Passionate consumption of Kaapi, coffee culture, and glocalisation in South India
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Transcript of Passionate consumption of Kaapi, coffee culture, and glocalisation in South India
Candidate number: 117171
Consuming Passions
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Passionate consumption of Kaapi, coffee-culture, and glocalisation in South India
Recited from memory, 2009, Bangalore:
At the ‘ripe’ age of 15, Amma decided it was time for her youngest daughter was ready to be
initiated into a culture of drinking Kaapi, the standard transition into adulthood for a South
Indian Woman in a traditional Tamil-Brahmin household; apart from the ceremonial
celebration of the start of menstruation, that is. Amma took me to my grandmother’s kitchen,
explaining how coffee was made, and how it was important to know the same if I had any future
prospects of marrying into another South Indian family. “You’re going to have to make coffee
every morning if your husband and in-laws drink coffee, you know beta? Besides, you can’t
keep drinking Bournvita and Milo either, no?” (Bournvita and Milo are deliciously sweet,
chocolaty powders mixed with milk – usually given to “growing children”).
She poured 1/10th a tumbler of filtered coffee decoction. She then boiled fresh milk with a few
teaspoons of sugar and consequently added it to the tumbler with the decoction. Next, she
elaborately poured the liquid mixture into a steel vessel, and then back into the tumbler. The
process was repeated until deemed appropriate. “The pouring process aids frothing”, she said
to me in Kannada, “In addition to blending the sugar and coffee decoction, it also brings the
coffee to drinking temperature – fairly hot, but drinkable. I don’t understand how anybody can
drink coffee cold.”
Kaapi represented civilised conversation, a complex set of familial relationships and gender
relations that made no sense to me back then. All that mattered was the excitement of getting
to drink this aurous adult concoction. “I’m giving you very ‘light coffee’, over time, you will
want something stronger. All you need to do is add more decoction and mix properly for
stronger coffee”, she added, before handing me a tumbler of my first ever cup of filter coffee.
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Growing up in 20th century Bangalore, where coffee (colloquially called Kaapi) is an essential
everyday commodity, underlines a majority of this essay. Kaapi has transformative meanings
that transcend beyond sociality in the average South Indian household. The symbolisms of
coffee project into the dimensions of familial politics, emotion, gender and formation of ethno-
national belonging. The arguments made here seek to explore and deconstruct to what extent
coffee-culture enables production of the aforementioned elements of identity in a globalised
experience of India. Coffee is one of the many commodities that is entrenched in the production
of a sense of glocalisation - defined in the context of this essay as ‘localising the global, and
globalising the local’ (Castano, et al., 2010, p.48). To what extent does that create a sense of
distinction within an India anchored in wider, global schemes of trade? How is the distinction
between North and South India reinforced through consumptive practice? Therein lie the
dimensions of this essay. But, first, what makes coffee a commodity? What is a commodity?
What is the history of coffee consumption? Coffee is not native to India. Therefore, it is
important to investigate the historical aspects of coffee-culture, in addition to the defining it as
a politically charged commodity.
Literature and methodology:
Appadurai (1986) and Kopytoff’s (1986) theoretical contributions towards the production of a
‘commodity’ is particularly valuable to understand what makes coffee an everyday object of
value. They discuss the social and cultural life of ‘things’, and the conditions involved in the
promotion of any ‘thing’ to a ‘commodity’ position. Although the ‘things’ the authors study
are categorically different from an embodied ‘thing’ such as coffee, their theoretical
conceptualisation of commodities could be reapplied to a range of ‘things’ that are otherwise
shadowed from their commodity status. Coffee-culture is suspended in shifting dimensions of
socio-political, and economic value (Billig, 1995; Saldanha, 2002; Tucker, 2011; Wickizer,
1951). Studying the infiltration of coffee into the aforementioned categories enables the
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formulation of the importance of coffee in everyday life. Further, locating coffee within glocal
tensions (Appadurai, 1990; Castano et al., 2010; Hirsch, 2011; Saldanha, 2002) provides
important insights into contextualised consumptive practices in the production of a coffee
consumer cohort in South India. Eleftheria Lekakis (2013) in particular, discusses the
phenomenon in terms of ‘cultural citizenship’ to analyse consumption and the individual in
relation to political citizenship. These represent the existing body of work that the analysis
presented in this essay contributes to. The approaches used to analyse the focus of this research
include a mixture of textual and discourse analysis, in addition to some ethnographic and
participant observation techniques. Café spaces in 21st century Bangalore (Coffee Day,
Starbucks, Matteo) were studied in terms of the latter two methods. Two genres of media were
researched in terms of the former two methods listed: 1. Photographs and 2. Online news
articles. To ground my research to the soil, I will be looking at four images in detail. The images
chosen are ‘filtered’ (excuse the pun) depending on whichever ones presume a ‘how to
prepare’, ‘Indian coffee’ narrative. In other words, the images chosen instruct the reader on the
steps involved in Kaapi preparation. I searched for the images using a keyword approach,
where the key words used are derived from the research question; the keywords used are –
‘Kaapi’, ‘Indian coffee-culture’, and ‘global Indian coffee’. The filtering process was done to
minimise the overwhelming number of images available for study online, and fix them in a
sphere of specificity. Although, the image filtering process anchors the images selected within
the context of this research, it comes with the limitations of how my own understanding of the
aforementioned narratives play out in analysis. But, I seek to avoid the ‘alienated researcher’
technique, as one cannot be truly separated from one’s own cultural upbringing. Importantly,
it would be interesting to analyse how the photographs resonate with mainstream notions of
South Indian coffee preparation. To support that argument, and to investigate the wider focal
points of this research, two online articles (journalistic and photojournalistic) from two
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different mainstream online news sources (Times Of India and BBC UK respectively) were
studied. The aims of this essay are also to study the discursive nature these articles, and locate
the commonality of ideologies about South Indian Coffee.
Initiation of coffee in South India:
Historically, coffee was brought into Mysore by Sufi Baba Budan, whom the coffee plantation
hill in Kadur district is still named after (Bhattacharya, 2014, p.70). It is recorded that Baba
Budan strapped coffee beans on his stomach and smuggled them to India while on his
pilgrimage in Mecca (2014, p.70). Coffee is said to have then infiltrated households in Mysore
and Coorg in Karnataka, and Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu. An alternative history to the advent
of coffee in South India is the possible trade exchanges that may have occurred during global
movements of coffee from Java, Yemen, and Columbia. This would mean that globalised
hybrid flows of coffee (for the context of this essay) existed long before the ‘21st century global
era’. “In the nineteenth century, almost every household in Mysore had a few coffee trees
planted at the back of the house and the village headmen extended the cultivation in small plots
till it embraced the entire forest in which their village was situated.” (2014, P.71). While a
majority of the large coffee plantations were still under the control of the British Empire, the
cultivation of coffee in the local household seems to have been a resistant strategy against
imperial rule. Would it then, be appropriate to consider coffee as one of the many key politically
charged objects that eventually led to the struggle against colonial oppression in India?
Although, the former situation (of Imperial ownership) boosted of the European coffee
enterprise in South India (2014, p.69), the latter situation (of local, small-scale cultivation)
provided the everyday South Indian family an economic advantage due to the commercial
export value coffee afforded. On the topic of affording coffee, records of history suggest that
coffee was a commodity of luxury (see Wickizer, 1951, p.3). “Plantation capitalism – together
with commercial capitalism – provided Sri Lankan bourgeoisie with opportunities for upward
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social mobility.” (Roberts, 1982, cited in, Bhattacharya, 2014, p.81). Here, the term
‘bourgeoisie’ symbolises a standard of wealth and ‘skill’, and the same could be applied to
local South Indian cultivators. An analysis of class distinction in the ‘skilful’ preparation of a
cup of coffee is analysed later on in the essay.
Coffee as a commodity:
According to Appadurai’s analysis of Simmel (1978), for any ‘thing’ to become a commodity,
the ‘thing’ would have to acquire an exchange value through its interaction with social
relationships, and its use by exchange. “Value is embodied in commodities that are
exchanged.” (Appadurai, 1986, p.3). In such a view of objects, value and commodities
reproduce each other. However, the key player in the production of both a ‘commodity’ and
value is the ‘user’ who adds meaning to the transaction (Simmel, 1978, cited in Appadurai,
1986, p.3). How is coffee exchanged? Of course, the wider intra-international trade relations
involved in the contextualisation of coffee as a commodity are relevant towards this regard and
are discussed later on in the essay. Coffee, in its prepared drink form, is exchanged in smaller,
intricate, and complex contexts of localised communities perhaps for the conversational
elements that accompany coffee-culture. Additionally, coffee could also be seen as exchanged
for the enhancement of social relationships; for reinforcement of the interaction order, and for
money in a café. The monetised, economic value of coffee might define it as a commodity, but
does not define the causes of, and the involvement of the user in the monetised interaction. In
other words, if value is produced as a result of exchange, defining coffee as a commodity due
to the fact that one pays money for it at a café does not provide much insight into what makes
one buy coffee at any given café. The commoditisation of coffee is therefore not merely due to
its monetary value, but also its cultural value. The social and cultural significance of coffee
gives its use meaning, projecting coffee from the commodity candidacy phase to the
commodity career phase (1986, p.15). There should have to be a reason for coffee’s popularity,
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the dimensions of which are beyond the focus of this essay. The arguments made here seek to
understand the implications of coffee’s ‘popular’ use in the formation of identity. ‘Popular’ is
a contested term, though, the meaning of which tends to change with time and space; with
context and culture, and also with hegemonic shifts in a culture of any given time and space.
“Coffee is the single largest commodity traded internationally apart from oil.” (North London
Haselmere Group, 1972, p.3). The largest importer of coffee in the world being the United
States of America, trade suffered during the world wars. Coffee, therefore, was used as a
weapon during the war. Brazil’s infamous burning of coffee plantations was on the one hand,
to control the overproduction, and on the other, to project its allegiance in the war. “In 1962,
the International Coffee Agreement was signed by producing and consuming countries and the
International Coffee Organisation was set up ostensibly to stabilise the market situation and to
resolve the problems of over-production and price instability.” (1972, p.3). However, the ICA
proved to be more problematic, along with the ICO gaining a monopolising control over coffee
trade. Moreover, the categorisations of the producing countries recognised by the ICO were
based on hegemonic definitions of ‘underdeveloped’ or ‘developing’ nations. This not only
created a binary, but contextualised coffee as a drink of the ‘developed’ nations, whichever
they might be. Ten years after the ICO was set up, it showed “itself to be an expensive white
elephant and the ICA an unworkable and ill-advised contract designed to curb dissent and to
perpetuate the inequities between the developed and developing nations.” (1972, p.3).
Nevertheless, consumers continued to consume coffee, despite its sparse availability.
Consumption “is a deeply personal act undertaken individually and burdened with private
motivations and values.” (Lekakis, 2013, p.70). This also meant that the commodity became
more expensive. Due to the economic uncertainty that war affords warring nations, cafés saw
fewer customers and coffee was prepared in the closed kitchens of the household (see Wickizer,
1951, p.4). “Whatever their relative importance in their respective spheres, the war
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demonstrated once again, but on a grander scale, that Western man is a creature of cultivated
desires, tastes, and habits that are not easily abandoned.” (1951, p.5). Coffee thus adopted the
career of a weapon – still, a commodity in war. But, much before the occurrence of the world
wars, in a time when America was still a colony of the British Empire, coffee was used as a
way of resisting a predominantly tea-drinking culture; of resisting Britain’s tea-drinking culture
and by extension, of resisting the British Empire and the East India Company. “Tea represented
part of British culture, and thanks to the parliament, a symbol of British oppression.” (Tucker,
2011, p.54). From a dramaturgical perspective, coffee in exchange became a way one
performed one’s nationality.
But, wars are not the only spaces that operationalise coffee as a weapon. Although, one is
probably aware of the desirable Turkish coffee, or the mocha latté, the ‘thing’ has had a
controversial existence in the history of Islamic culture. Coffee-culture brought with it a culture
of sociability, which meant that men could gather, debate and speak about politics and issues
that needed attending; coffeehouses became what Habermas (1989) called ‘the public sphere’.
This threatened the social order of the time. “Meanwhile, religious-political leaders became
uneasy as coffeehouses became places for social revelry and activities deemed immoral by
Islam, including unorthodox sexual behaviours.” (Tucker, 2011, p.51). It is important to note
here that, how one understands what ‘Islam’ permits and does not, depends on how one
interprets the Qur’an and Islamic culture. Religious-political leaders called the Ulema then
condemned coffee by proclaiming that the Qur’an prohibits the consumption of charred food,
and coffee was considered as charred due to its roasting (Alcott, 1893, p.127; Tucker, 2011,
p.51). This enabled a widespread destruction of coffee beans over the following centuries,
depending on whether or not the Sultan of the time preferred coffee over tea. And even if the
Sultan did prefer coffee, the orthodox civilians rioted against the use of coffee on religious
grounds (Tucker, 2011, p.51). However, regardless of the amount of control exercised, the
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proliferation of coffee among coffee lovers did not halt. Coffee became so engrained in the
daily lives of its consumers, that “women, who could not enter coffeehouses, could claim lack
of coffee in the home as a contributing justification for divorce.” (2011, p.53). Therefore, in
the context of gendered consumption, it is possible to hypothesize that coffee provided women
in the historic Islamic communities a sense of integration, in complex political relationships.
This, again, threatened the social order.
Consumption and coffee-culture in South India:
Coffee consumption remains to this day an important routine in the everyday life of coffee
consumers around the world. The little story at the beginning of this essay is only a small,
personal recollection of how engrained coffee is in the mundane schedules of South Indian
family households. “What these mundane examples show is that, in any society, the individual
is often caught between the cultural structure of commoditization and his own personal
attempts to bring a value order to the universe of things.” (Kopytoff, 1986, p.76). Coffee is
singularized and made personal, in this sense, where the consumers inject the commodity with
their own subjective emotion and relations. This also implicates the consumer in a cultural
citizenship rather than a mere institutional citizenship of identifying the self as ‘Indian’. Here,
cultural citizenship refers to “‘an approach to investigate questions of cultural respect and
cultural democracy’ (Stevenson, 2012) inclusive of cosmopolitan tendencies, ecological
sensitivities and consumer practices among other variables.” (Lekakis, 2013, p.54).
In traditional Tamil-Brahmin South Indian families like my own, coffee-culture also extends
its arms into the politics of gender. Coffee is associated with the comfort of family rituals
(Castano, 2010, p.52); of growing up within the family; of understanding the responsibilities
of social roles. Nostalgic recollections, happiness, sorrow and emotional performances of
identity play out in the preparation of coffee. The woman of the house is expected to make
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coffee for the adults of the household, in addition to breakfast, preparing tiffin boxes, and
readying the puja room for prayer. However, if the ‘stage’ and ‘props’ of coffee consumption
was changed to that of a café or a hotel, service is not as tightly gendered (see Figure 2). It is
almost as if the morning would not begin, and the day would not end without a cup of coffee.
With coffee, individual satisfaction and “the longevity of the relation assimilates [it] in some
sense to the person and makes parting from [it] unthinkable.” (Kopytoff, 1986, p.80). However,
in some instances, familial coffee-culture in South Indian contexts (as narrated in the story),
performs heteronormativity insofar that the family consists of a mother, a father, grandparents,
and children. Here, preparing coffee is associated with the responsibility of transferring home-
grown skill to the “husband’s” house, implicating the “daughter” of the house in
heteronormative gender identity.
Figure 1: Disassembled South Indian coffee filter (Source: Wikipedia commons): greyscale colour filter added
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Due to the fact that coffee preparation is linked to the presence of ‘skill’, coffee intersects with
the politics of classed consumption. In other words, to prepare coffee, one is expected to
possess skill, and knowledge – qualities that are often claimed by the ‘privileged’ classes
(Tucker, 2011, p.13). Additionally, the consumer of a ‘good’ cup of coffee is placed in the
position of power, becoming a judge of taste (literally). Paradoxically, however, the
preparation-skill relationship is invalid in the contexts of coffee being served at small coffee
stands in the streets of Bangalore (the spatial context of the story), where preparation is
considered work and the consumer takes on the role of the employer (see figure 3). This is
reinforced through the employee’s distinct uniform, separating social roles of consumption.
The distinction produced also creates a hierarchical consumption binary – the employee
consumes the coffee by purchasing it for sale from local cultivators, the customer (in the role
of the employer) consumes the coffee in exchange for leisure. Additionally, South Indian filter
Figure 2: The 'proper' way to froth a South Indian filter coffee (Source: Wall Street journal blogs)
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coffee is ‘popularly’ associated with the national identity and preparation style of the employee.
The utensils used are required to have been the normative coffee filters of any time within the
culture, in order for the coffee to be considered ‘authentic’ (see Figure 1). “Rather, distinction
is marked by other means, mainly along the axis of ‘authenticity’ (which itself stands for a
range of other values, like geographic specificity, ‘simplicity’, personal connection, and
‘historicism’, or food grounded in tradition).” (Hirsch, 2011, p.624). Instant coffee, cold coffee,
and the modern transmutations of coffee are deemed unworthy of consumption by first and
second generation coffee purists within traditional South Indian families. The market for these
‘new’, hybrid types of coffee is aimed at the third generation, ‘modern’ youth. Here, coffee
becomes symbolic of modernity, globalised ideology, blurring of boundaries and freedom from
the constraints of ‘tradition’. The undermining of national borders is seen as part of a condition
which “makes the utopia of a world society a little more real or at least more urgent.” (Beck,
1992, cited in Billig, 1995, p.52).
Cafés like Coffee Day have sprung up along highways between cities, and within cities
themselves, in Karnataka. Coffee Day uses South Indian coffee produce to reinvent the
traditional filter coffee. Although, the texture of the coffee is similar to the traditionally made
filter kaapi, Coffee Day adopts global coffee types (latte, cappuccino, mocha, etc.),
appropriating modern coffees into the discourse of ‘Indianness’, while also and resisting
tradition. The price of a cup of coffee, depending on the type, ranges from Rs. 120 to Rs. 250.
Similarly, Matteo and Starbucks are fairly new enterprises situated on the higher end of the
price scale with coffees ranging between Rs. 250 and beyond. However, the coffee beans used
have distinct aromas characteristic of the latter two cafés. But, what is similar about all three
cafes is that they provide a closed space, shut off from the peculiarities associated with India
to whoever sits down inside the boundaries of the shop.
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“These scripts can and do get disaggregated into complex sets of metaphors by which
people live (Lakoff and Johnson 1980) as they help to constitute narratives of the ‘other’
and proto-narratives of possible lives, fantasies which could become prologemena to the
desire for acquisition and movement.” (Appadurai, 1990, p.299)
They provide one with a sense of escape. Here, one can shift identities and transcend national
boundaries. People inside the café, therefore, are suspended in-between spaces and identities.
“The world outside passes like a movie, what counts is the illusion of separation, cursory
immunity.” (Saldanha, 2002, p.341). Cafés that also provide WiFi services leave one with a
sense of being suspended in a limbo of extended time. Most importantly, what these
movements suggest is the production of locality specific global market, characterised by
‘glocalisation.’ (Castano, 2010, p.48).
Figure 3: India Coffee House, Bangalore. (Image courtesy: leandevil.wordpress.com; Source:
http://www.burrp.com/know/a-slice-of-old-bangalore-part-i-71052)
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Images are strong informative media in an everyday life whose schedule proceeds hurriedly.
The amount of information available online saturates the mundane, enabling shorter attention
spans and minimal sociological mindfulness. Images, although numerous, cater to the visual
desire for quick information. However, one could also sit with a photograph for hours trying to
decode its complexities. The next image being analysed is chosen from a lifestyle and beauty
blog giasaysthat.com (see Figure 4). What first appears to be an aesthetically pleasing cup of
coffee seems to be drenched in a discourse of defining ‘Indianness’. “National identity in
established nations is remembered because it is embedded in routines of life, which constantly
remind, or ‘flag’, nationhood.” (Billig, 1995, p.38). Coffee in India (particularly, the south) is
drunk from a steel tumbler and davara, which is a lipped saucer-like vessel. What the image
does, in addition to encapsulating coffee in a steel tumbler and davara, is embed coffee within
a discourse of the ‘Indian way of drinking’. Further, the addition of text to the photograph re-
contextualises the coffee represented within Indianness by crossing out ‘coffee’ and replacing
it with Kaapi. The phonetic pronunciation of coffee varies in South India, and from it, the
popular notion of ‘kaapi’ came into play. It is, in some ways, used to distinguish between the
apparent ‘civilized, proper English speaking Indians’ and ‘the other Indians’. In other ways, it
is to protect the South Indianness of filter coffee. “However, at the same time that a liking for
certain foods embodies national belonging, no less embodied notions of how, where, and when
to consume it often divide the national community.” (Hirsch, 2011, p.620). The term kaapi now
comes to ‘flag’ coffee as quintessentially South Indian in India, and ‘Indian’ in global contexts.
The amount of coffee in the tumbler is also important towards understanding coffee as an
indulgent luxury. This also suspends coffee consumption in the tensions of post-feminist
discourse of moderation in a neo-liberal market that encourages excess (Cairns and Johnston,
2015, p.153). The image therefore represents the auspicious nature of coffee drinking culture
in South India, regardless of coffee being an everyday commodity.
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Figure 4: Photograph by Gia Kashyap (source - http://www.giasaysthat.com/2014/01/make-filter-coffee.html)
The online news article titled ‘What’s the secret of filter coffee?’ from The Times of India’s
online website predominantly deals with instructing the reader on the technicalities of
preparing South Indian filter coffee. This ranges from picking the right coffee beans that are
roasted and ground properly with authenticity assured by “grannies”. Simultaneously, the
article produces a distinction between North Indian consumers and South Indian consumers,
by highlighting the former group’s lack of knowledge in filter coffee preparation: “What
happens when a Bihari experiments with filter coffee? He thinks he can make coffee without a
filter. That’s not funny. That’s blasphemous, if you’re a Tam-Bram.” (Chandrasekharan, 2014).
Additionally, this also discursively reinforces the predominant stereotypes associated with
North Indian citizens and South Indian citizens. The article ends with detailed step-by-step
instructions on how to prepare the “perfect” cup of filter coffee, setting the normative of
authentic filter coffee preparation. Here, “the quest for authentic and ethical food corresponds
to the quest for authentic and real life.” (Boyle, 2003, cited in Lekakis, 2013, p.65).This,
resonated with the findings noted above in this essay. Alternatively, BBC UK’s photoset of
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India Coffee House in Mumbai adopts the discourse of coffee house sociality, discussing the
café as a “worldly home where people share their ideas and problems and get directed to the
right corner for help.” (Image 3, BBC, 2009). Further, the images themselves implicate the
represented in a narrative of ‘Indianness’, as understood by the ‘west’. All images have been
edited with increased warm temperature, producing the effect of the ‘old (hipster) world’. The
photoset resonates with the employer-employee arguments aforementioned in this essay, while
also representing the coffee house along the public sphere parallel (Image 4, 5, 7, and 10, BBC,
2009). While, the author of the TOI article claims Indian nationality in the byline, BBC’s
photoset lacks photographer credits, which implicates these images in the ethical use and
ownership dimensions of media law. The analysis of the latter issue is beyond the parameters
of this essay. The use of these images on a global, online BBC platform is what interests the
research, in terms of studying how the global is brought to the local and vice versa.
Conclusion:
Coffee becomes a ‘popular’ commodity due to its use and cultivation of multiple arenas of
cultural exchange value. But, what makes coffee in South Indian culture particularly interesting
is its production of multiple socio-political meanings. Within the comfort of the family, coffee
is politically and emotionally charged, interacting with the politics of gender, class, age and
ethno-national belonging. Within the boundaries of a café, coffee consumption reproduces
comfort producing different forms of socio-political, economic relationships: that of the
employer and employee, shifting the location of power and meaning; that of escape into “a
better place”, and that of bringing the global to the local. A common theme that emerges
throughout the research is the struggle to define South Indianness through consumptive
practice. By normalising filter coffee as quintessentially South Indian, not only is one
producing and reinforcing ethno-national distinction, but also discursively projecting the
identity of the local commodity globally. What these findings suggest is that South Indian filter
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coffee is a socio-politically and economically charged commodity that collectively forms a
‘glocal’ medium for its interaction with consumers. However, consumers are also equally
charged in producing a ‘glocal’ coffee ideology.
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