Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"A stimulating account of Britain’s favourite drink." * Times Literary Supplement *
"[Besky's] nuanced study of Indian tea . . . is a refreshing brew of botany, business and culture." * Nature *
"Provides an unusual and rich understanding of the process of creating, reproducing, and evaluating the quality of tea." * American Anthropologist *
"A wonderfully layered and immaculately researched exploration of the enduring tastes of empire."
* Allegra Lab *
"
Tasting Qualities will be a beneficial read to a broad range of scholars with interest in food, labor, and commodity studies, the intersection of food, nutrition, and health knowledge, science and technology." * Food, Culture & Society *
"With a fine eye for detail and sparkling writing that makes the seemingly mundane fascinating . . .
Tasting Qualities is a highly original, deeply researched, and theoretically sophisticated ethnography of Indian tea’s modernity, which adds to the scholarship on commodities and capitalism." * Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society *
"Engages deeply with the theoretical aspects of assessing the quality and value of commodities through the lens of tea." * CHOICE *
"A fascinating view of the Indian tea industry. . . . Manages to easily deconstruct and demystify the space between the plantation and the cup of tea." * Tea Journey *
"
Tasting Qualities is a persuasive ethnography of quality and its many unseen constituents." * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
"
Tasting Qualities is a persuasive ethnography of quality and its many unseen constituents." * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
"With a fine eye for detail and sparkling writing that makes the seemingly mundane fascinating . . . Tasting Qualities is a highly original, deeply researched, and theoretically sophisticated ethnography of Indian tea’s modernity, which adds to the scholarship on commodities and capitalism."
* Isis *
"Combining ethnographic and archival description, Sarah Besky’s
Tasting Qualities: The Past and Future of Tea cleverly turns an analytic lens on the dependable and standardized aesthetics of modern capitalism." * American Ethnologist *
"Besky offers anthropologists and other interdisciplinary scholars an ethnography to teach, think with, and push their studies of work, agriculture, finance, and commodities a bit further toward our collective understanding of quality." * Exertions *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Production of Quality
1 • The Work of Taste
2 • The Auction and the Archive
3 • The Problem with Blending
4 • The Science of Quality
5 • The Quality of Cheap Tea
6 • The Quality of Markets
Conclusion: The Endurance of Quality
Notes
Bibliography
Index
