The Downside of Relational Supply Chains - Edward Fischer, Making Better Coffee: How Maya Farmers and Third Wave Tastemakers Make Value (Oakland, University of California Press, 2022, 296 p.)
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Making better coffee does not mean making coffee better-that is, better for the smallholder Maya farmers in Guatemala that Edward Fischer has studied.Instead, Fischer argues, the shift from "second wave" specialty coffees (the higher-quality beans of the 1990s-2000s, with their attendant certifications) to "third wave" ultra-specialty coffees (with highly localized origin stories and direct relationships between roasters and farmers) tends to leave Maya farmers behind.The reason is that the construction of symbolic value in the third wave requires a kind of cultural capital that is more abundant among the owners of mid-sized coffee estates than among Maya farmers struggling to escape poverty, even when they are growing comparable beans at similarly high altitudes.The relationships between high-end coffee roasters and distant agricultural producers are real, but they are increasingly bypassing Maya farmers who have long been marginalized but who had greater chances for upward mobility in second wave coffee markets.At its core, this book is about the interplay between symbolic markers of quality, authenticity, status, and terroir in affluent consumer markets on one hand, and the political economy of coffee growing in Guatemala on the other.Fischer, an anthropologist, starts the book with an emphasis on the construction of quality among third wave coffee roasters, cuppers, and tastemakers.In these parts of the book, sociologists of valuation will find a lot that sounds familiar-as entrepreneurs compete over minute differences in quality, and tastemakers introduce new justifications and vocabularies.It is in linking these symbolic dynamics to the political economy of coffee growing that we arrive at something more unique and valuable.In Fischer's telling, it is not simply that trends in affluent markets forced disruptions among Guatemalan coffee farmers, though he is certainly attentive to the power differentials at play over time.Instead, he shows how agricultural elites in Guatemala turned toward differentiated, specialized coffee growing and marketing-in part due to their love of Austrian school free-market economics, he argues-rather than seeking to maintain a more stable national profile (as coffee growers in Colombia did).This ended up providing new opportunities for Maya farmers, who 1
Source: European Journal of Sociology
Author: Tim Bartley
Institution: Georgetown University
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4405175030