A gourmetização das práticas alimentares: mobilidade social e estetização da experiência.

Abstract

This dissertation takes as a starting point the recent transformations in food products associated with gourmetization processes, in which there is a strong concern aesthetics, to reflect on experiences of social mobility in contemporary Brazil. It is assumed that changes in the ways in which food is appreciated, even those more traditional and popular, as well as the trajectories of the individuals who deal directly with the gourmet food market, are part of more general social mobility, within the framework of what Lipovetski and Serroy (2015) call “aestheticization of the world” when referring to the most different forms of resignification of relations of consumption. Thus, the objective of the work is to apprehend, from gourmetization processes, how individuals re-elaborate, in their eating practices, demarcators of borders social. To achieve this objective, field research was carried out in Campina Grande, a city with 400,000 inhabitants located in the interior of Paraíba, Northeast Brazil, whose food supply market has welcomed and incorporated the phenomenon of gourmetization. This work is therefore part of the more general debate on social mobility in Brazil, emphasizing that dynamics associated with the dissemination of gourmet food are a privileged place of aesthetic and material creation, which problematize the relations between the classes in the country.