Michaela DeSoucey

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Bio

I am a cultural and organizational sociologist with research expertise in studying the business and politics of consumption. My research and teaching has centered on how relationships among markets, social movements, and state systems shape the cultural and moral politics of food. I am also interested in cultural ideas about risk, trust, and responsibility, as well as about the valuation of heritage and the construction of authenticity.

Research Publications

BOOK:

Michaela DeSoucey. Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food. Princeton University Press. Hardcover 2016, paperback 2018.

• Winner: 2017 ASA Sociology of Culture Section Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book
• Winner: 2017 Gourmand World Cookbooks Awards, national winner in Culinary History
• Winner: 2016 ASA Consumers & Consumption Section Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award

RECENT & REPRESENTATIVE ARTICLES:

Danny Hamrick, Michaela DeSoucey, and Nino Bariola. 2024. “Distillations of Authenticity: A Global Value Chain Analysis of Peruvian and Chilean Pisco.” Regional Studies. 58(10): 1792-1803.

Jennifer Smith Maguire, Richard Ocejo, and Michaela DeSoucey. 2023. “Mobile Trust Regimes: Modes of Attachment in an Age of Banal Omnivorousness.” Journal of Consumer Culture. 23(3) 597-616.

Michaela DeSoucey and Miranda Waggoner. 2022. “Another Person’s Peril: Peanut Allergy, Risk Perceptions, and Responsible Sociality.” American Sociological Review. 87(1): 50-79.

• Winner: 2023 ASA Section on Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity Outstanding Published Article Award
• Honorable Mention: 2023 ASA Section on Medical Sociology Eliot Friedson Outstanding Publication Award

Nicolas Bascuñan-Wiley, Michaela DeSoucey, and Gary Alan Fine. 2022. “Convivial Quarantines: Cultivating Co-presence at a Distance through Digital Commensality.” Qualitative Sociology 45: 371-92.

Jennifer Woolley, Jo-Ellen Pozner, and Michaela DeSoucey. 2021. “Raising the Bar: Values-Driven Niche Creation in U.S. Bean-To-Bar Chocolate.” Strategy Science. 7(1): 27-55.

• Reprinted in “Strategy Science’s Contributions to Doctoral Reading Lists: Non-Market Strategies.” 2023. Daniel A. Levinthal and Gwendolyn K. Lee, eds.

Jo-Ellen Pozner, Michaela DeSoucey, J. Cameron Verhaal, and Katarina Sikavica. 2021. “Watered Down: Market Growth, Authenticity, and Evaluation in Craft Beer.” Organization Studies. 43(4): 321-345 (lead article).

Michaela DeSoucey, Michael Elliott, and Vaughn Schmutz. 2019. “Rationalized Authenticity and the Transnational Spread of Intangible Cultural Heritage.” Poetics 75 (101332).

Michaela DeSoucey and Daphne Demetry. 2016. “The Dynamics of Dining Out in the 21^st Century: Insights from Organizational Theory.” Sociology Compass 10(11): 1014-1027.

Rahsaan Maxwell and Michaela DeSoucey. 2016. “Gastronomic Cosmopolitanism: Supermarket Products in France and the United Kingdom.” Poetics 56: 85-97.

David Schleifer and Michaela DeSoucey. 2015. “What Your Consumer Wants: Business-to-Business Food Advertising as a Mechanism of Market Change.” Journal of Cultural Economy 8(2): 218-234.

Elizabeth Cherry, Colter Ellis, and Michaela DeSoucey. 2011. “Food for Thought, Thought for Food: Consumption, Identity, and Ethnography.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 40: 231-258.

Michaela DeSoucey. 2010. “Gastronationalism: Food Traditions and Authenticity Politics in the European Union.” American Sociological Review 75(3): 432-455.

• Winner: 2010 ASA Political Sociology Section’s Graduate Student Paper Prize
• Winner: 2010 ASA Economic Sociology Section’s Ron Burt Award for Best Graduate Student Paper
• Honorable Mention: 2010 ASA Sociology of Culture Section Suzanne Langer Award for Best Student Paper

Klaus Weber, Kathryn Heinze, and Michaela DeSoucey. 2008. “Forage for Thought: Mobilizing Codes in the Movement for Grass-fed Meat and Dairy Products.” Administrative Science Quart. 53(3): 529-567.

• Winner: 2014 ASQ Award for Scholarly Contribution
• Winner: 2009 ASA Section on the Sociology of Culture Clifford Geertz Prize for Best Article

Area(s) of Expertise

Culture; Food; Consumer Markets and Politics; Organizational Theory; Risk/Responsibility; Identity Movements; Globalization/Localization; Qualitative Methodologies.