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Competitive Coffee Making and the Crafting of the Ideal Barista
Abstract
Despite widespread attention to issues of gender and economic exploitation at coffee's agricultural origins, works within coffee scholarship systematically overlook the workers at the final stage of production: baristas, the coffee shop employees who prepare and serve beverages. This article draws from data collected from over four hundred female American specialty coffee baristas to examine how their gender impacts their experiences at coffee competitions. I argue that barista competitions exist in order to legitimize the barista as a type of skilled laborer, but that these attempts rest on highly gendered understandings of skill, professionalism, and performance. Barista competitions attempt to present a unified industry face, but gender remains a salient issue through its unequal presence that renders female baristas as distinct and different from the ideal barista, who is assumed to be male. The conclusions drawn from this case study have broad significance for our understandings of gender and precariousness in the food industry, and the relationship between, and negotiation of, skill and perceived value. The rarefied world of specialty coffee competition magnifies and illuminates extant workplace issues regarding gender, which are characteristic of many forms of low-wage service labor in the United States.
... Researchers deem the barista profession as creative, promising, and superior in job quality. For example, Knox (2016Knox ( , 2019 and Parrish (2020) assert that baristas entail artistically gratifying work, vast growth opportunities, better pay, and higher self-regulated agencies-qualities that do not match up to other sectors of the F&B industry-making them a unique group that both academia and practice could learn from. ...
... 478-479). Instead, Ott (2020) implies that a "true" barista is one who appreciates the manual craftsmanship that goes into the brew process: one embraces coffeemaking as a form of artistry (Laurier, 2013;Lee, 2021a;Parrish, 2020). ...
... Adopting Ott's definition of a "true" barista, we define a barista as an F&B operative in the third-wave coffee shop industry who is primarily responsible for the crafting and serving of specialty coffee beverages. We focus on baristas working in the artisanal sector of the coffee shop industry, otherwise known as the third-wave coffee market, where one requires greater coffee knowledge and technical skills, serves premium coffee known as specialty coffee, and takes pride in coffeemaking as a serious form of craftsmanship (Knox, 2016(Knox, , 2019Laurier, 2013;Lee, 2021a;Ott, 2020;Parrish, 2020). As we align ourselves with this definition, two additional terms must be defined: operative and third-wave. ...
This study explores the day-to-day operational intricacies of front line food and beverage employees. Situated in the third-wave coffee sector, the authors offer an evocative autoethnography about baristas' operational experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. Using personal memory mining practices, observational fieldnotes, focus groups, interviews, and storytelling as a means for dramatic enactment, the authors present "Barista Diary," a story about how baristas navigate the everyday tensions and complexities when working behind a coffee bar. Informed by Deweyan philosophy and contemporary hospitality literature, the authors reveal how baristas develop skills as habitual powers, manage operational chaos through aesthetic experience, and transform simple coffeemaking services into nourishments with hospitality merit. The authors depict that a barista's job entails more than just making coffee, but a nexus of intricacies that often go undiscussed in academia and practice.
... Performing aesthetic engagement demands knowledge and skills. Craft practitioners, therefore, seek to develop their expertise (Parrish 2020;Salon 2008). For example, they use institutional materials that support aesthetic engagement, such as the Specialty Coffee Association's (SCA) sensory lexicon, which "identifies 110 flavor, aroma, and texture attributes present in coffee, and provides references for measuring their intensity" (World Coffee Research 2021). ...
... Translation efforts contributed to the diffusion of meanings by adapting them to align with broader targets. Take, for example, the professionalization of baristas that accompanied their aesthetic engagement with practices and display of masterful performances (Parrish 2020), which contributed to the creation and diffusion of meanings such as 'professional barista,' 'coffee connoisseur,' and 'handcrafted coffee' (see Figure 3 for an evolution of these terms over the years). As craft baristas professionalized, they and the coffee shops they worked at became associated with snobbery due to gatekeeping behaviors, exemplified by parodies in cultural work (e.g., Portlandia's 'The Coffee Manifesto'), which led to the growth of meanings such as 'coffee snob.' ...
How markets evolve is a perennial and important question in business. Building on a large qualitative dataset on the coffee market comprising primary and secondary interviews, archival data, and fieldwork, the authors introduce a novel theoretical mechanism—practice expansion—to explain how ongoing institutional complexity fosters market evolution. To theorize practice expansion, the authors combine institutional logics with resource partitioning and introduce a two-by-two typology of firms evolving in markets: craft vs. commercial and generalist vs. specialist. The authors’ analysis, grounded in this typology, identifies three mechanisms that explain practice expansion (elaboration, translation, and transformation). The authors then show how practice expansion contributes to market evolution by increasing product diversity, broadening skills and knowledge, and enriching the market meaning system. The novel theory introduced in this article contributes to extant work by theorizing market evolution as resulting from practice expansion, and by broadening our understanding of the types of firms and their interactions important to that evolution. The novel theory also points to important strategy implications for how different types of firms can contribute to and benefit from the identified evolutionary patterns and ongoing institutional complexity.
... Chefs, cooks, bartenders, and baristas are exemplar members of operational level creative professionals-connoisseurs of their crafts who live in the spontaneity of creativity McBride and Flore, 2019;Ocejo, 2017;Parrish, 2020). Several studies, particularly in the field of culinary/pastry arts, have explored the underlying mechanics and considerations that guide elite culinary producers' creative endeavors Palczak et al., 2020;Stierand and Dörfler, 2012;Stierand et al., 2014). ...
... The ideas delineated here are ready for practical adoption, specifically amongst the third-wave coffeeshop community. Understanding that coffee consumers and enthusiasts are constantly seeking for experiential novelty (Han et al., 2020;Lee et al., 2017), and that culinary/beverage producers are actively craving creative opportunities to express (Manzo, 2014;Ocejo, 2017;Ott, 2020;Parrish, 2020), the pomelo filtration method offers a new mode of expression that satisfies both parties. From the consumer perspective, the pomelo filtration method not only imparts new flavor and harmonies, but also it comprises a potential aesthetic quality that could be imparted into the guest experience. ...
Social science theories, particularly those from the praxis of culinary arts, are meaningful only when they are authenticated in practice. Using the specialty coffee context, this article's purpose is twofold. First, an existing culinary creativity theory is exercised in practice; and second, a new brewing concept is developed and is readily operationalizable for practice. Informed by the theoretical premises of “the expressionist view of culinary creativity,” a new creative brewing method named “the pomelo filtration method” is proposed. The entire idea’s journey is documented, analyzed, illustrated, and discussed. Implications to both theory and practice are provided.
... Bunun yerine Ott (2020), "gerçek" bir baristanın, demleme sürecine giren manuel işçiliği takdir eden kişi olduğunu ima eder. Diğer bir ifadeyle kişi, kahve yapımını bir sanat biçimi olarak benimsemektedir (Laurier, 2013, Lee, 2021, Parrish, 2020. ...
Nispeten yeni bir olgu olarak, kahveyle ilgili deneyimler ve kahve turizmi alanında önemli araştırma boşlukları bulunmaktadır. Bunlardan biri de kahve turizminde baristaların rolüdür. Bu makalenin amacı, baristaların kahve turizmindeki rollerini ve kültürel elçilikten deneyim yaratımına kadar kahve turizmi sürecine nasıl katkı sağladıklarını incelemektir. Baristalar, turizm sektöründeki en yaratıcı mesleklerden biri olarak kabul edilmektedir. Kahve turizminin yaygınlaştığı bölgelerde, baristalar birer kültürel elçi olarak turistlere yerel kahve kültürünü tanıtmaktadır. Baristaların bilgi birikimi ve tutkusu, kahve deneyimini zenginleştirir ve bir fincan kahveyi bir kültür yolculuğuna dönüştürmektedir. Baristalar, kahve turizminin yerel ekonomiye ve sürdürülebilir turizme olan katkısında önemli bir rol oynamaktadır. Yerel kahve çiftlikleri ve küçük ölçekli üreticilerle işbirliği yaparak turistlere doğrudan kaynağından gelen kahve çekirdeklerini tanıtırken, sürdürülebilir kahve üretimi hakkında bilgi sahibi olmalarını sağlamaktadır. Kahve turizminin önemli etkinlikleri arasında kahve festivalleri ve barista yarışmaları da yer almaktadır. Bu etkinliklerde baristalar ön plandadır. Bu festivallerde baristalar, ziyaretçilere özel kahve demleme tekniklerini, yaratıcı tarifleri ve kahve sanatı gösterilerini sunmaktadır. Baristalık, disiplin, tutku ve yaratıcılıkla dolu bir meslektir ve kahveye olan ilgiyi artıran ve kahve kültürünü ve turizmini destekleyen önemli bir unsurdur. Bu nedenle, baristaların kahve turizmindeki rolünün, her geçen gün daha da değer kazandığı söylenebilmektedir. Sonuç olarak kahve turizmi, yerel ekonomilere katkıda bulunma ve turistik destinasyonların kültürel çeşitliliğini artırma potansiyeline sahiptir. Bu potansiyeli gerçekleştirmek için baristaların etkin bir rol üstlenmesi önemlidir.
... There is an emerging literature that engages with the crucial role that baristas and coffee shop owners play in coffee culture. Buchanan (2023, 140) interviewed owners and baristas in Mexico, finding that their work with coffee afforded them "passion, curiosity, job security, and status." Lee and Ruck (2022) examine the unnoticed complexities of baristas' work and Parrish (2020) explores the importance of gender in barista life. Sonia Bookman's influential work on coffee shop culture drew on interviews with "baristas, franchisee owners, and marketing directors" (Bookman 2014, 98). ...
Prompted by the meteoric increase in the number of coffee shops in South Korea over the past two decades, this article explores the various strategies that coffee shop entrepreneurs in Seoul adopt to succeed in one of the world’s most saturated markets. Grounding our study in Bourdieusian notions of taste and distinction as well as contemporary research into coffee shop culture and social class identity, we conducted two rounds of semi-structured interviews with coffee entrepreneurs in Seoul (N = 9). Our interviews are supplemented by written field notes from coffee shops in two different neighborhoods in Seoul. The results show that most coffee entrepreneurs strive to distinguish their shop from other coffee shops via: 1) unique and innovative menu items; and 2) the physical space and atmosphere (bun-wi-gi) of the coffee shop itself. In addition, despite the ubiquity of coffee in Korean culture today, many Korean coffee entrepreneurs still see coffee as a foreign drink that needs to be specially adapted to Koreans’ tastes.
This study delves into the efficacy of combining brain-stimulating articles with interactive sessions in a WhatsApp group to improve coffee knowledge and practice. The study, which draws on cognitive learning theory and practice-based learning theory, investigates how this strategy fosters a culture of continuous learning, collaboration, and mastery among baristas at Bash Coffee Company. Baristas actively develop knowledge and increase their understanding of coffee theory by offering properly picked articles. The articles include industry news, developing trends, and advanced methodologies, allowing baristas to properly encode, store, and retrieve coffee-related knowledge. The interactive sessions supplement article-based learning by promoting information exchange, concept clarification, and practical application. Baristas participate in real-world discussions, seek advice from expert facilitators, and share their experiences with others. This collaborative setting promotes development, innovation, and skill refining. The inclusion of brain-stimulating content and interactive sessions in the WhatsApp group enables baristas to excel in their coffee practice. This strategy not only improves knowledge, but also provides clients with unique coffee experiences. The study's findings provide useful insights for coffee firms looking to foster continuous learning and excellence in their baristas.
The higher the status in the "haute cuisine" field, the fewer women are employed in prestigious positions. Although cooking is considered a feminine competence, it becomes masculine when it is considered a professional job. Therefore, there are recognized gender barriers for women to achieve chef positions in the field. This article discusses the case of six female chefs who were awarded three Michelin stars in 2014 and one with two stars. The goal was to research how these women met the criteria of the Michelin Guide and which were the specific aspects that distinguished them from the rest. Although in their discourse, gender barriers were not highly accentuated, however, passion, the feminine approach to management, and family support were considered mandatory for their success.
Although the consumer culture field has addressed the role of ritual processes in consumption, no research has yet identified how connoisseur consumers, through ritual practices, establish and manipulate their distinction from other consumers. Drawing on key concepts from ritual theory, this research addresses the role played by ritual in connoisseurship consumption and consumers’ taste. In conducting an ethnographic study on connoisseurship consumption, the first author immersed himself in the North American specialty coffee context-Toronto, Montreal, Seattle, and New York-from August 2013 to July 2014. He used long interviews and participant observation to collect data, which was then interpreted using a hermeneutic approach. We introduce the taste transformation ritual, theorizing the process that converts regular consumers into connoisseur consumers by establishing and reinforcing differences between mass and connoisseurship consumption. We develop a broader theoretical account that builds on consumption ritual and taste formation.
Despite the diversity of consumption and class practices of the new urban middle classes within and between societies, they share some qualities. Focusing on the lifestyles and mentalities of regulars of specialty coffee bars in Tehran, Glasgow and Amsterdam, this study explores common characteristics of this group. Our ethnography suggests that through their everyday consumption practices, coffee people share a set of ethical dispositions and cultural practices among which this article focuses on the metropolitan body, cosmopolitanism and environmentalism.
This chapter addresses work ‘segregation’ by sex in the cultural industries. We outline some of the main forms this takes, according to our observations: the high presence of women in marketing and public relations roles; the high numbers of women in production co-ordination and similar roles; the domination of men of more prestigious creative roles; and the domination by men of technical jobs. We then turn to explanation: what gender dynamics drive such patterns of work segregation according to sex? Drawing on interviews, we claim that the following stereotypes or prevailing discourses, concerning the distinctive attributes of women and men, may influence such segregation: that women are more caring, supportive and nurturing; that women are better communicators; that women are ‘better organized’; and that men are more creative because they are less bound by rules.
Since the 1990s supposedly ‘historic’ fault lines separating coffee preferences and practices across the European continent have been broken down. The consumption of Italian-style espresso-based beverages outside the home is now widespread. Much of this is drunk in branded coffee-shop outlets, based on a format popularised in the United States. This article investigates these changes employing the culture of production perspective. It is structured in three parts. The first investigates the formation of quasi-national coffee-drinking styles in the at-home and away-from-home sectors with particular reference to Italy; the second analyses the transformation of out-of-home coffee-drinking in the UK during the 1990s; and the third examines the spread of Italian-style coffee across the European continent.
A literature review demonstrates the importance of visual information in performance. There is evidence that dress and appearance affect perceptions of musical elements of a performance. There are differences in men and women's dress that may put female classical soloists at a disadvan-tage that could affect their musical advancement. This study investigates the roles of concert dress and physical attractiveness on audience perceptions of performance quality, focusing on solo women violinists of the Western Classical tradition. Four female violinists were filmed playing in four states of dress: Jeans, a Nightclubbing dress, black Concert dress and Point-light condition (body movement is apparent but not physical appearance). Each clip was recorded in two conditions: both as the Per-former's own version and with a mastertrack dubbed over the top. The dubbed versions therefore had a constant mu-sical soundtrack. Fifteen male and 15 female participants (age range 17– 66 years) were asked to rate clips on six point scales in terms of Technical Proficiency, Musicality, Appropriateness of Dress and Attractiveness of Performer. Significant effects were found of Dress, Performer and Condition on participant perceptions, and an interaction of Performer and Dress was observed. This work confirms the importance of the visual information in performance and its effect on the formation of audience judgements on per-formers.
Economic growth and a rising middle class consumer base make emerging markets an attractive prospect for many international businesses. Changing patterns of retail in these countries present opportunities for business expansion that many are keen to capitalise on, but also challenges for reaching their ambitions. This paper examines the growth of the coffee shop industry in China, considering its key features dynamics and drivers, in order to address questions about successful retail expansion in emerging markets. It aims to explore how changing consumer cultures have contributed to a rapidly growing industry, what strategies businesses have used to enter the market and maintain growth, as well as considerations for potential retail success in the future.
Coffee with the right traits can command impressive prices in the specialty coffee market. While much of the attention to terroir—the taste of place—in coffee has focused on region, the details of place matter too. For farmers, paying attention to the details of coffee landscapes is important to create the distinctive flavors prized in these markets. This article explores how farmers in the Tarrazú coffee region of Costa Rica use systems of traceability based on details of the landscape and the coffee that grows in it to create coffee that “tastes of something.” Instead of seeing traceability and terroir as different kinds of production with different logic, these farmers see traceability as a key piece of terroir-based high-value production.
In 2012–2015, baristas engaged in union drives at five cafes in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In a series of semi-structured interviews with participants in and supporters of these drives, it became clear that issues of gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity were critical in understanding why and how these union drives evolved: women and queer baristas experienced gender-based discrimination and marginalization at work; they were noted leaders in some of the drives and drew on activist networks to rally community support for the unionization effort. Finally, issues of gender and sexuality informed some of the baristas’ broader economic analysis. We argue that the barista union drive in Halifax illustrates a framework for understanding how gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation inform unjust experiences in precarious workplaces and strategies for confronting them. A gendered analysis of the barista union drives underscores the importance of organized labor’s outreach to young workers and, further, that engaging with workers with attention to intersectionality is an important organizational strategy.
The craft beer industry is of increased interest to academics and geographers are beginning to not only chart a “geography of beer”; but also the local economic development implications of the industry. Indeed, we posit that the growth of the craft beer industry resides at the nexus between nature, place, and identity—or what we consider an applied geography of growth that is necessarily informed by sustainability and the closely allied geographic concepts of human-environment interactions and place. Further, we examine the branding of nature and place as co-determined spatial mechanisms for market differentiation and economic growth including neo-localism. Specifically, we examine real world examples of authentic branding initiatives that extend from dynamic place-based human-environment interactions that promote the overall sustainability of communities and the craft beer industry. In doing so, we propose an economic development framework based in an applied geography organized around the concepts of place, region, and sustainability. The framework can be used in a variety of economic development contexts and across multiple industries.
This book considers in unprecedented detail one of the most confounding questions in American racial practice: when to speak about people in racial terms. Viewing "race talk" through the lens of a California high school and district, Colormute draws on three years of ethnographic research on everyday race labeling in education. Based on the author's experiences as a teacher as well as an anthropologist, it discusses the role race plays in everyday and policy talk about such familiar topics as discipline, achievement, curriculum reform, and educational inequality. Pollock illustrates the wide variations in the way speakers use race labels. Sometimes people use them without thinking twice; at other moments they avoid them at all costs or use them only in the description of particular situations. While a major concern of everyday race talk in schools is that racial descriptions will be inaccurate or inappropriate, Pollock demonstrates that anxiously suppressing race words (being what she terms "colormute") can also cause educators to reproduce the very racial inequities they abhor. The book assists readers in cultivating a greater understanding of the pitfalls and possibilities of everyday race talk and clarifies previously murky discussions of "colorblindness." By bridging the gap between theory and practice, Colormute will be enormously helpful in fostering ongoing conversations about dismantling racial inequality in America.
This paper was originally written for presentation at the Nuffield Conference on De-skilling and the Labour Process, in November 1979, and later discussed by the Conference of Socialist Economists Sex and Class Group. We should like to thank Sue Himmelweit for her comments on the first drafts and for her encouragement to rewrite it for Feminist Review: In revising it we have gradually come to realize that it opens up many more questions than it resolves. We put it forward, therefore, not as a finished 'position' but as a way of sharing our questions with other feminists, in the hope that a wider dialogue may ensue.
This article examines the ways in which Chinese consumers engage with foreign brands, looking specifically at their perceptions and experiences of Starbucks. Rather than assuming an inherent conflict between global and local meanings, or collectivist and individualist values, we examine the accomplished meaning of foreign brands: how Chinese consumers make sense of Starbucks, and what their engagements with the brand can tell us about the interplay between the local, global and glocal in the consumption of Western goods. Based on interviews with urban, middle-class consumers, the article explores four major themes in respondents' narratives about Starbucks. First, we discuss the strategies and cues respondents use to understand and authenticate Starbucks as a foreign brand; second, we focus on the local socio-cultural context for engagements with the brand as a symbol of status; third, we discuss the respondents' associations of Starbucks' global status with quality and trustworthiness; and, finally, we consider how respondents use Starbucks as a glocal bridge, to experience a Western way of life. We suggest that these findings highlight the role of foreign brands – and consumer goods more generally – in the problems of individual and collective identity formation.
Engaging key issues in a growing sociological literature on the emergence of ordinary cosmopolitanisms in consumer culture, this paper traces a link between brands and cosmopolitanism. Focusing on the case of specialty coffee brands Starbucks and Second Cup, the paper draws on recent theoretical approaches to the brand, and substantial qualitative data from research conducted in Toronto, to outline how the brands frame and invoke a narrow form of cosmopolitanism as part of the brand experience. However, it is not assumed that such cosmopolitanism is straightforwardly taken up or reproduced by consumers. Rather, considering the interactive ways in which consumers engage with the brands, it is argued that a stylized ‘cosmopolitan cool’ is co-generated in the dynamic interplay. While elaborating the connection between cosmopolitanism and the brands, the paper will also consider the paradoxes, limits and tensions of such branded cosmopolitanism.
This article takes up the question of the vexed class role of the American celebrity chef, beginning with the premise that, in the U.S., the achievement of class status is inimical with physical labor——and that, nevertheless, celebrity chefs have not only achieved elevated class status, but have become creators of class status for those who eat their food, by allowing diners to take in a proxy version of their own status with their pastas and foie gras. Beginning with a brief history of contemporary chefdom, the article explores the synthesis of perceived French class, American bootstrapper working culture and testosterone-laden cowboy allure that has led to the rise of the contemporary image of the American chef. It then explores the ways in which the dirty work, the physical labor of the kitchen and the labor-free, pristine notion of celebrity come together in the body of the chef, creating difficulties for the diner who seeks to take in the chef's celebrity power with his food, but also swallows the chef's labor, thus sliding backwards on the American class scale, reversing the Horatio Alger story, precisely by seeking to move upward. Similarly, the diner who reinforces his sophistication by swallowing what the chef feeds him is also taking in the unknown, the mysterious, the potentially defiling and disgusting. Television chefdom solves this problem, at once making the chef famous, exposing him as ordinary, and putting him in his place through the mechanisms of reality TV and public judgment.
Using a gendered organization perspective, this research examines how restaurants structure gendered service encounters and how table servers perform gendered scripts of good service. Interview data from integrated wait staffs in five kinds of restaurants reveal three scripts of good service—friendliness, deference, and flirting. Waitresses were perceived as stereotypically friendly and openly displayed cheerfulness in coffee shops. Resisting subservience was easier for waiters and in restaurants that gender the work role as “waitering.” Waitresses performed a “job flirt” in restaurants that cast the work role as “waitressing.” To give good service is to “do gender” by performing gendered scripts, by differentially applying scripts to waiters and waitresses, and by structuring scripts into waitering and waitressing work roles.
Sociologists have documented how women in male-dominated occupations experience subtle and overt forms of discrimination based on gender stereotypes. This study examines women professional chefs to understand how they perceive and respond to stereotypes claiming women are not good leaders, are too emotional, and are not “cut out” for male-dominated work. Many of our participants resist these stereotypes and believe that their gender has benefited them in their jobs. Using in-depth interviews with women chefs, we show that they utilize essentialist gendered rhetoric to describe how women chefs are better than their male counterparts. While such rhetoric appears to support stereotypes emphasizing “natural” differences between men and women in the workplace, we suggest that women are reframing these discourses into a rhetoric of “feminine strength” wherein women draw from gender differences in ways that benefit them in their workplaces and their careers. Our conclusion discusses the implications of our findings for gender inequality at work.
Gender scholars have long argued that workplace culture is an important key to understanding how informal norms create, maintain,
and sometimes undermine gender and sexual inequality at work. Although most studies have defined workplace culture as occupational
culture, less emphasis has been placed on the importance of organizational culture. This article addresses the importance
of both aspects of workplace culture by examining the occupational and organizational dress and appearance norms of men and
women who work as editors and accountants at a heterosexual men's pornographic magazine and at a feminist magazine. This comparative
case study demonstrates that workers face different expectations about the appropriate split between “personal” and work identities,
depending on what they do and where they work. These informal, unwritten occupational and organizational norms play a large
part in workers' definitions of appropriate and inappropriate expressions of gender and sexuality at work and should be attended
to more carefully in attempts to achieve equality for men and women in all workplaces.
Coffee was once viewed as a masculine beverage. When coffee crossed the threshold of the home and entered the kitchen, it lost its male exclusivity. The espresso shot has not made this journey from the public to the private domain. History has shown that the home is the female center of control. Men must journey outside of that domain for control. The "third place" provides this, the classic example being the tavern. The drinks that accompany this third place are inherently masculine. Also, if modern culture maintains that strong drinks are for strong bodies, the association between espresso and men applies. As a shot of liquor is concentrated alcohol, espresso is concentrated coffee and provides an accelerated caffeine "intoxication." While coffee evolved beyond its masculine origins, the espresso shot has retained its masculinity by virtually avoiding entrance into the home and by the nature of the drink itself.
This article analyzes the multifaceted connections linking consumers and producers in expanding North/South Fair Trade coffee networks. I develop a commodity network framework that builds on the commodity chain tradition, integrating insights from cultural studies, actor–network theory, and conventions approaches. This framework illuminates how material and ideological relations are negotiated across production and consumption arenas. In the case of Fair Trade, progressive ideas and practices related to trust, equality, and global responsibility are intertwined with traditional commercial and industrial conventions. As I demonstrate, the negotiation of these divergent conventions shortens the social distance between Fair Trade coffee consumers and producers. I conclude that by re–linking consumers and producers, commodity network analysis provides a robust entré for academic inquiry and engagement in alternative food politics.
The author investigates the applicability of the word “terroir” to chocolate. As a Master of Wine, wine journalist, and wine educator, the author has tried to understand how “terroir,” the environmental and human factors associated with growing vines and making wine, impacts the flavor of wine. Comparing and contrasting viticulture and winemaking to cacao farming and chocolate manufacture, the author analyzes to what degree terroir could be a concept that informs chocolate appreciation. He notes that the great distances between cacao farms and factories encourage the perception of cacao and chocolate as commodities. He observes that the varietal and origin nomenclature of cacao can be at worst misleading and generally lacks clarity and precision. He shows how the many steps that transform cacao into chocolate threaten the expression of terroir in the final product. Yet he acknowledges that there could be a basis for use of the word in the world of cacao and chocolate.
Keywords:alternative agriculture;place;value;food studies;cheeseABSTRACT Terroir, the taste of place, is being adapted by artisan cheesemakers in the United States to reveal the range of values-agrarian, environmental, social, and gastronomic-that they believe constitute their cheese and distinguish artisan from commodity production. Some see themselves as reverse engineering terroir cheeses to create place though environmental stewardship and rural economic revitalization. But a tension is produced: while warranting projects of reterritorialization through defetishized food production, terroir marketing may risk turning the concept of "terroir" into a commodity fetish. U.S. terroir talk reveals attempts to reconcile the economic and sociomoral values that producers invest in artisan cheese.
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Gettin' Paid: The Results from Our International Barista Income Survey
- Alex Bernson
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Linguistic, Social and Sexual Relations: A Review of Dale Spender's Man Made Language
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Most Baristas Still Don't Make a Living Wage
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The Brand New Brazilian Specialty Coffee Market
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Concerned about a Barista Living Wage? Take This Survey
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The Future of Iced Coffee
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Machines, People, and Social Interaction in 'Third-Wave' Coffeehouses
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Why Coffee Competitions Are Important
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Meister, Erin. 2013. "Why Coffee Competitions Are Important."
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World Champion Agnieszka Rojewska on the Barista's Biggest Task
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The Barista: A Sustainable Profession in the Making
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Sense Work: Inequality and the Labor of Connoisseurship
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She's a Lady: Tipped Wages and the Maintenance of Gendered Divisions among American Specialty Coffee Baristas
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Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World
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Pendergrast, Mark. 2010. Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee
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When Is a Barista not a Barista? The Relationship between Workplace Learning and Occupational Identity Formation
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Coffee and Wine-Two Worlds Compared
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A Surprising New Trend in Coffee
- Simran Sethi
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