The Visual Sociology of Food in the Digital Age: A Conceptual Critique of Spectacle, Simulacra, and the Table

Abstract

This article develops a conceptual framework that examines the visualization of food as a multilayered sociological problematic at the intersection of visual sociology and food sociology. Despite the rich theoretical heritage of both subdisciplines, food visuality has largely been neglected as an object of systematic theoretical inquiry. The study aims to address this gap by bringing together three key figures of critical theory, Debord’s concept of spectacle, Baudrillard’s theory of simulacra, and Barthes’s semiological method, in a systematic joint reading along the axis of food and visuality. Employing systematic reading of canonical texts, theoretical comparison, and critical hermeneutics, the study formulates an integrated analytical framework organized around three levels: production (aesthetic coding and social construction), circulation (platform-mediated distribution and sign circulation), and consumption (visual reception and translation into practice). Rather than applying each theorist separately, this synthesis reveals the productive tensions among them, the source of spectacle, meaning and agency, representation and materiality, and discusses what specific questions each tension opens within the context of food visuality. By conceptualizing visual food sociology as a disciplinary field with its own epistemological questions, the article aims to provide a conceptual foundation for future empirical research.