Project Aspen
Food, Power & the Minority Participant
Investigating the Exchange of Bourdieusian Capital at the Intersection of Food & Participatory Media in the Asian-American Diaspora
December 16, 2020
Introduction & Theoretical Framework
Food, Media & Defining Power as Forms of Capital
Since its launch in 2005, the participatory media platform YouTube has become a significant way many Americans consume information, construct a shared sense of identity, and interact with others (Burgess and Green 2009, 5-8). According to YouTube itself, everyday over two billion people sign in to the platform and watch over one billion hours of content (YouTube 2019). Additionally, such platforms have not only broadened access to content production tools but have also been a catalyst for new types of food-related content. Based on a 2015 study, YouTube videos in food-related genres received nearly 41 billion views, with 14,000 content producers uploading videos in that year alone (Jarboe 2015). Furthermore, according to De Solier (2013), food blogging (or vlogging)—a form of online journaling using text, photography, or video—has become an especially popular genre. She explains that the underlying motivation of food blogging is a material expression of creativity that help content producers construct their own sense of purpose and identity, and fulfill a desire to share their knowledge with others (Lebesco and Naccarato 2018, 58).
While DeSolier’s ideas serve as a foundation to understanding these social behaviors, a closer analysis of a YouTube food vlog will explain that simply wanting to share knowledge does not tell the whole story (LeBesco and Naccarato 2018, 58-59). In fact, YouTube is a site of complex social interactions and is reflective of the real life conflicts between dominant and minority racial groups. Moreover, for a particular Asian American YouTube creator [The vernacular term for YouTube content producers], the act of creating food-related content is a way to claim ownership over their own racial and ethnic identities and challenge existing hegemonic power structures embedded within media.
To explain such evolving power dynamics, Pierre Bourdieu’s definition of power as various forms of capital is useful to employ as a theoretical framework. In Distinction (1986) and in The Forms of Capital (Richardson 1986), Bourdieu saw societal power manifested as four types of capital: economic, social, cultural, and symbolic; with each type of capital being viewed as a resource that could be accumulated and exchanged. As an example, a person’s social connections (i.e. social capital) could help them get a higher paying job—which may result in higher pay (i.e. economic capital). Cultural capital, which is defined as socially acquired knowledge that drives one’s aesthetic tastes and preferences for certain types of food, was particularly central to deciphering the relationship of food-related information to societal power (1986, 180). In The Forms of Capital (1986), he further suggested how cultural capital can exist in three forms: embodied, objectified, and institutionalized—wherein embodied cultural capital are acquired knowledge that drives behaviors, objectified cultural capital are material objects that one possesses that can be exchanged for economic capital or simply the role of signaling social status, and institutionalized cultural capital are credentials like academic diplomas, professional qualifications, or job titles bestowed by academic institutions, corporations, or governments.
Therefore, if behaviors adjacent to food—like shopping, cooking, and eating—are symbolically-loaded performances that mark one’s position in society, control over the reproduction of such information becomes critical in understanding a certain type of societal power structure. For Bourdieu, he observed that social and cultural institutions as well as familial units were the primary source of that reproduction. In America, the media communication platforms—like television and film—have historically been a major source of such information, however, in contemporary times, newer, more democratic forms of media have shifted consumer behaviors (Burgess and Green 2009). In fact, YouTube claims that on mobile devices alone, the viewership from 18-34 year olds reaches more people in the U.S. than any other TV network (2019).
Furthermore, the open nature of YouTube has particularly benefited the voices of minority creators. According to Guo and Lee in their 2013 study, “Asian/Asian Americans—a group systematically ignored by the mainstream media—are extremely vocal on YouTube.” As a result, Asian American content creators have amassed millions of channel views and subscribers—the two most vital metrics for success and influence (392). Therefore, employing Bourdieu’s ideas of power as forms of capital may help situate the creation of food-related media content in the context of societal power. This paper attempts to examine such power dynamics by addressing the following questions. What drives Asian American producers to produce content based on food? How exactly do they find success and accumulate power and influence? And ultimately, how does it alter the way Asian American identities are constructed?
Research Methodology
The approach of collecting primary data was to observe and analyze food-centric media as a type of digital artifact. While no informants were interviewed nor viewers surveyed, the thinking was that the performances and behaviors embedded within the content itself could be observed as material evidence [Akin to archaeologists who dig up material artifacts in order to better understand ancient civilizations]. In the review of secondary literature, there is precedent for this type of approach. In a 2018 study, Florencia Garcia-Rapp sought to improve the understanding of YouTube’s beauty community through a multiyear online ethnographic study of content. She describes the advantages of diversifying the primary data collection from both the emic (a local perspective) and the etic (an outsider’s perspective). With that said, due to the limitations of scope, this paper will analyze the content primarily from the etic perspective—while noting its limitations and the potential for future research.
The critical first step for collecting data was to select a popular food-related YouTube channel. Based on a survey of the “Trending” section of the platform, food-related videos are considered to be trending if the total views rise above two-hundred thousand—with some videos receiving nearly ten million views. Trending and recommended food-related Asian American channels tend to hover around one million total subscribers; therefore, the criterion for selecting a popular YouTube channel was that the videos average over two-hundred thousand total views and have at least one million total subscribers. Moreover, because of the paper’s focus on Asian American content producers, it was a requirement that the producer was of Asian/Asian American descent.
In short, for this paper, I focused on observing a YouTube creator named Mikey Chen and his four food-based YouTube channels, which total 4.94 million subscribers and 898 million views (YouTube 2020). His most popular channel Strictly Dumpling [Strictly Dumpling has 3.44 million subscribers and 688.22 million total views] focuses on reviewing Asian food cultures, while his other channels approaches the topic of food from a variety of other perspectives. Cooking with Mikey [Cooking with Mikey has 165,000 subscribers and 6,796,504 total views] focuses on how to cook Asian foods; in Eating with Mikey [Eating with Mikey has 149,000 subscribers and 8,124,621 total views] Chen interviews other YouTube creators while eating Asian food; and Mikey Chen [Mikey Chen has 1.19 million subscribers and 195,291,984 total views] serves as his daily vlog that combines the documentation of his life with his experiences of traveling and eating Asian foods (YouTube 2020a).
To collect quantitative data, all three-hundred and forty videos (as of November 11, 2020) in the Mikey Chen channel were observed and available information such as date, title, duration, total viewers, total thumbs up marks, total thumbs down marks, total comments, and the city and/or country featured were gathered. These data points, along with the observations of the content itself, helped clarify what type of content was most popular to his viewers, showed how his popularity had grown over time, and illustrated how his approach to content production had evolved. In regards to the observation of the content, each of the three-hundred and fifty videos were viewed [Over fifty-eight total hours of video content] and a handful of videos were selected for in-depth observation and analysis. The criterion for selection were based on factors such as highest total views, disclosure of important information such as childhood memories or significant life milestones, and outstanding storytelling and editing styles.
Background
Mikey Chen, the Asian American YouTube creator
An overview of Chen’s life gives important historical and social context for understanding his personality and internal motivations. In particular, his upbringing and past experiences helps situate his motivations for producing food-related content within the context of growing up as an Asian immigrant in American society. In terms of his ethnic background, by all accounts Chen identifies himself as Chinese American. He was born in Xi’an, China, and like most Chinese families under the One child policy, he grew up as an only child (Hesketh and Zhu 1997). After immigrating to the United States with his mother and father, he spent his teenage years in the Midwest—attending secondary school and eventually graduating from Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri (Becker 2019). According to a CNBC Make It interview, after graduating college, he got a position as a financial analyst at Morgan Stanley—a prestigious Wall Street financial firm—in New York City (Jr 2019), however, he quickly left the job after only one year. Soon thereafter, he found work at non-profit organization, where he worked to address human rights violations in China. Around the same time, he discovered a passion for creating videos, and he began uploading YouTube videos about Asian food cultures.
Findings
Quantitative Observations
While his other channel Strictly Dumpling is much more popular, from a content perspective analyzing Mikey Chen is more interesting. In particular, because in Mikey Chen, his experiences of food are paired with journal entries from his everyday life. The diary-like aspects provides valuable insight, not only into his character, personality, and values—but also his inner thoughts.
In the Mikey Chen channel, he posts an average of one video per week and they each average around 8 minutes and receives over 300 thousand viewers [Each of his videos receive an average of 332,034 viewers, 347 total comments, 3,733 thumbs up marks, and 184 thumbs down marks]. Therefore, it is fair to say that his videos are popular and well-liked by his viewers. It is notable that there are a handful of videos that sometimes go viral [The colloquial term for when a video becomes especially popular], and tend to skew the overall statistics. For example, a video titled “First Time Flying First Class - Taiwan Trip (Korean Airlines)” has received over 9.7 million total views—far more popular than average (Chen 2016b). These videos are often about expensive travel accommodations like first class airline seats, expensive foods like $150 Japanese melons (Chen 2018a), or novelty food reviews like a food tour of Tokyo Disneyland (Strictly Dumpling 2020a). In over three-hundred and forty videos, Chen has covered a variety of food cultures [Chen has covered foods from: East and South Asian (Asian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, Indonesian, Singaporean, Hong Kongese, Thai, Mongolian), European (British, French, Italian, Czech, ), North American (American, Canadian), Central and South American (Mexican, Peruvian)]— however, it is almost always related to Asian food culture.
Qualitative Observations
Mikey Chen has a likable and sociable personality—and that may primarily be due to his positive and light-hearted nature. He rarely posts negative reviews of restaurants and rarely complains about the food. In fact, he scouts restaurants and samples the foods on the menu off-camera. This approach to content results in his on-camera persona conveying a strong aura of positivity, and makes him seem more friendly and sociable. In fact, in one particular episode, he explicitly talks about his desire to create uplifting content that exposes the beautiful side of the world cultures. He says,
I just wanted to be with like-minded creators and just make good content. . . I guess I had this kinda naive thinking that because there’s so much content out there, not all of it is very positive. Not all of it is very encouraging. Most of [it] is actually is not. There’s a lot of negative stuff out there. And let’s face it, we get enough negativity from the news alone. So I was wanted to be with a group of people that make content that was not only engaging and entertaining and educational and cultural. Also uplifting as well. . . Regardless of whether you’re talking about food, or news, or supernatural phenomenon, or whatever. There needs to be more content that talks about I don’t know, the beautiful things in life. The wonderful foods that we eat, the beautiful cultures that we may not be familiar with, and presented in an uplifting and positive manner (Chen 2017a).
In addition to his positive nature, his use of humor is also note worthy. He often makes food-related jokes and frequently anthropomorphizes the foods that he is eating. In one episode, while reviewing some Chinese dumplings, he spills Chinese hot oil on the hood of his car and jokes, “Oh my god, I’m just getting hot oil all over my car. And that’s okay, because it makes it a … hot commodity” (Chen 2020b). In that same episode, he continues joking about his love for a particular garlic sauce. He says,
And they gave me this little garlic dipping sauce . . . Oh, that’s excellent. Oh, that sauce is excellent. Oh, I love that sauce. I want every inch of my teriyaki—and my face—to be covered with the sauce . . . Dump the dumpling into the sauce. I’m not even being shy about this. I just want the dumpling to just go swimming in there. Not even like a subtle little dunk. I want it covered (Chen 2020b).
This jovial, light-hearted interaction reinforces the message that he is relatable and friendly. Moreover, he distances himself from the luxury lifestyle that may be unattainable by his viewers by mispronouncing names of luxury brands like Hermès and Gucci, and he often questions whether a luxury-branded product is considered “good.” In one episode, while reviewing the luxury-branded lotions on a Taiwan-bound business-class flight, he says, “Let’s see what’s inside [the beauty kit]. We got some hand and body cream. I mean, I’m not that familiar with this stuff so I don’t know if this is a good brand or not. It probably is. [The brand] Sounds fancy” (Chen 2016b). Frequent moments like this further solidifies his sociability, and reinforces his image as an average person.
During his travels, while he mostly travels alone, sometimes he is seen with friends and other YouTube creators [In YouTube culture, collaborating with other creators is common]. While on one hand, in the episodes where he is traveling by himself, he talks directly to the audience, which makes the conversations feel more intimate for the viewers. On the other hand, the videos with friends and other guests, feel less personal and somewhat less connected to the audience. Regardless, these moments of on-camera socialization show the audience that people he interacts with in real life also find him to be sociable and likable.
For Chen, his vlogs are a form of online diary and serve to document his everyday life (De Solier 2013, 149-158). As such, he often reminisces about his upbringing—in particular, about emigrating to the American Midwest and growing up as one of a few Asian Americans in his neighborhood. When he talks about family, it is often about his past and present relationship with his parents (Chen 2017c). In one memorable episode, he starts by talking about growing up in poor neighborhoods and ends with him surprising his parents by handing them the keys to a new house in New York City (Chen 2020a).
Additionally, Chen often communicates his values and spiritual beliefs. On multiple occasions, he mentions practicing Falun Gong (what he describes as a Chinese spiritual exercise based on the Buddhist principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance) and having worked at a non-profit human rights organization—exposing China’s human rights issues such as the religious persecution of Uyghurs and Falun Gong practitioners (Chen 2016c).
Through his vlogs, Chen also discloses his failed romantic relationships. For example, in an episode titled “New Apartment Tour! Why I Moved to Greater Seattle” he explains that a failed relationship with his long-time girlfriend had prompted him to make the move from New York City to Seattle. He says,
Personally, I went through a breakup. I mean, it’s been a while. But it’s something that kinda hit me quite hard. And I think I’m still getting over that to a certain extent. So.. personally I felt that being in a new surrounding. And I picked Seattle (Chen 2019).
In terms of the narrative structure of his videos, they are consistent and relatively short—with each video averaging around 8 minutes. He often begins the episode by greeting the viewers and telling them what he has planned for the day. The moments of speaking directly to the audience are interlaced with shots that establish time and space—like clips that show a wide landscape of a New York City skyline, or him opening the door to a restaurant and walking in. Further, his videos are always soundtracked with pleasant music which help to set the tone. The videos are also edited in ways that conveys a sense of speed and momentum. For example, in one scene where he is describing Chinese dumplings, there are over 78 cuts [Edit points where the two ends of videos has been spliced together] in the span of about 4 minutes [4 minutes and 32 seconds to be exact] (Chen 2020b). Additionally, he also uses advanced re-timing techniques (wherein the video clips are sped up in post-production) that also help speed up the pace of the videos. And moreover, all filler pauses and words that a person typically utters in everyday conversation have been edited out—resulting in a sense of confidence and competence in his dialogue style.
In terms of content, food is clearly his primary focus. Although Chen considers the channel to be his life journal, the scenes we see on camera are often related to food. For example, scenes with him driving to a Chinese grocery store to buy ingredients or him walking down the sidewalk to visit a new Chinese restaurant. While Chen mainly eats Asian food, it is notable that he eats Asian foods across the whole range of the socioeconomic spectrum—from instant ramen at a Japanese 7-Eleven (Chen 2018b) and Hong Kongese McDonald’s (Strictly Dumpling 2019b) to $300 Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup garnished with gold flakes (Strictly Dumpling 2017a).
When ordering and eating Asian foods, Chen often stresses the importance of its authenticity. For example, in one episode titled “TRADITIONAL CHINESE BREAKFAST Tour! STEAMED Noodles, CHINESE BURGERS & Street Food In New York,” he describes what makes a good, authentic Chinese pork burger and Liangpi noodles. He says,
What a really good [Chinese pork] burger bun looks like for Chinese people is the outside has to look like the color of a tiger, the spots of a tiger. This definitely exhibits [that]. And inside are juicy bits of pork. It’s so crispy on the outside, and flaky on the inside. You can see how thin and airy the outside bun is. So much of the tender meat on the side and falling out already. I mean this bun is so light, it can’t even handle all the meat on the side. . .
. . . And this is their Liangpi . . . and these are, of course, cold wheat noodles. Little bits of gluten, some of my favorite—great to soak up that sauce. And this is something you have to have when you’re eating your pork burger. . .
. . . This is some of the softest Liangpi I’ve had. And that’s because what they do with their Langpi is the more traditional way. Where they wash the dough. What that means is that, basically wash a chunk of dough until it becomes really really smooth. And the water around it becomes saturated with the dough itself and it becomes really thick, and then you steam that. And that’s how these noodles are made. (Strictly Dumpling 2019b).
The authentic and traditional qualities of Asian foods seem important for Chen, and his ability to accurately identify and vividly describe those characteristics have improved over time.
His relationship to established food media authorities are also observed in his videos. On several occasions, he says that, in addition to receiving food recommendations from his viewers and friends, he also finds inspiration from watching content from established food media figures like Anthony Bourdain (CNN’s No Reservation) and David Chang (Netflix’s Ugly Delicious) (Chen 2016a). As an example, in an episode titled “Buying a Custom Tailored Bespoke Suit in Hong Kong(Anthony Bourdain Recommended),” he visits Hong Kong for the first time based on watching the Hong Kong episode of Bourdain’s No Reservation, and even purchases a custom-tailored suit from the exact same tailor where Bourdain had purchased his (Chen 2016a).
Analysis
Motivations & Functions
To situate the act of food vlogging in the larger social context of power, the questions of why people create content and what purposes it serves must be asked. According to Isabelle De Solier (2018),
My research found that the reasons why foodies engage in blogging are not only to engage in this process of digital creative production, but also to create products that serve two functions. The first is to document their self-formation through food, which I consider the personal function [emphasis added] of the food blog. . . . The second function of food blogs is to share knowledge and lifestyle advice with others, which I consider a public function [emphasis added] of the blog. This latter function is shared in common with professional food media and makes food blogs a form of amateur food media (LeBesco and Naccarato 2018, 58-59).
Separating the “personal” and “public" functions of food vlogging provides a good foundation for understanding the answers to these questions—however, her explanations may be overly generalized. The function of documenting “self-formation” and the desire to “share knowledge with others” may partially explain the underlying motivations for creators, but rather than developing a monolithic theory of food media production, a more nuanced, contextualized explanation may be more useful. Along the same lines, in Daniel Miller’s anthropological analyses of Facebook in Trinidadian culture (2013), he stresses the importance of practicing the principles of cultural relativism [A theory that a community can only be understood in the context of their own culture] while critically examining the effects of social media technologies on cultures (Stevenson and Lindberg 2013). He argues, “Without this injection of cultural relativism, we could easily be drawn into making vast generalizations about what Facebook is and its social consequences, based on assumptions about the functions of technology or some general model of human psychology” (Miller 2013, 164). In other words, the urgency to draw up broad, unified theories of new technologies can hinder useful analyses. Therefore, in the same spirit, it is important to situate Chen’s food vlogs within the context of his local environment and social circumstances.
So, what exactly does it mean to contextualize Chen’s drive to create food vlogs into his social situation? It means that, for him, his motivation to create food media should be analyzed alongside the myriad of social processes that are in play for him—in particular, growing up in an Asian American diaspora and having an Asian American identity. In other words, because his identity is defined by his race and ethnicity, his desire to create content about food may be related to his longing to connect with his cultural identity and community.
In the same way, some researchers suggests that mukbang [A Korean YouTube phenomenon wherein Korean YouTube streamers eat alongside their viewers during mealtimes] helps alleviate the feeling of loneliness due to the rise of single-person households in South Korea (LeBesco and Naccarato 2018, 54-55). For Chen and those like him living in the Asian American diaspora, their cultural identity has been altered by American values and their community separated by geography. New media technologies have mitigated this situation somewhat, and through the production of his food vlogs, Chen resolves his need to desire with his culture in tangible ways and mediates his need to construct his racial identity. To put it another way, while food and practices surrounding food have always been an essential part of a community, participatory media technologies have enabled those like Chen to make a meaningful attempt at taking ownership of that culture. For example, as mentioned previously, his ability to accurately describe the authentic and traditional characteristics of Chinese pork burgers and Liangpi noodles help connect him to that cultural identity in a physical and visceral way.
Consistent with De Solier’s findings on the personal function of food vlogging, for Chen, food vlogging also serves as a diary entry—allowing him to materialize his evolving self through the documentation of his life experiences, thoughts, and emotional reactions. For example, there are many moments where Chen documents major life milestones like buying his first house, moving to a new city, or experiencing the pains of a failed relationship. On the public function of food vlogging, De Solier argues that the public motivations and functions are to “share knowledge and lifestyle advice with others” (LeBesco and Naccarato 2018, 59). While this may be accurate, considering how globally popular and widespread the genre is, the framework seems overly generalized and much too simplistic. Wanting to share information is almost a given since that is the primary function of participatory media platforms. In short, current research does not seem to adequately account for the racial and ethnical factors that constitute the food vlogger’s identity, and also fails to contextualize their motivations into their lived-in social experiences. The vitally important question to ask is how do food vloggers like Chen decide what information to share and why? For Chen, those decisions seem to be informed by his life experiences as an Asian American immigrant, and in particular, by his experiences of how Asian food culture had been represented in traditional American media, which according Chen himself are represented by the likes of white food media figures like Bourdain.
Broadly speaking, some scholars argue that Asian Americans has had a long struggle to be represented fairly in traditional media (Ono and Pham 2010). Racial stereotypes such as “yellow peril” (representations of Asian Americans as threats to take over American society) and the appearance of being a “model minority” (the portrayal of Asian Americans as quiet, hardworking, and staying out of trouble) are still present to this day (Ono and Pham 2010, 25-26, 80-81). As for representation of Asian food culture in media, white food media celebrities like Bourdain holds those roles (Severson, Haag, and Moskin 2018). And while Asian Americans like David Chang have made progress in representing Asian food cultures, such examples are few and far between (Wells 2018).
This highlights how new participatory media technologies like YouTube have given the tools necessary for Asian Americans like Chen to represent their own food culture. To put it another way, creators from minority groups are now better equipped to compete for social power in this field—an opportunity that was previously limited (Ono and Pham 2010, 6-9). Such case studies show that for such creators, the intersection of food and participatory media are an important site for contesting hegemonic structures, and the resulting social conflicts ultimately challenge the notions of authenticity, expertise, and authority in food culture.
The Accumulation and Exchange of Social & Economic Power
Bourdieu’s ideas about power as forms of capital provides insight into how Chen manages to accumulate social power with which he can directly exchange into economic power. Without question, the primary metric of success on YouTube is the total view and subscriber figures. These values directly quantifies the amount of social power accumulated by a YouTuber creator and normalizes the metric for success across the entire platform [For Chen, those values amount to 4.94 million subscribers and 898 million views across all four of his channels]. As a YouTube creator, the formula to understand the conversion of the social into the economic is straightforward. Setting aside corporate sponsorships, merchandising, and revenue from other business ventures, from YouTube advertisements alone (after YouTube takes a 45% cut) a single video can earn anywhere between $3 and $10 per 1,000 views (O’Connell 2018). Therefore, Mikey Chen may have earned anywhere between $2.7 and $8.98 million dollars in the past seven years—which averages out to about $386 thousand to $1.28 million per year.
While it may be hard to know exactly how Chen has managed to find success on YouTube, some observations from his vlog provides clues that may help shed light. The first factor is related to access to technology and technological literacy. In addition to the lowered costs of video production equipment, such as video cameras, microphones, editing software, and broadband internet, participatory platforms like YouTube have enabled those technologies to be useful and have connected creators with their audiences through content. More importantly, technology and media literacy are essential skills for an aspiring YouTube creator—without knowing how to effectively use the tools, access to them is meaningless. Similarly, another success factor is a consistency of content production. For example, Chen has consistently uploaded at least one video to his most channels for the past six years (as of November 15, 2020) and his channels holds an archive of over eight-hundred and fifty videos. It goes without saying that without new content, a creator cannot sustain their popularity and viewership.
The second success factor is related to his likable and approachable online persona. His tendency to exclusively post positive reviews, directly address his audience, and use light-hearted humor creates a feeling of intimacy for the viewers. In addition, his desire to review foods across all socioeconomic levels and his implicit rejection of the luxury lifestyle also seems to contribute to his overall relatability and likability.
While having a meaningful relationship with all five million subscribers is not likely, the relationship is not as asynchronous as one might think. His embrace of the live-streaming features on YouTube, wherein he can interact in real-time with viewers through chat rooms, further solidifies the feeling of genuine connection between Chen and his viewers. In fact, authenticity may also be a crucial factor in determining his success. According to García-Rapp in her study of YouTube’s beauty community (2017), “authenticity” as defined by being trustworthy, honest, open, and being rightfully motivated, help YouTube creators achieve sustained popularity and success. And based on his willingness to disclose his values and on-going struggles, he exhibits these qualities.
The narrative style of his videos may also explain his success. The advantages of post-production editing allow him to shape his personality and message in precise and persuasive ways. These filmmaking techniques not only help him finely tune his message, but it also allows him to finely control his on-screen persona. For example, the pace of his videos are controlled through the removal of extraneous filler words and gaps in his speech.
Cultural Power & the Challenge to Authority
Chen’s drive to garner success and influence by creating content about Asian food cultures has the resulting effect of challenging the definition of food expertise and authority—societal roles that determine how cultural capital is reproduced (Medvetz and Sallaz 2018, 349). In various texts, Bourdieu had mentioned that cultural capital can also be referred to as informational capital (Medvetz and Sallaz 2018, 350). According to Erik Neveu’s interpretation of Bourdieu’s theory, he says,
Cultural capital is made of knowledge and know-how, of the skills and analytical tools that allow one to manage and produce social relations, cultural products, and technical devices (Medvetz and Sallaz 2018, 350-351).
In other words, cultural capital is the “knowledge" needed for a person to accumulate the social relations and other material tools needed to position themselves within the ranks of a stratified society. As was the case for Bourdieu and French society, for Chen and American society, desiring and preferring certain types of food is information that we refer to as cultural capital. To put it another way, taste in food is socially constructed, and particular cultures shape what foods we eat and why we eat it (Anderson 2005). As a result, our food choices ultimately mark our position in society and ensures the preservation of class distinctions. Therefore, knowing what forces control the reproduction of this information is important to understanding social power. For French society, historical factors influenced such reproduction, however, in contemporary American society, the forces of globalization and global migration complicate such processes.
While the foundational social unit—like family or peer groups—certainly shapes what we eat, large-scale forces like participatory media technology or popular culture also been highly influential (Watson and Caldwell 2005). According to research—in America, what foods we eat are influenced by food critics, celebrity chefs, and media personalities (LeBesco and Naccarato 2018, 13-16). However, unlike food critics, celebrity chefs, and media personalities who tend to have either professional writing experience or professional experience as restaurant cooks (Bourdain 2018; Wells 2018), Chen lacks those sorts of experiences—which are credentials that Bourdieu refers to as institutionalized cultural capital. At the beginning of his YouTube career, Chen funded his own trips to new cities, countries, and restaurants to document his own experiences and legitimize his own authority. By referencing places recommended by established food media figures like Bourdain and Chang—Chen had leveraged the legitimacy of established food authorities and used that knowledge to document those same experiences and thereby legitimize his own authority. The acquisition and documentation of Chen’s experiences in Bourdieu’s understanding is what is known as objectified cultural capital—material assets with which he can use to legitimize his own authority and expertise. To put it another way, food is so fundamental to human life, every person needs to eat, and thereby every person has a right to their own opinion about the foods they have consumed. Chen’s behaviors are also consistent with a growing social movement that Leadbeater and Miller (2004) have coined “the Pro-Am Revolution,” whereby amateurs—even without professional experience—are able to contest the notions of expertise and gain power through their own consumption and experience.
Furthermore, traveling, eating, and documenting his food experiences also gives Chen the skills necessary to identify nuanced characteristics of food and communicate it to his audience with a vivid vocabulary. For example, while reviewing Japanese ramen, he refers back to his experiences of eating authentic ramen in Tokyo, and describes in precise vernacular vocabulary how thick the noodles should be in proportion to the thickness of the broth, and the texture the noodles should have to be considered authentic (Chen 2018b). The demonstration of these abilities further cements his status as a bonafide food authority.
Additionally, Chen interacts with other institutions that are gatekeepers of food knowledge. For example, he has visited restaurants that had earned stars from the Michelin Guide—a French food and travel guide which many in the restaurant industry consider to be one of the highest honor a restaurant can receive (Fabricant 2010). In Bourdieu’s terms Michelin stars could be referred to as a type of institutionalized cultural capital—legitimacy bestowed by a cultural institution. For Chen, dining at these restaurants allows him to also legitimize his authority in the space of fine dining [Based on the fact that the Michelin Guide is owned and operated by the French, fine dining is seemingly influenced by French culinary heritage].
In short, Chen has leveraged the medium of food vlogging to document his own experiences of eating the same foods that have been acknowledged by traditional food authority figures, thereby validating his own opinions and legitimizing himself as an authority on food.
Symbolic Power & the Embrace of Hybridity
Symbolic capital—Bourdieu’s fourth type of capital—helps socially contextualize Chen’s motivations to create content about Asian food culture. Referring back to Neveu’s interpretation of Bourdieu, symbolic capital is recognized when other forms of capital (economic, social, and cultural) is acknowledged by individual actors or institutions in society. He says,
Symbolic capital is never anything other than a transfiguration of one of the three basic—social, cultural, and economic—capitals. It is the recognition or prestige an individual or institution enjoys by virtue of these capitals, depending on their amount, use, and conditions of acquisition (Medvetz and Sallaz 2018, 350-351).
In other words, the authority and expertise he has accumulated is considered symbolic—and therefore legitimized—if it is widely recognized by society. For Chen, his food authority status is legitimized based on his success and popularity on YouTube [As measured by his total views and subscribers]. Moreover, YouTube also helps legitimize his authority through what known as the “YouTube Creator Awards.” These awards are physical plaques—made from solid blocks of aluminum with their names and total subscribers etched into them—that signify major milestones of total subscribers (three awards given at one-hundred thousand, one million, and ten million subscribers) (“Creators | Awards | YouTube” n.d.).
For Chen, acquiring this sort of societal power is not simply a side effect of needing to make a living, it is arguably his primary goal. The facts are that he left a comfortable, prestigious, high paying job as a Wall Street analyst to create YouTube content about Asian food culture. Attempting to find success on YouTube by all accounts is an extremely difficult goal. According to one study, even for the top three percent of the most-viewed channels, the combined income from advertisement revenues would still fall below the U.S. federal poverty line (Bloomberg 2018). Chen’s motivations are not simply about accumulating economic and social power, but rather, it is about leveraging available, technological resources to challenge who gets to represent Asian food—which in turn, has the effect of redefining the Asian American identity.
Some may view Chen’s approach to cultural reproduction to have an essentializing effect that further consolidates hegemonic powers (Lee and Guo 2013). According to Lee and Guo (2013), “Celebrating the authenticity and distinctiveness of vernacular discourse would only essentialize vernacular communities and consolidate the hegemonic power structure that defines the difference between the vernacular and the mainstream, thus reinforcing the marginalization of the vernacular” (394). In other words, further differentiating Asian food cultures from other western food cultures has an effect of reinforcing those racial boundaries, thus maintaining existing social distinctions and power structures. Regardless, Lee and Guo provide a framework to mitigate these essentializing effects of vernacular discourses in marginalized communities through a concept known as hybridity—a conceptual in-between space to rearticulate and renegotiate social boundaries (Lee and Guo 2013, 395).
Through this conceptual framework, Chen’s method of cultural reproduction can be seen as embracing a hybrid identity, and there are three examples in particular that clearly demonstrates this. Firstly, Chen has fully embraced the use of the English language—including many of the colloquial English expressions—as well as the use of the local languages of the cultures he is documenting. For example, when eating Liangpi noodles in New York City, he introduces the locations in English, but he makes sure to properly pronounce the correct Chinese pronunciations of the dishes. Secondly, Chen balances his videos on Asian food cultures with content that also features non-Asian foods. As an example, even whilst visiting Asian countries or neighborhoods, he is willing to review popular fast food chains like McDonalds, Burger King, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, and eat non-Asian American foods like steaks, pizza, and sandwiches. Ultimately, he gives non-Asian foods a chance to co-exist in his world. In one particular episode, he takes an order of Kentucky Fried Chicken and recooks it in an Asian rice cooker with white rice, soy sauce, mirin, and hot oil (Chen 2020c). This highlights his willingness to embrace a hybrid space leaves space for both Asian and non-Asian identities to exist in harmony. In a third example, the guests that he he shares meals with are of diverse ethnic backgrounds—both Asian and non-Asian—which creates a hybrid space for food cultures to interact and evolve and audiences to witness.
Discussion & Conclusion
Broader Implications, Research Limitations & Future Research Directions
While this study provides an explanation for what motivates Chen and possibly those like him to create media content surrounding food, it certainly has its limitations. The most glaring is that this paper is a case study of a single food vlogger. While Chen’s impact on his viewers and to the rest of society may be notable, future research could examine other creators like him to find patterns, commonalities, and idiosyncrasies. Furthermore, while this paper focused on one aspect of Chen’s racial and ethnic identity, his other social identities are missing from my analysis. In 1989, Kimberlé Crenshaw had developed a concept related to identity which she coined intersectionality—wherein the intersecting and overlapping identities such as race, gender, and class, help explain power inequality in the form of discrimination and oppression. Consequently, identities of minority Americans are complex and therefore, the analytical framework to help understand must also be equally sophisticated. For Crenshaw and her critique of racist law and politics, it required examining the intersection of Black and female identities; for the investigation of minority food vloggers like Chen, his interactions must be viewed more holistically, inclusive of his other identities.
In conclusion, by examining the food vlog of a single Asian American YouTube creator as a case study, this paper explored the nature of societal power at the intersection of food and participatory media. Its primary goal was to improve the understanding of how the marriage of quotidian life (i.e. food culture) and new media technologies can yield beneficial results for those in marginalized classes. Knowing how technology benefits disenfranchised communities can help society direct resources to alleviate pressing social issues and expand opportunities for all. The analysis of Chen and his content can be summed up as a story about how technology enables those at the margins of American society to connect with their cultural heritage and define their own identity. For viewers, YouTube content may simply be a source of information or a form of entertainment, but for minority creators like Chen, it is central to their evolving selves. And while much of the current research on food vlogging attempts to describe a monolithic theory of food media production, in fact, researchers often fails to see the importance examining acts of creativity within the principles of cultural relativism. To fully grasp the meaning of such social behaviors, scholars must contextualize their subjects into their local environment—within their own values, struggles, and conflicts.
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