Description
Book SynopsisAn anthropologist uncovers how great coffee depends not just on taste, but also on a complex system of values worked out among farmers, roasters, and consumers. What justifies the steep prices commanded by small-batch, high-end Third Wave coffees? Making Better Coffee explores this question, looking at highland coffee farmers in Guatemala and their relationship to the trends that dictate what makes great coffee. Traders stress material conditions of terroir and botany, but just as important are the social, moral, and political values that farmers, roasters, and consumers attach to the beans. In the late nineteenth century, Maya farmers were forced to work on the large plantations that colonized their ancestral lands. The international coffee market shifted in the 1990s, creating demand for high-altitude varietalsplants suited to the mountains where the Maya had been displaced. Edward F. Fischer connects the quest for quality among U.S. tastemakers to the lives and desires of May
Trade Review"Fischer's insightful new book. . . .illustrates in great detail…how rarely that increased value benefits Maya farmers directly." * Economic Botanist *
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Making Better Coffee is an engaging exploration of the value and values that surround coffee. . . .This book will be very useful for researchers, providing an excellent review of the literature. It could be used in graduate or advanced undergraduate classes." * FoodAnthropology *
"A captivating and enlightening journey that delves into the intricate and multifaceted relationship between coffee production and its enjoyment by consumers." * Exertions *
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Making Better Coffee offers an unabashedly practical look at real-world market spaces that impact the lives of millions of people around the world. . . . [L]earning more about and from an industry that is simultaneously functional and dysfunctional is more than desirable. It should be mandatory." * Administrative Science Quarterly *
"A compelling case study of our current stage of capitalism in which controlling the means of production no longer guarantees maximum accumulation. . . . Fischer’s work demonstrates that when we make better coffee, it is not necessarily better for everyone." * Gastronomica *
Table of ContentsContents
Introduction
1. Creating Third Wave Values
2. Plant Biology, Capitalist Trade, and the Colonial Histories of Coffea arabica
3. German Oligarchs, First Wave Coffee, and Guatemala’s Enduring Structures of Inequality
4. Austrian Economics and the Quality Turn in Guatemala Coffee
5. Maya Farmers and Second Wave Coffee
6. Cooperation, Competition, and Cultural Capital in Third Wave Markets
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Image Credits
Index
