Date of Award
8-22-2025
Date Published
September 2025
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Sociology
Advisor(s)
Edwin Ackerman
Keywords
authenticity;consumption;cosmopolitanism;food;race;racial segregation
Subject Categories
Social and Behavioral Sciences | Sociology
Abstract
This dissertation examines how racial inequality shapes the survival, visibility, and strategic adaptation of restaurants in postwar Syracuse, New York. It investigates how commercial food spaces reflect, reinforce, and negotiate racialized patterns of urban development, consumer taste, and economic opportunity. Drawing on longitudinal business and demographic data, a computational content analysis of online restaurant reviews, and original interviews with immigrant restaurateurs, the study integrates quantitative, computational, and qualitative methods to illuminate how race and space co-produce outcomes in the urban food economy. The first empirical chapter shows that Black-majority neighborhoods face higher commercial volatility and shorter restaurant survival, while white-majority areas benefit from durable clustering, suggesting race conditions the protective effects of density. The second chapter reveals how consumer discourse around immigrant cuisines is framed by authenticity and exoticism, while mainstream foods evoke familiarity and comfort. The third chapter draws on interviews to show how immigrant restaurateurs navigate pressures to balance cultural expression with market appeal, often tailoring offerings to meet the expectations of a broader, often white, audience. Together, these chapters demonstrate that the restaurant economy in Syracuse is not simply a reflection of entrepreneurial initiative or consumer preference but a racialized field structured by spatial inequality, discursive framing, and institutional power. By tracing the consumption of food across time, place, and discourse, this dissertation offers a sociological account of how symbolic multiculturalism coexists with material exclusion, and how race continues to shape who gets to represent culture, and who is allowed to thrive, in the urban marketplace.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Koytak, Huseyin Zeyd, "Race, Space, Taste in the Postwar U.S.: Three Independent Studies on Urban Restaurants in Syracuse, New York" (2025). Dissertations - ALL. 2220.
https://surface.syr.edu/etd/2220
