{"id":177,"date":"2025-10-14T09:17:25","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T09:17:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/sociologyofeverydaylife\/?post_type=content&p=177"},"modified":"2025-10-15T09:19:50","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T09:19:50","slug":"chapter-4","status":"publish","type":"content","link":"https:\/\/routledgelearning.com\/sociologyofeverydaylife\/students\/chapter-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 4 \u2013 Coffee"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Chapter 4 \u2013 Coffee<\/h1>\n\n\n
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Chapter Summary<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This chapter explores how our consumer tastes connect to our social class. We discuss how visible and demonstrative consumption habits\u2014conspicuous consumption\u2014distinguish some groups from others. We also identify the differences between Bourdieu\u2019s concepts of economic, cultural, and social capital. The case of coffee, and coffee shops more specifically, is used to examine the sociological concepts of public space and third place. Finally, we explain coffee\u2019s connection to globalized commodity chains and describe how a $5 cappuccino is connected to poverty and hardship for coffee growers and laborers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Further Reading<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Fischer, Edward F. 2021. \u201cQuality and inequality: creating value worlds with Third Wave coffee.\u201d Socio-Economic Review<\/em> 19(1):111-131.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The article focuses on the burgeoning high-end (‘Third Wave’) coffee market in the USA and examines how economic gains are extracted by translating values across symbolic and material worlds. It explores how roasters, baristas, and marketers have developed a new lexicon of quality for coffee, tied to narratives of provenance and exclusivity, which creates much of the value added in the Third Wave market. The article also highlights how this disadvantages smallholding coffee farmers, particularly Maya farmers in Guatemala, who lack the social and cultural capital needed to extract surplus symbolic value from their crops, perpetuating classic dependency patterns of global capital accumulation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discussion questions<\/summary>\n