelf, farm shop, TV set, book store, magazine rack, or even a kitchen table near you.” Studies of foodie
discourse suggest that desirable foods are not only delicious, authentic, and exotic, but are also sustainable, eco-friendly, and
ethically-certified (Goodman, Johnston, and Cairns 2017; Phillipov and Gale 2020). As Johnston and Baumann write, “many foodies
not only understand what an authentic ceviche is, but they also worry about whether the seafood that made up their ceviche is from a
sustainable source” (2015: 115). Food scholarship suggests that for high-status consumers, delicious (aesthetically-valued) foods are
frequently connected to good foods (morally-consecrated) (Emontspool and Georgi, 2017). However, past research is unclear about
how individuals’ taste profiles accommodate both aesthetic and moral preferences. Earlier work by Kennedy et al. (2019) uses
intercept survey data from Toronto, Canada to suggest that the highest status people value foods that conform both to the ethical and
aesthetic preferences of foodie culture. We build on this work by employing data from a national quota sample, by combining
qualitative and quantitative data analysis, and by using measures specifically designed to understand how aesthetic and moral ori­
entations interact in cultural consumption. We also address crucial questions for understanding the significance of high-status aesthetic
and moral orientations in cultural consumption: Are these orientations transposable – does an orientation toward aesthetic or moral
consecration in food transpose to other cultural realms? And do these tastes play a role in the maintenance of symbolic and social
boundaries?

3. Data and Methods

The mixed methods data for this paper are drawn from a larger study on Canadians’ orientations toward ethical meat. In this paper,
we use quantitative (survey) data and qualitative (focus group) data to examine the associations between social class and aesthetic and
ethical orientations to food. We take an abductive approach influenced by calls for a “forensic social science” (Goldberg 2015), in that
rather than seeking to test a range of hypotheses, we cast a wide net on a specific topic of interest to generate phenomenologically valid
arguments about what motivates higher status consumers’ food consumption patterns (see also: Martin 2011). Our analysis is driven by
an overarching question – what do higher status people prefer in their cultural consumption options? We address this question through
an iterative process, in our case, moving abductively between analyses of the survey and focus group data (Swedberg 2014). For ease of
presentation, we present details about our survey data and analysis separately from details about our focus group data and analysis.

3.1. Survey: Sample, Measures and Analytic Approach

The survey was administered online using a Qualtrics panel in the autumn of 2019 (n= 2328). Respondents were screened in order
to produce a sample that reflects quotas among the Canadian population in terms of gender, age (18+), race, education, income, and
province of residence.2
We designed our survey as part of a larger project on meat consumption and production. In addition to questions about meat, our
survey included questions about food more generally to provide context for understanding attitudes and behaviors towards meat. To
address our first research question (can we identify distinct orientations to food based on aesthetic preferences and moral priorities?),
we analyze survey questions relating to aesthetic and ethical orientations to food. (See the appendix for sample means on all measures
employed in this article.) In this step, we conduct a latent class analysis without covariates using Latent GOLD 5.1 (Vermunt and
Magidson 2016). Latent class analysis uses a set of indicators to identify clusters that are based on an unobserved categorical grouping
and assigns a likelihood of class membership for each case. To identify classes, we rely on three indicators that previous research
(Johnston and Baumann 2007) points to as reflecting an aesthetic orientation in food and four indicators modified from Schoolman
(2019) that relate to a moral orientation in food. The aesthetic questions are: 1) “I consider myself a foodie.” (strongly disagree to

2
Samples generated from panelists for firms such as Qualtrics are quota samples. These samples are subject to the limitation that they might not
be representative of the national population insofar as participation requires internet access and is based on voluntary inclusion by respondents.
Internet access in Canada is very common, with more than 94% of Canadians having home internet access (Statistics Canada 2019). Some studies of
quota sampling have supported the use of quota samples to generalize findings (e.g., Zhang et al. 2020), or at least found that quota samples provide
substantively similar results to probability samples (Moser and Stuart 1953), while reducing problems with high levels of non-response often found
with probability samples. We acknowledge that the likelihood of participation in a quota sample can be influenced by the topic of the research
(Yang and Banamah 2014), and so we caution that our results may be limited in their representativeness.

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S. Baumann et al. Poetics 92 (2022) 101654

strongly agree); 2) “I seek out foods from different ethnicities and cultures.” (strongly disagree to strongly agree); and 3) “When I
travel, I prefer to eat at restaurant chains that I know.” (strongly disagree to strongly agree, reverse coded) The indicators oper­
ationalizing moral orientations are: 1) “When you grocery shop, how often do you AVOID buying certain products for political, ethical
or environmental reasons (also known as ’boycotting’)? (never to always) 2) “It’s unethical that many animals live in crowded
conditions.” (strongly disagree to strongly agree) 3) “Indicate how important each of the following factors is when choosing which
foods to buy: environmental impact.” (not important to extremely important) 4) “The way that meat is produced in this country is a big
problem.” (strongly disagree to strongly agree). We also include an indicator that implicates both aesthetic and moral judgments
(DeSoucey 2016), How comfortable are you with eating foie gras” (not comfortable to comfortable), foie gras being a food that is often
aesthetically valued but morally condemned34. Following the initial specification of our classes, we then re-estimate the classes while
including covariates, in order to address our second research question (are aesthetic and moral orientations in food consumption
choices associated with SES and other demographic measures?). This process allows us to assess the relationships between the classes
and a set of demographic control variables along with focal variables related to social stratification5. In addition to questions on
gender, race, and age, we include a scale for political orientation6. The scale is based on two questions: “How would you describe your
political opinions on SOCIAL issues (e.g., environment, women’s rights, religion, multiculturalism)?” and “How would you describe
your political opinions on ECONOMIC issues (taxes and government programs)?” Response options range from “Very liberal” (=1) to
“Very conservative” (=7) on a seven-point scale. We add scores from these two questions, with higher numbers indicating conser­
vatism, and the scale ranging from 2 to 14. We also include a question about household income which asked the respondent to select
one of nine bands for household income (see Table A3). We include a question about childhood arts exposure, “During your childhood
how frequently did your parents or guardians engage you with the arts (e.g., music, theatre)?” Response options range from “not at all”
(=1) to “all the time” (=7). Finally, we include a question about respondent’s highest educational qualification obtained. We combine
responses of “No certificate, diploma or degree” and “Secondary school diploma or equivalency certificate” as the reference group. We
combine responses of “Apprenticeship or trades certificate or diploma” and “College, CEGEP or other non-university certificate or
diploma” and “University below bachelor’s degree” to create a category of Moderate Education. We combine responses of “Bachelor’s
degree” and “Master’s degree” and “Doctorate or professional designation (e.g., M.D., D.D.M.) to create a category of High Education.
The next part of our analysis addresses our third and fourth research questions (are aesthetic and moral orientations in food
transposable to cultural consumption more broadly? And, do aesthetic and moral orientations in food lead to drawing symbolic and
social boundaries?). We follow a “three-step approach” (Vermunt 2010) for estimating relationships between the latent classes and two
sets of “distal outcomes” (Bakk et al. 2013). Our first set of distal outcomes are aesthetic and moral orientations beyond the case of food
(see below for detail), which addresses our third research question. Our second set of distal outcomes is holding symbolic and social
boundaries corresponding to moral evaluations in food, our fourth research question. For the three-step approach, we use the pro­
cedure available with Latent GOLD, which incorporates correction methods to account for the introduction of bias that occurs when
cases are assigned to latent classes based on their posterior class membership probabilities assigning class membership to cases7. In this
process, after class membership is assigned, that assignment is used as an explanatory variable for estimating distal outcomes via a
regression model8.
We constructed scales for the orientations beyond food from a number of survey items. In order to measure high cultural capital
aestheticism, we asked respondents to indicate their engagement in 14 pastimes over the previous year. We included a range of
traditionally high and low cultural capital activities. To create a scale, we first conducted a principal components analysis with varimax
rotation to determine the number of factors and identify a high cultural capital (HCC) aestheticism factor. The items are in line with
findings of prior research on HCC aestheticism (e.g., Bennett et al. 2009). The survey asked, “In the past twelve months, which of the

3
We follow the reasoning of Yamaguchi (2000) and Knight and Brinton (2017) in choosing to dichotomize the variables we selected to identify
the latent classes. Using ordered variables is “likely to generate more latent classes with “mixed” response patterns, which are relatively unstable
because the latent variable’s states become more continuous in nature” (Yamaguchi 2000:1714). The eight questions vary in their response options,
asking about agreement, frequency, or importance. The dichotomization results in a score of 0 representing disagreement, infrequency, discomfort,
or unimportance, and a score of 1 representing agreement, high frequency, comfort, or high importance. Neutral response options were grouped
with disagreement, infrequency, or unimportance (score of 0).
4
In order to identify the latent class solution with the best number of classes, we repeated the procedure and specified different numbers of
classes. For details about the model selection procedure, see the appendix. We identified the four-class solution as the best model.
5
We ran this cluster model with covariates with different numbers of classes and ensured that the 4-class solution remained the best solution.
Results are available upon request. Moreover, as a robustness check, we also used the three-step process described below to estimate the re­
lationships between the classes and the covariates. In that process, we used the three-step method in Latent GOLD where we specified our classes
without covariates, we assigned class-membership to cases, and then estimated the relationship between each class and all the covariates, with class
membership as a dependent variable. The results using the three-step method were substantively identical to results obtained from estimating the
classes simultaneously with covariates. Results are available upon request.
6
We rely on racial categories employed by Statistics Canada, and race is one of the quotas used to construct our sample. However, due to small
cell sizes, we combine East Asian, South Asian and Arab into a broader category of Asian. We are also forced to combine some racial categories into
the category of “other race.”
7
Class assignment introduces classification error because class membership in latent class analysis is probabilistic and the assignment is therefore
imprecise.
8
We use proportional class assignment. Proportional class assignment assigns each case to each class with a weight equal to the posterior
membership probability for that class (Vermunt and Magidson 2016).

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S. Baumann et al. Poetics 92 (2022) 101654

following activities have you done.” The activities in the HCC aestheticism factor include: visited an art museum; watched a foreign
film; went to a symphony, ballet or opera; listened to jazz music; purchased art for my home; and read a restaurant review. The HCC
aestheticism factor explains the greatest amount of variation (18%) and each of these items load highly onto the first factor (loadings
are .400 or higher). As evidenced by an estimate of Cronbach’s alpha, the items have high inter-item reliability (alpha=.614) and the
alpha score is not improved by removing any of the items. The index ranges from zero to six, with a mean score of 1.66 (s.d.=1.519)9.
We model this variable as a count variable.
Compared with the extensive body of research examining HCC aestheticism, there is far less research into HCC moralism. However,
De Keere (2020) suggests that those with higher cultural capital are more likely to express strong views that issues like climate change
are serious social problems and to feel a sense of responsibility to take personal action to address it. With respect to evaluating the
principle role of governments, those with high cultural capital stressed the need to address social and economic inequality, rather than
individual rights and freedoms (De Keere 2020). Similarly, Flemmen et al. (2019b, p. 169) identify associations between social class
and political values, in particular, the space of high cultural and economic capital (the upper left quadrant in Bourdieusian maps of
social space) corresponds to a “liberal, ‘new left’ fraction”. In our survey, we asked respondents to indicate how strongly they agree
that climate change, sexism, discrimination against racial minorities, and homophobia are pressing social problems requiring urgent
attention and action10. A reliability analysis indicates that the items can be used as a scale (Cronbach’s alpha=.816). The scale ranges
from one to five, with a mean score of 3.83 (s.d.=.94). We created the scale from averaging the scores on each individual question, and
the scale has 17 levels (see Table A4). We model this variable as a continuous variable11.
Our final research question asks whether aesthetic preferences and moral concerns in food relate to symbolic and social boundaries.
To measure a symbolic boundary that people draw around meat choices, we asked respondents to indicate how strongly they agreed
with the statement, “Good people make it a priority to buy ‘ethical’ meat (humanely raised and sustainable)” (strongly disagree to
strongly agree). To measure a social boundary around meat, we asked respondents how strongly they agreed with the statement,
“Many people I know have reservations about eating meat” (strongly agree to strongly disagree). These questions are primarily
measuring moral boundaries. We dichotomize these variables (strongly agree or agree = 1) and regress class membership on these
indicators of symbolic and social boundaries using logistic regression12.

3.2. Focus Groups: Sample, Themes, and Analytic Approach

We conducted focus groups with meat consumers in Toronto and Vancouver in order to clarify and deepen our understanding of the
relationships we observe in the survey data. Specifically, we employ our focus group data to illuminate the nature of the food ori­
entations we find through the LCA (the first research question), and to look at how judgments of food are bound up with social class and
perceptions of moral worth (the last research question). In both sites, we recruited people who expressed an appreciation for meat as
well as an awareness that meat is implicated in social and ecological issues. In Toronto, we conducted five focus groups with a total of
18 meat consumers. In Vancouver, we conducted four focus groups with a total of 16 meat consumers. (See Table A5 for an overview of
our focus group participants’ sociodemographic characteristics.) Pseudonyms are used for all participants to ensure confidentiality.
There are two unique features of our approach to recruitment for the focus groups. First, we targeted people who seek out and
consume “ethical meat”, which we defined as meat which is produced in a way that is healthy, humane and sustainable. Within this
specific criterion, we also worked to have representation from people with different motivations for choosing ethical meat, including
health, animal welfare, and environmental protection, and we aimed to achieve diversity in age, gender, race/ethnicity, and income.
Ultimately, the people we spoke with varied in the way they defined ethical meat and in the positions they took towards meat. We
sampled people who take, at times, the position of moral aestheticism. But no one took that position all the time.
The second unique feature of our recruitment strategy is that we only actively recruited one participant per focus group and asked
that person to invite three to four friends who were also interested in, but not necessarily strongly committed to, ethical meat. This
approach had two advantages: it introduced heterogeneity into our sample, as the primary participants sometimes included people
who were not necessarily regimented ethical meat-eaters. And it meant that the participants in the focus group had a strong rapport
and felt comfortable challenging and disagreeing with one another. In this way, our data collection took full advantage of the strengths
of focus groups as a data-making tool: the groups’ conversations reflected the particular language and interests of the participants; the
group was able to generate fully-articulated accounts by drawing one another out into debates and discussions; and, by observing the
focus groups, we had the opportunity, “to observe the process of collective sense-making in action” (Wilkinson 1998, p.181).
The focus group guide elicits participants’ aesthetic appreciation for meat as well as their moral concerns with meat and animal
agriculture. In order to get a sense of the extent to which these two dimensions motivated participants’ meat choices, we asked
participants to tell us what meats they love to eat and what meats they would never eat, and asked them more specifically how they
identify meat that is “ethical”. Our analytic approach to understanding how participants defined aesthetic and moral properties of meat
and the relative importance of each dimension relied on a two-stage coding strategy. In the first stage, we wrote structured analytic

9
This low mean score is reflective of the fact that small numbers of people are engaged in many of these very high cultural capital activities (see
Table A4), which has been a pattern observed in past research (DiMaggio and Mukhtar 2004).
10
We recognize that these views are politicized, in addition to being moralized, and return to this issue in the discussion.
11
As a robustness check, we also modeled this variable as a count variable with Poisson regression. Results are substantively identical.
12
We dichotomized these variables (strongly disagree to neutral = 0, agree to strongly agree = 1) to take advantage of the interpretability of
logistic regression coefficients vs. ordinal logistic coefficients.

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S. Baumann et al. Poetics 92 (2022) 101654

memos immediately after each focus group to synthesize observations about the relative importance of moral and aesthetic motiva­
tions for the participants, and to think through various ways that each dimension was signaled and discussed. Reflecting on the
consumer orientations that emerged in our statistical analysis, our second stage of analysis involved line-by-line coding to see if the
data corroborate the existence of these four orientations to food and meat. We also worked to link excerpts of text to aesthetic and
moral themes (e.g., moral–connection to a producer) to support and sharpen our claims about how these concerns relate to social
interactions. This iterative coding strategy is based on Saldaña’s (2015) analytic and focused coding techniques, respectively.
The next theme that we explore in the focus groups relates to symbolic boundary work. In order to understand the role that meat
consumption patterns play in the distinctions that participants make about their own and others’ eating practices, we asked several
questions. First, we asked participants to describe the stereotypical “ethical” meat eater and the stereotypical “unethical” meat eater.
To analyze the symbolic boundary work in our focus groups we used the same analytic process as described above. The first stage of
analysis (the analytic memo) centered on the following questions: Do participants see ethical meat-eaters as a higher status group?
How do they see people who don’t eat ethical meat? What boundaries do people draw in relation to good meat / bad meat? This process
generated the thematic codes used for the second stage of analysis. In the second stage, we used line-by-line coding to link excerpts of
boundary-work text to thematic categories from stage one (e.g., unethical meat eaters are unaware) as well as the four orientations.

4. Findings

4.1. Identification of Food Orientations and their Demographic Correlates

In this section we address our first two research questions regarding the existence of aesthetic and moral orientations toward food,
and the demographic correlates of those orientations. Our first model is a latent class analysis with no covariates, which allows us to
identify dominant food orientations. As mentioned above, based on the eight survey items relating to food aesthetics and food ethics,
we find that our respondents’ orientations toward food reflect distinct positions characterized across four latent classes (the model
selection procedure is described in the appendix): pragmatism, aestheticism, moralism, and moral aestheticism. Fig. 1 presents the
deviation from the mean for each of the eight questions we use to identify the food orientations, by latent class. Like with other
inductive pattern-finding procedures, latent class analysis requires an interpretive move to characterize the nature of the groupings it
produces. We based our interpretation of the LCA groupings on a reading of the commonalities and differences in mean responses to the
questions, but also based on our knowledge of people’s food orientations, especially regarding meat, gained through our focus group
data. Below we flesh out the nature of the four classes through drawing on the LCA results and focus group data together. We use our
analyses not to definitively identify participants as belonging to a specific category of consumer, but rather to characterize the position-
taking that is represented by each latent class. Underscoring this argument, we often found that focus group participants could hold
opinions and ideas that were in tension or even contradictory, reflecting shifts across orientations. Nonetheless, these opinions and
ideas could be matched with the orientations represented by the latent classes.

4.1.1. Pragmatism
Our first class captures an orientation toward food and meat that has little interest in either aesthetic or moral properties (see
Fig. 1). This orientation is represented by scores below the sample mean on all items. Given its lack of connection with aesthetic and
moral concerns, we label the position-taking here as pragmatism. This is distinct from the tradition of pragmatist sociology and is
instead intended to reflect a practical, “no-nonsense” approach to consumption. The pragmatism orientation reflects 29.4% of the
survey sample, which is the largest of the four classes. Table 1 presents the results of our second model, a latent-class analysis including
demographic covariates, which contributes to our description of the four classes. Compared to the overall sample, pragmatism is an
orientation that is more likely to be held when people have lower income, lower inherited cultural capital, lower educational
attainment, and more conservative politics. Each successively older age group is more likely to be associated with pragmatism, and
holding this position is negatively associated with being Asian and female. To help interpret the log odds, the coefficient for the gender

Fig. 1. Difference from the Mean on Items Across the Four Classes

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S. Baumann et al. Poetics 92 (2022) 101654

Table 1
Demographic Covariates of the Four Classes
Pragmatism Aestheticism Moralism Moral Aestheticism

b/(se) b/(se) b/(se) b/(se)

Female -.360*** -.199*** .279*** .280***

(.053) (.057) (.060) (.069)
Age (Ref = 18-33)
34-48 .221** .164* -.171* -.214**
(.075) (.083) (.077) (.083)
49-62 .235** .130 -.164 -.202*
(.079) (.088) (.086) (.089)
63-93 .338*** .265** -.050 -.553***
(.084) (.093) (.097) (.118)
Race (Ref = White)
Asian -.184* .279*** -.182 .087
(.092) (.077) (.102) (.086)
Indigenous -.104 .028 -.033 .109
(.102) (.104) (.107) (.111)
Black .088 -.111 -.102 .125
(.218) (.224) (.202) (.174)
Other Race -.085 .151 -.126 .059
(.151) (.125) (.179) (.174)
Political Conservatism .058*** .061*** .021 -.139***
(.016) (.017) (.018) (.023)
Household Income -.108*** .081** -.086** .114***
(.024) (.029) (.027) (.034)
Childhood Arts Exposure -.181*** .094** -.055 .142***
(.030) (.031) (.031) (.036)
Education (Ref = Low)
Moderate Education -.094 -.126 -.012 .232**
(.058) (.069) (.065) (.083)
High Education -.203** -.049 -.078 .330***
(.076) (.078) (.082) (.091)

NOTE.—Table presents log odds. Results reflect effect coding where coefficients represent difference between class membership and the grand mean.
Model is weighted with population-equilibrated weights. N = 2328
*
p < 05
**
p < .01; p < .001 (two-tailed test).

variable converts to an odds ratio of .697, meaning that women are more than 30% less likely to hold this orientation than men.
Although our focus groups were not designed to study the pragmatist orientation to meat, we did identify some attitudes and beliefs
articulated by participants that reflected this impulse. The pragmatist perspective is not concerned with either aesthetic or moral
properties of meat, focusing instead on the values of being filling, tasty, and for having been a traditional family staple. Overall, we
could describe the pragmatist perspective on meat-eating as relatively uninterested in the particularities of meat’s provenance, ethics,
or gourmet elaborations.
The pragmatist perspective emerged in certain moments of focus groups. For example, in a Vancouver focus group, Max Easton, a
39-year-old white man with a trade school diploma described his favorite meat, bacon, in a way that focused on its general taste with
little attention to aesthetic or moral concerns: “I know this is such a low cut of meat, but I love bacon. Bacon, bacon, bacon. Give me all
the bacon. Like, ‘Can I put bacon with that?’” Interestingly, Max holds this position while openly acknowledging that bacon isn’t a
particularly high-status food.
While a pragmatist perspective came through episodically in our focus group discussions (e.g., a brief but happy mention of veal, or
bacon, or grocery-store meat), occasionally it was strongly pronounced within a single participant’s general perspective on meat-
eating. This perspective made the participant stand out in a focus group studying conscientious omnivores, where most group
members had significant reservations and concerns about eating meat. For example, in one Vancouver focus group, Mindy Cabello, 38-
year-old Southeast Asian woman with a Bachelor’s degree, seemed a bit out of place in a focus group of conscientious omnivores. At the
outset of the group interview, we asked everyone to share their favorite meat-based meals and to offer a label to describe their
approach to meat-eating. Mindy’s answers contrasted with the general tone in the group (hesitant about meat-eating). In response to
the question about her favorite meat-based meal, she said, “I love pork. And anything that has pork in it, I’m there.” While others
described quite detailed accounts about particular cuts of meat, Mindy was not as discerning in her consumption habits as portrayed in
her focus group contributions. While the other women in the focus group commented on the emotional complexities of eating meat,
Mindy stated succinctly, “I don’t feel guilty about eating meat.” Perhaps even more telling, when asked for a label to describe her diet,
Mindy says, “If I’m hungry, I eat whatever I want to eat.” Overall, the pragmatist impulse is centered around a relatively uncomplicated
and undiscerning enjoyment of meat.

4.1.2. Aestheticism
We label our second class “aestheticism” because this position is characterized by a very strong interest in the aesthetic properties of

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S. Baumann et al. Poetics 92 (2022) 101654

food. At the same time, taking the aestheticist position corresponds with less engagement with ethical concerns. In Fig. 1 we see that
those taking the aestheticist position score far above the sample mean for identifying as a “foodie,” seeking out ethnic foods, avoiding
chain restaurants, and feeling comfortable eating foie gras. In contrast, this position belies weak attachment to the ethical properties of
meat. From Table 1, aestheticism is more likely to be held by those who identify as Asian, with a higher household income, with being
politically conservative, and with engagement with the arts as a child. It is also negatively associated with identifying as a woman. The
combination of position-taking toward food and sociodemographic characteristics suggests that this class reflects traditionally high
cultural capital tastes, in a Bourdieusian sense. This class represents the position taking of 24.4% of the sample.
We saw many responses in our focus groups that we would categorize as expressing aestheticism. When asked to describe her
orientation to meat in a Toronto focus group, Selena, a 30-year-old white woman with a postgraduate degree, called herself a “taste-
atarian”, meaning somebody who prioritized meat when it added “something really good, flavor-wise”. In Vancouver, Cameron
Sawyer, a 35-year-old, mixed race chef with a college certificate, exemplified aestheticism in his comment: “I like to play with meat”.
He elaborated: “You can smoke it, you can cure it, you can braise it, you can do many, many different types of things to it.” These
aesthetic properties are what is “alluring” for Cameron about meat. Unlike those who reflect moralism and moral aestheticism, those
who take the aestheticist position value the “hunt” for meat. As Cameron said, “I will drive across the city to get good meat if it comes
down to it. I will sacrifice convenience for quality every time.”
For the aestheticist position, moral concerns are not central for motivating meat consumption preferences, and do not play a
dominant role in differentiating between meat that tastes “good” or “bad”. While those who espouse aestheticism are aware of the
market for ethical meat, they often dismiss these products as being too expensive, and/or a secondary concern in the pursuit of great
taste. For example, Dahlia, a 55-year-old Iranian-Canadian woman with a Bachelor’s degree, described how she had purchased an
ethically-certified version of grocery store meat, but wouldn’t buy it again because she didn’t think it tasted as good as regular meat. In
another instance, Sandra Appleton, a 34-year-old white woman with a Master’s degree told us that although she tries to pay attention
to the provenance of meat, she finds that, “a lot of the ethically-raised meat is just super expensive.” Even those who are happy to pay
top dollar for a quality piece of meat, tell us that morals are not a central consideration when pursuing something really delicious. Dan
Miller, a 50-year-old white man with a bachelor’s degree told the group he would be unlikely to care about the ethics behind a burger.
In his words, “It doesn’t make a difference for me [whether a burger is ethical or not]. If I’m choosing fast food, I really don’t care,
because I know it’s probably not great anyway.” While a moral orientation involves strict guidelines about where to source meats,
aestheticism is oriented toward the truest expression of a genre (e.g., the best junky hamburger) over the moral properties of meat.

4.1.3. Moralism
Whereas a traditional understanding of high cultural capital tastes prioritizes aesthetic preferences, our analyses point to the
existence of a parallel orientation focused on the moral properties of food. Moralism describes a position toward food and meat
wherein aesthetic preferences are secondary to moral concerns; 23.3% of the survey sample reflects this orientation. In Fig. 1, we see
that moralism is characterized by responses that are below the sample mean on all of the aesthetic items, but above the sample means
on all items that indicate concern for ethical issues in food, and meat in particular. We see in Table 1 that moralism is much more likely
to be expressed by females (32% more likely based on the odds ratio (not shown)), an observation that is consistent with existing
literature (Kalof et al. 1999). Moralism is more likely to reflect the preferences of younger respondents and less likely to be held by
those with a high income.
Amongst our focus group participants, the moralist motivation is most often motivated by concerns about animal welfare and the
environmental impacts of meat. Yasir, a 31-year-old male with a postgraduate degree (who had been a vegetarian in the past), saw a
clear tension between eating meat and being pro-environmental: “I love eating meat and anything in it, but I also aspire to be an
environmentalist and I know that meat production is one of the largest producers of greenhouse gases”. Others saw an ethics/pleasure
contradiction in terms that focused on their care and concern for animals. For instance, Hailey Merksburg is a 42-year-old white
woman with a Master’s degree who eats very little meat and feels guilty about eating animals: “I have very mixed feelings about eating
pigs because they’re so intelligent and sweet.” Grant Davies, a 50-year-old, straight white man with a law degree spoke to the envi­
ronmental impacts of meat. Describing what influences his meat choices, Grant said, “environmental reasons are my main one after
health”. Although those taking a moralist position toward meat describe relatively strict ethical standards, this does not mean that they
always eat meat in line with these preferences. What was common, however, were the expressions of guilt among those with a moralist
orientation when recounting moments that they felt were transgressions from their ideals. Eating meat is complex emotional terrain in
the moralist impulse.

4.1.4. Moral Aestheticism

Our final latent class is moral aestheticism, a position strongly prioritizing foods’ aesthetic and moral properties, expressed by
22.95% of the sample. We can see in Fig. 1 that this class is above the sample mean on all aesthetic items. At the same time, this class is
also above the mean on all of the items measuring ethical imperatives regarding food. The question about being comfortable eating foie
gras works well to distinguish our classes. While aestheticism is most at ease with foie gras, and moralism is least comfortable with foie
gras, moral aestheticism is an intermediate orientation, reflecting an aesthetic appreciation but also a degree of moral rejection. From
Table 1, we see that this orientation is strongly associated with women (those holding the moral aestheticist position are more likely to
be female (32% more likely), high household income, childhood arts exposure, and moderate and high educational attainment, with
this orientation being 39% more likely to have the highest level of educational attainment. Moral aestheticism is negatively associated
with political conservatism and with age, with the oldest age group 43% less likely to have this orientation. We note in these data a
reflection of a dominant trope of the “cultural elite,” where moral aestheticism is reflected among younger, politically liberal, highly-

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S. Baumann et al. Poetics 92 (2022) 101654

educated, wealthier people.

Our focus group data allow us to paint a richer picture of this orientation to food. Moral aestheticism involves an embodied
orientation to meats that satisfy culturally-consecrated criteria for aesthetic sophistication and morality. These criteria are dynamic
and constantly evolving, but here, we draw from our focus groups to identify the aesthetic and ethical properties of meat that appeal to
our conscientious omnivore participants. We note three interconnected themes: first, we observe that an important distinction among
the moral aestheticist orientation is the inseparability of these two elements. To be aesthetically satisfactory, meat has to be perceived
to meet certain moral standards. And our participants use some symbolic signposts to evaluate the extent to which they could trust that
a meat product was truly “moral”, for instance, preferring a high-end butcher shop over a more generic shopping experience. Second,
we note that in contrast to moralism, moral aestheticism is characterized by quite fluid boundaries between “moral” and “immoral”
meats. In other words, the list of meats that this class might consider to be ethical is far more substantial than within moral
aestheticism. And third, we comment on some of the characteristics of meat that can imbue a product with moral consecration.
To illustrate our first point, we draw on Vancouver focus group participant Katie Szymanski, a 38-year-old white woman with a
Master’s degree. Throughout the focus group, she spoke about her connections in the food industry, from friends who run a CSA
(Community-Supported Agriculture), to friends who run a farm-to-table restaurant. Katie follows food influencers on social media,
takes pride in having omnivorous food tastes, and conveys the importance of eating delicious food. But Katie also alluded to the role
that morals play in distinguishing the delicious from the unpalatable. For example, in describing her love of bacon, Katie told the
group, “I love bacon!”, but then qualifies this by describing her discomfort with knowing about issues in how pigs are raised and
processed. She explains that this is, “a conscious thought for me”. Katie resolves these tensions by seeking out bacon that satisfies
certain ethical criteria: “if it’s ethical, and it was sustainable, and they were taken care of, and they weren’t put into a situation that’s a
mass market, then I’m more likely to be okay with eating it. And it tastes better to me.” This excerpt illuminates a key trait of moral
aestheticism—the inseparability of aesthetic and moral priorities. It also points to some elements that participants used to characterize
“ethical” meats: a smaller scale of production, a shorter supply chain, and evidence that the producer took “care” raising the animal.
Our second theme stresses the flexibility in defining meat as moral that is characteristic of the moral aestheticism orientation.
Ethical meat is meat that the consumer believes offers higher standards in terms of sustainability and animal welfare, especially when
compared with conventional grocery-store meat. These flexible, process-related criteria mean that there is a wide range of meat
products that can potentially be ethically-satisfactory. Participants who align more strongly with moralism have more clear-cut
boundaries between ethical and unethical meats (e.g., veal can never be ethical), but those who endorse moral aestheticism
conveyed an openness to classifying diverse meat products as ethical, depending on the level of awareness and attention to detail in the
meat production process. Katie spoke about foie gras specifically, referring to the strict boundaries among ethical eaters and con­
trasting this with her own flexible approach. Referring to foie gras, she said, “That’s always been such a huge thing with vegetarians
and vegans.” Now that some in the industry are responding to those concerns though, Katie argued, “they’re saying, ‘no, this is actually
ethical foie gras. We haven’t stuffed the ducks with the food and we’re treating them well, and they’re out on the farm.’” For Katie, an
ethically-problematic food like foie gras can be rendered morally acceptable through a reassertion of the producers’ attention to the
care of animals as well as the small scale of production.
The third theme is closely connected to the previous theme because it deals with degrees of moral consecration. Rather than the
flexible nature of that consecration, this third point focuses on the signals that people attend to in understanding moral consecration.
One common signal of moral consecration among those who reflect moral aestheticism concerns the qualities of the person selling the
meat. For Ella, a 30-year-old white Toronto focus group participant with a postgraduate degree, the defining qualities she attributes to
her local Italian butcher shop – “Mom & Pop”, “humble” – allow her to classify the meat she buys there as moral and “sustainable”,
even though this old-fashioned local butcher shop has no explicit claims to selling sustainable meat beyond a vague assurance of
sourcing “the highest quality” meat from local farmers. Although Ella later acknowledges in the interview that she doesn’t think all
meat from a butcher is “pure”, she sees shopping at a butcher shop as a way to get meat that is directly connected to a presumed ethical
producer: “I think I just feel better going to a butcher and being quite confident that it’s a one-link to a farmer”. Her fellow-focus group

Table 2
Classes as Predictors of High Cultural Capital Aesthetics and Moralism
Classes HCC Aesthetics HCC Moralism

b/(se) b/(se)

Pragmatism -.578*** -.485***

(.057) (.041)
Moralism -.162** .124**
(.054) (.047)
Aestheticism .242*** -.120**
(.040) (.043)
Moral Aestheticism .498*** .481***
(.035) (.041)

NOTE.—Results reflect effect coding where coefficients represent difference between class member­
ship and the grand mean. Model is weighted with population-equilibrated weights. N = 2328 *p < 05;
**
p < .01; p < .001 (two-tailed test).

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S. Baumann et al. Poetics 92 (2022) 101654

participant, Serena agrees with this butcher-focused perspective, saying, “At least they’re [the butcher] hitting that mark of the, that
your final person in your supply chain is the small business within your community.” Retailers’ characteristics were a common signal
for assessing moral consecration, and other signals included labels and certification standards (e.g., organic, grass-fed), as well as
perceptions of a small-scale, family operation.

4.2. Beyond the Domain of Food

Our third research question asks about the transposability of orientations to food beyond this specific domain. To what extent are
aestheticism and moralism in food reflective of broader orientations toward cultural consumption? Results in Table 2, below, present
the results of a three-step process ending in regression analyses where class membership predicts high cultural capital dispositions. To
reiterate, cases in the sample are assigned class membership to one of the four latent classes and using a correction procedure for
measurement error class membership predicts high cultural capital aestheticism and moralism in realms outside food.
We see that the orientations toward aesthetics and morals that each class holds toward food are, for the most part, mirrored in their
orientations toward high-status aesthetics and high-status moral positions beyond food. People who hold the pragmatism orientation
to food reported lower-than-average scores on the variables measuring both HCC aestheticism and HCC moralism. People taking the
moralism orientation report lower-than-average scores on HCC aestheticism, and higher-than-average scores on HCC moralism. The
aestheticism orientation is the inverse of the moralism position: members of this class report higher scores on HCC aestheticism and
lower scores on HCC moralism. Finally, those taking the moral aestheticism position on food have higher-than-average scores on both
HCC aestheticism and HCC moralism. As the highest-status orientation, this extension of the valuing of high-status aesthetics and
moral stances to cultural realms beyond food reveals an important fact—namely, the broad cultural relevance of the simultaneous
valuing of HCC aesthetics and HCC moralism among higher status people.

4.3. Symbolic and Social Boundaries

We argue that higher status individuals prefer culture that is both aesthetically and morally consecrated. Past work on cultural
consumption argues that classed aesthetic preferences are socially significant because they are the basis for symbolic boundaries,
which can manifest as social boundaries (Lamont and Molnár 2002). If moral consecration is an important criterion shaping high-status
cultural consumption, then we should also see evidence that moral consecration can serve as the basis for symbolic boundaries and
social boundaries. To address our final research question, in this section we present evidence from our survey and focus group data to
demonstrate that these positions are strongly linked to the symbolic boundaries that people draw and the social boundaries they live
with. We used indicators of specifically moral boundaries regarding meat eating. In this analysis we use latent class membership as the
predictor in logistic regression models.
In Table 3 we see that pragmatism is significantly negatively associated with holding either type of boundary. In contrast, moralism
is significantly positively associated with holding both a symbolic and social boundary. Aestheticism is, like pragmatism, significantly
less likely to be associated with holding a symbolic or social boundary. Moral aestheticism stands out as the orientation that is most
likely to hold these boundaries; nearly 80% more likely than the rest of the sample to hold the symbolic boundary and 70% less likely to
hold the social boundary. In this analysis, moral aestheticism and pragmatism represent opposite ends of a spectrum regarding drawing
moral boundaries.
Our focus group participants mentioned at various points perceptions about food and status that confirm what we found in our
survey. There were many evocative examples, and we share two here. The first illustrates how our participants evaluated people who
buy low-cost, conventionally-produced meat and the second example showcases judgments of people who purchase ethical meat.
Cameron, quoted earlier, told the focus group that he would never buy meat from Walmart, but that because he lives near the store, he

Table 3
Classes as Predictors of Holding Symbolic and Social Boundaries
Classes Symbolic Boundary Social Boundary

b/(se) b/(se)

Pragmatism -.438*** -.429***

(.057) (.062)
Moralism .162** .112*
(.054) (.056)
Aestheticism -.308*** -.213***
(.058) (.060)
Moral Aestheticism .585*** .530***
(.052) (.051)

NOTE.—Table presents log odds. Results reflect effect coding where coefficients represent difference be­
tween class membership and the grand mean. Model is weighted with population-equilibrated weights. N =
2328
*
p < 05;
**
p < .01; p < .001 (two-tailed test).

11
S. Baumann et al. Poetics 92 (2022) 101654

will, on occasion, “go in there and get toilet paper and whatnot and then I’ll kind of cruise through the food aisles just to check it out.”
What stood out to him is that when the store has, “whole chicken specials, for maybe like $6 a chicken”, he sees, “this energy in
people’s eyes. They just, like, go after it.” Cameron told us, “for me, I’m personally horrified. It’s literally a no-label chicken just
wrapped up. I wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole.” But he clearly distinguished himself from, “a large majority of the population that
thinks they’re getting a deal because it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m getting a $6 chicken.’” Another participant, Max Easton, argued, “Well, they are
getting a deal.” Cameron disagreed. He said, “For me, that person is—I don’t want to say unintelligent…” Participant Palmer Lacey, a
34-year-old Southeast Asian man offered: “Unconscious?” “Exactly!”, Cameron exclaimed. He continued, “They’re unconscious
consumers that maybe have come from a family that doesn’t care about food or what-have-you. So, to their minds, they’re thinking this
deal is getting them better meat.” But Max pressed him: “Maybe they’re just poor.” Cameron countered, “Yeah, maybe. But the thing is,
even if I’m poor, I’m still going to find an ethical way to... I’m not going to feed my kid shitty food.” The boundaries Cameron draws
based on whether or not someone buys a $6 chicken are only partly socioeconomic. He also imputes these shoppers’ competence and
moral worth from their purchases, distinguishing himself in the process.
Many of our participants’ evaluations of people who buy ethical meat were strikingly different—commenting on those consumers’
higher-order concerns and values. For example, a Vancouver-based focus group included several people who work at an ethical butcher
and expressed an orientation towards moral aestheticism. One participant, Bonnie Schraeder, is a 37-year-old who manages the shop.
When we asked Bonnie if she could characterize the patrons of her store, she told us there are three categories: “One is for taste, they
just want quality.” It sounds as though Bonnie is referencing those who take the aestheticist position toward meat. The second, she said,
is concerned with health, which reflects research showing that being health conscious is commonly perceived as a morally-valued
lifestyle (Crawford 2006). And the final category includes, “people who care”, which she explained is expressed by their concerns
for, “the environment, [and] the animal.” The phrase, “people who care” is a stamp of moral approval. Bonnie’s comments indicate a
symbolic boundary that casts ethical meat eaters as having moral qualities that Cameron’s $6 Walmart chicken buyers lack.

5. Discussion and Conclusion

Our analysis of individuals’ preferences and consumption choices regarding food and especially meat reveals four distinct orien­
tations. These orientations vary according to how people prioritize concerns for high-status aesthetics and high-status morals. Put
differently, a “good” meal for higher status consumers is both delicious and ethical, an orientation we term “moral aestheticism”. Our
findings also show that these four consumption orientations vary in their demographic correlates, in how they are related to aesthetic
and moral orientations beyond food, and in how they are connected to symbolic and social boundaries. Specifically, moral aestheticism
is an orientation toward food that is more prevalent among women who are high-income, highly educated, politically liberal, relatively
young, and have inherited cultural capital. Furthermore, people reflecting this orientation are more likely to hold this same orientation
toward culture in general, beyond food. They are also more likely to hold a symbolic boundary regarding food and more likely to report
a social boundary regarding food. We argue that our findings demonstrate that contemporary high-status tastes involve both aesthetic
and moral evaluations.
One of the enduring contributions of existing sociological research on aesthetics in the context of consumer preferences is
unpacking the nature of high cultural capital aesthetics; we suggest a similar effort is needed in the domain of high cultural capital
morality. Within aesthetics, Bourdieu (1984) identified the contrast between tastes of necessity and tastes of freedom as a key
dimension that structures aesthetic preferences, with high cultural capital tastes oriented toward an appreciation for tastes of freedom.
For example, in the realm of food, high-status tastes favor light, refined, and artfully-presented meals that signal distance from the
necessity of maximizing the ratio of dollars spent to caloric value. Bourdieu elaborated the Kantian perspective that
non-instrumentality is an essential quality of beauty. Holt (1998) moved this conversation into the North American landscape, noting
that HCC consumers in the United States valued properties like idealism and cosmopolitanism. Other principles that have been
identified as structuring high-status tastes include omnivorousness (Peterson and Kern 1996) and multivocality (Griswold 1987), as
well as authenticity and exoticism (Johnston and Baumann (2007).
But what are the moral qualities that higher status consumers prefer? What kinds of structuring principles can we discern among
those moral qualities? In our study of food, we observe that high cultural capital moral consecration reflects a particular set of con­
cerns: an interest in having one’s consumption choices minimize harm to valued and vulnerable entities (e.g., animals, the environ­
ment) and an interest in promoting equity and fairness to actors and institutions affected by globalized corporate capitalism (e.g.,
laborers, small and local businesses). These two prominent themes call to mind existing work on moral foundations (e.g., Haidt 2012).
Using multiple datasets collected on samples of Americans, Haidt and colleagues observed a relatively stable set of moral foundations:
care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity. We find that in the context of food, and meat in particular, higher status consumers
prioritize care, fairness, and purity. We see these foundations invoked in our participants’ comments about environmental health and
animal welfare, concerns with how meat is produced, their perception that small livestock operations are cleaner, and their nostalgia
for small, family-run farms. Food, and meat specifically, could be morally consecrated when purchased from a source deemed legit­
imately ethical (e.g., a farmers’ market, an independent butcher) or when labeled with a morally-consecrated designation (e.g.,
organic, pasture-raised). We suggest similar patterns exist beyond the realm of food. For instance, clothes purchased from the ethical
retailer Everlane have a moral cachet, as do clothes labeled “anti-sweatshop”, “eco-friendly”, or “Fairtrade”. There is a growing field of
ethical classification where organizations compile information about the ethical practices of companies, which could play a key role in
shaping processes of moral consecration. Across spheres as diverse as film, music, clothing, food and beyond, we suggest that HCC
consumers may be oriented toward products that are not only aesthetically-consecrated, but that also signal a commitment to reducing
harm and injustice.

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The boundary work that we witnessed has implications for class inequality and political divisiveness. Scholars contributing to
moral foundations theory (e.g., Haidt 2012) have demonstrated that political liberals are more concerned with care and fairness than
with the other moral foundations. Conservatives also value these concerns, though not as highly, as they also incorporate respect for
authority; loyalty to family, friends, and neighbors; and preservation of purity or sanctity into their sense of what is moral. The
consecration of moral concerns that have a stronger appeal to liberals might be an under-examined driver of political polarization and
divisiveness. If the parameters of what constitutes “ethical” consumption (and “good” food more specifically) is more heavily weighted
toward liberal moral foundations and neglects conservative moral foundations, then the symbolic and social boundaries that higher
status consumers draw may be perceived as unfair or “elitist” by people who do not share the same impulses. This argument is also
made in the context of environmentalism (Kennedy and Horne 2020). Recall that the moral aestheticism orientation was negatively
associated with political conservatism in our survey findings.
While Bourdieu and others drew attention to how high cultural capital aesthetics sharpen the divisions between social classes, we
suggest that the incorporation of moral consecration preferences plays an additional role in exacerbating political divisiveness.
Nonetheless, we also see evidence of naturalizing class boundaries in the context of morality and consumption. For instance, when our
focus group participants rejected the idea that sociodemographic characteristics patterned interest in ethical meat, they naturalized a
heavily classed boundary as solely a moral one. The decision to reject the Walmart chicken is not just a choice about aesthetics or taste,
but a statement of one’s ethical principles – and one that can obfuscate the choices afforded by economic privilege.
One question that arises in connection to our argument is the relative appeal of aesthetic versus moral consecration, and whether
there are threshold effects for each kind of consecration. Take, for example, the films of Woody Allen. In an article in The Paris Review,
Claire Dederer’s (2017) titular question is, ‘What do we do with the art of monstrous men?’, using Woody Allen as her “ur-example.”
The article is referencing the fact that although the director’s films have long been aesthetically-consecrated, today it is problematic to
express an appreciation for Allen’s films. The reason is the broad acceptance of the idea that Allen is a sexual predator alongside the
recognition of misogyny in his work. Allen’s aesthetic consecration is in effect “vetoed” by the negative moral evaluation of him and of
his work. His case raises the question, is there a threshold for aesthetic or moral consecration, above which consecration on one
dimension cannot be negated by failure on the other? Conversely, is there a lower bound beneath which a cultural option cannot be
redeemed by consecration on the other dimension? Similar examples exist in other domains that point to the complications related to
tensions between aesthetic and moral valuation. The music of Richard Wagner remains aesthetically-celebrated, despite his established
anti-Semitism, and Shakespeare remains in the literary canon despite ethnic and racial representations that do not meet contemporary
standards. Returning to the case of food, products like veal, foie gras, and factory-farmed meat are falling out of favor with some higher
status eaters. The unethical (harm) dimension of the product appears to have veto power over aesthetic qualities.
These examples also raise the question of how moral consecration processes unfold. Aesthetic consecration is a result of the work of
actors in fields with the symbolic power to consecrate, such as elite producers and intermediaries connected to influential institutions
(Bourdieu 1984). Booker Prize-winning authors and Michelin-starred restaurants are aesthetically consecrated. But how are cultural
choices categorized as morally consecrated or morally unacceptable? In the case of food, certification as organic, local, or fair trade
might serve this function. But many cultural realms lack formal certifications of ethical standards. For example, Lizzo’s music contains
themes of feminism and racial equality that appeal to many higher status audience members, but these moral dimensions are not
formally recognized in a parallel fashion to the aesthetic consecration Lizzo’s music has received through awards and positive reviews.
Informally, however, it is possible that some agents working in the field are recognized as having not only the power to aesthetically
consecrate consumption choices, but also the moral authority to confer – or deny – moral consecration. Future research should
investigate how the moral status of cultural options is established in various fields and what degree of consensus is needed to support
that status. For instance, Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory holds that HCC preferences are internalized in the habitus from an early
age. It is an open question to what extent preferences for moral consecration are internalized over the lifecourse and internalized and
naturalized at a subconscious level versus an explicit evaluation. Similarly, it is also an open question to what extent aestheticism and
moralism are experienced as orientations that direct preferences and choices separately or together. Relatedly, just as research on
cultural consumption has attended to the distinction between what people consume vs. how they consume (Jarness 2015), future
research should apply this distinction to understanding HCC moralism in consumption.
Our findings show that moral aestheticism is associated with younger age groups, a relationship that we think is suggestive of the
dynamic nature of moral consecration. It is possible that sources of moral consecration, relative to aesthetic consecration, are newer
and more contested, and that this context might be affecting the moral evaluations of food that younger people in our sample are
making. We also note that ethical consumption discourse has recently become more prevalent, and it is a discourse the encourages
moral evaluations in consumption choices. Younger people are potentially more readily socialized into this discourse, and they are also
at a life stage when they are engaged in establishing their self-concepts and self-presentation, for which consumption can play a central
role. Young people also tend to have less economic capital to draw on, and by making moral evaluations and choices that are high
status, they both have and can signal the possession of cultural capital.
The constitution of cultural capital has always been dynamic and complex. Friedman and Reeves (2020:342) demonstrated this
dynamism longitudinally and concluded that, “the aesthetic mode of cultural distinction may be changing”. Our analyses of symbolic
and social boundaries indicate that both morals and aesthetics influence judgments of worth and social value. In this way, achieving
distinction through high-status consumption choices is all the more difficult to achieve, as the most socioeconomically-privileged
consumers incorporate aesthetics and morals in their consumption objectives. In this further-attenuated construction of cultural
consecration, consumers are required to have literacy and an embodied orientation to longstanding criteria like authenticity, an ability
to play with cultural forms, and an orientation to emergent criteria around care and equity. These qualities move high cultural capital
consumption still further from tastes of necessity, and reproduce a problematic association linking “good” food (and good culture) with

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“good” people, who just happen to be affluent.

Another question of interest is how these evolving tastes interact with cultural omnivorousness. For instance, Peterson and Kern
(1996) showed us that it is not enough to know highbrow culture to be a high-status consumer, that one also has to have a broad and
diverse, yet still consecrated, profile of cultural preferences. It is unclear how omnivorous status hierarchies engage with processes of
moral consecration. Can we understand better which lowbrow genres and cultural objects are incorporated into omnivorous cultural
diets when we attend to processes of moral consecration? Certainly, consumers must have the cultural capital to differentiate between
ethical and unethical cultural goods, and distance themselves from aesthetically-consecrated goods if they are morally-sanctioned. We
expect that those with more privilege will be better-positioned to navigate this shifting terrain, and intuitively understand the
interlinked processes of aesthetic and moral consecration. Yet the sort of ironic appropriation of lowbrow cultural goods seems un­
likely to function as a form of cultural capital in the moral domain. The ways in which foodies, for instance, have shown an ability to
play with highbrow and lowbrow options, are unlikely to translate to the same playful orientation to consumption choices deemed
immoral (e.g., veal).
We look forward to research that builds on our findings. For instance, in order to more firmly establish the emergence of the higher
status moral aestheticism position, we would like to see analyses from domains beyond food, such as visual art, fashion, music,
literature, and architecture. While cost is a major factor in food choices, it is less salient in some realms such as television or music,
which might affect the expression of moral aestheticism in realms beyond food. Since our qualitative case study on food and meat
helped to illuminate the sub-dimensionality of moral consecration, we believe that similar case studies beyond food would help
develop and refine the argument. Quantitative and qualitative studies beyond food would help to refine the dimensions of high-status
moral consecration in cultural consumption.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant No. 435-2015-
0197). We are grateful to Clayton Childress, Jean-François Nault, and Craig Rawlings for helpful comments, and to Catherine Yeh and
Dan Prisk for research assistance. We are also grateful to our focus group members and survey respondents for sharing their time,
opinions, and information, and to the editor, Vaughn Schmutz, and the anonymous reviewers for excellent advice.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2022.101654.

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Shyon Baumann is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. He is a cultural sociologist who studies questions of classification, evaluation, legitimacy, and
inequality. He is currently working with co-authors on a large-scale project on the meat industry in North America, drawing on original data on meat producers and meat
consumers. He is also involved in a project that seeks to refine the conceptualization and measurement of classed cultural consumption.

Emily Huddart Kennedy is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. Her research interests bring together environmental sociology, cultural
sociology, and the sociology of consumers and consumption to interrogate how individuals, groups, and communities seek to effect positive changes to the natural
environment and to understand consumer perceptions and motivations.

Josée Johnston is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her research is centrally concerned with understand how cultural and political forces reproduce
and legitimate the inequitable and unsustainable features of capitalist economies. She primarily uses food as a lens for investigating questions relating to consumer
culture, ethical consumption, gender politics, sustainability, and inequality. Her most recent research stream investigates the cultural politics of meat consumption.

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