Imagining cultural wealth: producer perceptions and potential value in cultural markets

Whether the result of purposeful nation-branding projects or longstanding traditions, associations endure between specific nations and the particular goods they produce. Such associations can be harnessed on behalf of the symbolic and economic value recently recognized as national cultural wealth. Further, the cultivation of impression management strategies about geographical origins is requisite for specialty food firms: terroir is a foundational convention of the gourmet food industry, and its potential value is significant. For entrepreneurial firms in the specialty food market, the process of strategically connecting to cultural wealth would seem to depend upon their particular geographic location. But while some national origins add both symbolic and economic value to cultural products within the global marketplace, others potentially threaten that value. In this paper, I read closely the discursive data contained on a nearly complete collection of two case study firms’ food packages (N = 100) to illustrate the firms’ unexpectedly divergent perceptions of cultural wealth, despite their identical national location. I further analyze interview data to describe the vital (and potentially valuable) interaction between producer perception, imagination, and cultural production. By redirecting analytical attention toward profit-seeking producers, this paper aims to increase the analytical power of the concept of cultural wealth.