Sensory Authenticity: Embodying and Commodifying “the Other”

Scholarship on authenticity within the social sciences has long focused on the social construction of “the real” and “artifice” and the constant negotiation of difference in social interaction. This chapter examines these negotiations at the level of the body and considers how cultural producers otherize and commodify the corporeal within a market for authenticity. Drawing on interviews, ethnography, and content analysis within restaurants selling comida árabe (Arab cuisine) in Chile, this study shows how restaurateurs use a sensorial toolkit—a range of embodied strategies that manipulate each primary sensation (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste)—to advertise their cuisine. The cumulative experience produced and sold within these restaurants creates a general sense of authenticity as restaurateurs exoticize and traditionalize their products to meet the Orientalist inertia of the market for comida árabe. Bringing together scholarship on authenticity and sensation, this chapter reveals how fundamental social processes of exclusion and distinction are grounded in everyday, embodied exchanges.