Making Better Coffee

How Maya Farmers and Third Wave Tastemakers Create Value

Edward F. Fischer

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English

University of California Press
29 November 2022

History of the Americas; Food & society; Anthropology; Social & cultural anthropology

"An 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 varietals—plants 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 Maya producers, showing how profits are made by artfully combining coffee's material and symbolic attributes. The result is a complex story of terroir and taste, quality and craft, justice and necessity, worth and value."

By: Edward F. Fischer
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 363g
ISBN: 9780520386969
ISBN 10: 0520386965
Pages: 306
Publication Date: 29 November 2022
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Edward F. Fischer is Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University, where he also directs the Institute for Coffee Studies. He has authored and edited several books, most recently The Good Life: Aspiration, Dignity, and the Anthropology of Wellbeing.

Reviews for Making Better Coffee: How Maya Farmers and Third Wave Tastemakers Create Value

"""Fischer's insightful new book. . . .illustrates in great detail…how rarely that increased value benefits Maya farmers directly."" * Economic Botanist * ""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 *"