IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/mpifgd/174.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Quality and inequality: Taste, value, and power in the third wave coffee market

Author

Listed:
  • Fischer, Edward F.

Abstract

Based on a case study of the burgeoning high-end ("Third Wave") coffee market in the United States, this discussion paper examines value creation and capital accumulation in an age of neoliberal globalization. Drawing on sociological and economic theories of value, as well as perspectives on world systems and late capitalist accumulation, this paper proposes a framework in which the importance Marx ascribed to control over the material means of production has become eclipsed by control over the means of symbolic production in extracting surplus value through global trade. It shows how roasters, baristas, and marketers have created a new lexicon of quality for coffee, one tied to narratives of provenance and exclusivity that creates much of the value added in the coffee trade. This disadvantages smallholding coffee farmers who are heavily invested in land and the material means of production but lack the social and cultural capital to benefit from the surplus value created through symbolic production. It also perpetuates classic dependency patterns of global capital accumulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Fischer, Edward F., 2017. "Quality and inequality: Taste, value, and power in the third wave coffee market," MPIfG Discussion Paper 17/4, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:mpifgd:174
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/156227/1/882061062.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucien Karpik, 2010. "Valuing the Unique: The Economics of Singularities," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9215.
    2. Beckert, Jens & Rössel, Jörg & Schenk, Patrick, 2014. "Wine as a cultural product: Symbolic capital and price formation in the wine field," MPIfG Discussion Paper 14/2, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    3. Aspers, Patrik, 2006. "Designing for the Other: Using Knowledge to Upgrade Manufacturing in the Garment Industry," MPIfG Discussion Paper 06/9, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    4. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, 2015. "The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10581.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Evie Smith & Lisa Antoshak & Patrick H. Brown, 2022. "Grounds for Collaboration: A Model for Improving Coffee Sustainability Initiatives," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-22, May.
    2. Mangku Purnomo & Pardamean Daulay & Medea Ramadhani Utomo & Sugeng Riyanto, 2019. "Moderating Role of Connoisseur Consumers on Sustainable Consumption and Dynamics Capabilities of Indonesian Single Origin Coffee Shops," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(5), pages 1-17, March.
    3. Lauren Rosenberg & Mark Swilling & Walter J V Vermeulen, 2018. "Practices of Third Wave Coffee: A Burundian Producer's Perspective," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(2), pages 199-214, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carter, Elizabeth, 2015. "Constructing quality: Producer power, market organization, and the politics of high value-added markets," MPIfG Discussion Paper 15/9, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    2. Yura Yokoyama, 2023. "From money to culture: The practical indeterminacy of Bitcoin's values and temporalities," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(1), pages 32-43, January.
    3. Vivien Blanchet & Celine Berrier-Lucas, 2021. "15 ans de recherches sur les transitions socio-écologiques : bilan et propositions," Post-Print hal-04135096, HAL.
    4. Jan van Duppen, 2021. "Book review: The Botanical City," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(8), pages 1746-1750, June.
    5. David M. Waguespack & Robert Salomon, 2016. "Quality, Subjectivity, and Sustained Superior Performance at the Olympic Games," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(1), pages 286-300, January.
    6. Tinglong Dai & Sridhar Tayur, 2022. "Designing AI‐augmented healthcare delivery systems for physician buy‐in and patient acceptance," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 31(12), pages 4443-4451, December.
    7. Meagher, Kate, 2019. "Working in chains: African informal workers and global value chains," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 91590, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    8. Hervé Charmettant & Yvan Renou, 2021. "Cooperative conversion and communalization: Closely observed interactions between the material and the mental," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 92(1), pages 55-77, March.
    9. Mariagiulia Mariani & François Casabianca & Claire Cerdan & Iuri Peri, 2021. "Protecting Food Cultural Biodiversity: From Theory to Practice. Challenging the Geographical Indications and the Slow Food Models," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(9), pages 1-22, May.
    10. Isabelle Bouty & Marie-Léandre Gomez & Carole Drucker-Godard, 2013. "Maintaining an Institution : The Institutional Work of Michelin in Haute Cuisine around the World," Working Papers hal-00782455, HAL.
    11. Jason Potts & John Hartley, 2015. "How the Social Economy Produces Innovation," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 73(3), pages 263-282, September.
    12. Beckert, Jens, 2009. "Pragmatismus und wirtschaftliches Handeln," MPIfG Working Paper 09/4, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    13. Katherine Farley, 2022. "“We ain't never stolen a plant”: Livelihoods, property, and illegal ginseng harvesting in the Appalachian forest commons," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(2), pages 309-321, June.
    14. Megan Horst & Nathan McClintock & Adrien Baysse-Lainé & Ségolène Darly & Flaminia Paddeu & Coline Perrin & Kristin Reynolds & Christophe-Toussaint Soulard, 2021. "Translating land justice through comparison: a US–French dialogue and research agenda," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 38(4), pages 865-880, December.
    15. Nieto-Romero, M. & Parra, C. & Bock, B., 2021. "Re-building historical commons: How formal institutions affect participation in community forests in Galicia, Spain," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    16. Dominic Piacentini, 2021. "Beside the berm: The convenience of roadside picking," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(2), pages 208-218, June.
    17. Caroline Faria & Vanessa A Massaro & Jill M Williams, 2020. "Feminist political geographies: Critical reflections, new directions," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(7-8), pages 1149-1159, November.
    18. Pollock, Neil & D’Adderio, Luciana, 2012. "Give me a two-by-two matrix and I will create the market: Rankings, graphic visualisations and sociomateriality," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 565-586.
    19. Boedker, Christina & Chong, Kar-Ming & Mouritsen, Jan, 2020. "The counter-performativity of calculative practices: Mobilising rankings of intellectual capital," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    20. Letizia Bindi & Angelo Belliggiano, 2023. "A Highly Condensed Social Fact: Food Citizenship, Individual Responsibility, and Social Commitment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-22, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    coffee; Guatemala; values; inequality; means of production; Kaffee; Guatemala; Werte; Ungleicheit; Produktionsmittel;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:mpifgd:174. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mpigfde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.