Collection of Coffee Cups and Movements in Consumer Culture - Essay Example

CONCEPT PAPER (Material Culture and Ethnography) (and ID number) of the Location of Mortensen Course Name: (Question No. 1) Date Submitted: Introduction There is little doubt that material things define people, in the sense these items become imbued with concepts and ideas to them. This process can be termed as culture-making activities by which materiality is concerned with how objects made by Man become a reflection of himself in many instances. It produces what are called as artifacts, material objects endowed with form and function. A simple item of everyday use, such as a coffee mug, becomes an artifact if people will try to understand the history of the discovery of coffee and the drinking protocol associated with its production and consumption. This is just one example of how apparently simple things can acquire immense value in the determination of a certain culture, which in this particular case, is the coffee-drinking culture, which had originated in the Arab world. The Arabs are renowned for their hospitality to strangers, because Arab culture understands the fragility of life and intense struggle to survive in mostly arid lands, the deserts of the Middle East and Africa. An offer of a cup of coffee is a mark of friendship because the receiver gets a boost after a tiresome travel in a hostile environment. Coffee today is one of the greatest commodities being traded in the world futures markets, similar to oil, corn, wheat, sorghum, rice and other great essentials. Discussion The coffee beans were supposedly discovered by an Ethiopian goat herder in the ninth century and this knowledge eventually spread to Yemen and then to Egypt. The drink is a very invigorating brew especially from long travels in the arid desert sands of this area. Today, I drink my coffee daily, usually in the mornings when I wake up and I cannot make it through the day without drinking at least two to three cups of strong brewed coffee, black (without sugar). The ethnographic object I am discussing in this paper is my coffee mug and all the other coffee mugs used similarly around the world each day, in various countries and cultures. It is not surprising that coffee drinking has taken roots in many parts of the world because the brew has a special allure to drinkers. It is much like the way cocoa and chocolate had been discovered also by the native American Indians in Latin America, where it was a special brew for the royalty of the Aztecs and the Mayas (pre-Olmec peoples) of Mexico. Today, coffee is probably the worlds most popular drink, preferred by more people than either softdrinks, juice drinks or alcohol. This is also shown by the growing number of new adherents to the vitalizing properties of coffee, that even those who previously were tea drinkers have shifted to drinking coffee as a habit. I started drinking coffee as a teenager and continues to drink even today. My parents are coffee drinkers, during breakfast and also all throughout the day, when they are both in the office and at home during weekends when we have visitors or not. My coffee mug is closely identified with my parents because it reminds me of them. It has become an object of comfort, familiarity, and habit which had become ingrained and part of my daily activities. I owned various mugs over the years, in their various shapes, sizes and colors. I have a large collection of mugs. I hope it can be displayed someday, publicly preferably, in some museum as artifacts. Most of the prestigious museums today tend to have collections of non-Western artifact items collected from various parts of the world, and they are classified as antiquities, curiosities, souvenirs and sometimes even as masterpieces. How come there are no museums that also have collections of Western or European common-day objects, such as the simple coffee mug? It can be stated coffee now is part of a global mass consumption culture (Miller & Slater, 2007, p. 5). From its anecdotal discovery by the goat herd in Ethiopia, coffee beans and drinking it had spread to Egypt, then the Middle East, to other parts of Africa, on to Persia (now Iran) and Turkey. From there, it went further to the Balkans, then Italy and to other European countries and finally to Indonesia and the Americas. Today, coffee drinking is a worldwide phenomenon, as evidenced by the global success of such brands as Starbucks Coffee, Costa Coffee and a host of other less famous brands like Caffe Nero and Coffee Heaven. The art and habit of drinking it had become a cultural marker as well, because it had become a lifestyle change in itself. What this means is that drinking coffee is now part of a global culture because even the tea-drinking countries like India and China have adopted coffee as their favorite beverage. Many people in these countries have now shifted to drinking coffee outside their home, in the Starbuck outlets where a price of $3 per cup seems justified in view of the ambiance where it is drank. The trend will continue as more people become more affluent and drinking expensive premium brew is one way to flaunt their new wealth. It is now also a characteristic of a more modern lifestyle, a wasteful and conspicuous consumption, in a “throwaway” society (Lucas, 2002, p. 5). The first use of coffee beans as a liquid brew involved roasting the coffee berries in the fire, boil it with water and then drink the brown aromatic liquid right there and then. A bit later, nomads traveling on camels used leather flasks to carry the liquid around and to keep it warm. A careful examination of the history of coffee will reveal the ways it had embedded in various local cultures, not only as a revitalizing brew but as a part of customs and traditions, like hospitality. It had been drank around the world to show various types of behavior as well, such as coffee time in relation to other things, such as the British habit of having a tea time in the afternoons. Drinking utensils, like my coffee mugs collection, is indicative of an authentic domain of identity. Based on these drinking devices, an ethnographer can have a good idea of the person who collects such items because this identity is revealed in the accumulation of such possessions (Clifford, 1985, p. 238) as a mark of individuality but at the same time a distinction of belonging to a much larger group, the coffee lovers worldwide. Coffee drinking is now universal. The way the younger generation today drink coffee is not so much for its original intention of getting a lift from its strong aroma but rather a communion of sorts with coffee drinkers in large cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Sydney, Moscow or wherever an outlet exists. Coffee mugs come in different shapes and sizes with various interesting designs in them which provide some characteristic distinctions for the drinker. Moreover, some mugs and cups acquired unique names such as primo (small), medio (medium) and massive (large). The culture of coffee drinking is no longer confined to the original way of welcoming a stranger as a sign of hospitality but has evolved into an alternative lifestyle where the location of drinking it is also a big consideration, the ambiance and the social networks such a habit generates. Although a local practice, the addictive qualities of coffee also has a universal undertone these days. Like cooking utensils such as pots, woks and frying pans, coffee mugs indicate a local culture to a certain extent although most mugs or cups today are made of paper and disposable. Nevertheless, such cups have logos, designs, and emblems in them as signs of the brand names. Coffee drinking is as much a part of local cultures as the cuisine of a particular place based on the habits, behaviors and practices of the coffee drinkers in that locality. Clearly, a collection of mugs confers a unique identity, due to the ownership of these items (Myers, 2005, p. 45). Conclusion The study of common objects in a culture (Miller, 2010, p. 48) gives insight into values and belief systems. The same thing can be said of my humble coffee mugs collection, which can be termed as some form of fetishism. From being an exclusive drink reserved for royalty, coffee beans have become commoditized as to make it widely available to anybody. Its various types of coffee blends, such as instant, premium or brewed, can indicate a social hierarchy too, as prices have become discriminatory in the sense on how people can afford to buy them. The ways by which some people are obsessed with getting the right blend in coffee drinks point out to fetish tendencies, which Marx saw as a perversion of values (Marx & Engels, 2007, p. 461) and shown by the way capitalism had focused on profits in trading coffee today, a corruption of modern societies (Myers & Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2001, p. 11). Every time I drink my coffee, I cannot resist the thought how coffee as a sign of culture and civility has become a commodity. I hope my collection of mugs will someday make it to some museum collection as kind of testament to the modern generation of drinking coffee as a sign of sophistication, flamboyance or decadence, depending on which way one looks back at it. Coffee mugs can likewise qualify to be classed as a category of things, similar to other everyday objects like the clothes we wear. The utility of a coffee mug goes beyond its obvious drinking usefulness for taking in a savory drink. My mugs collection can point out to my incipient possessive individualism because it shows how my obsession on ordinary items indicate my ideas of comfort, love of parents and family values. It is a feature of Western society, but perhaps more importantly, the commodity production of a coffee drink is a global extension of the Western colonial power (Phillips & Steiner, 1999, p. 3). Reference List Clifford, J. (1985). Objects and selves – an afterword. In J. Clifford and G. Marcus (Eds.), Making ethnography (pp. 236-246). New York, NY: Berkeley Publishing Group. Lucas, G. (2002). Disposability and dispossession in the twentieth century. Journal of Material Culture, 7(1), 5-22. Marx, K. & Engels, F. (1867). Capital: A critique of political economy. Chicago, IL: The Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company (note: a 2007 re-print). Miller, D. (2010). Theories of Things. In D. Miller (Ed.), Stuff (pp. 43-78). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Miller, D. & Slater, D. (2007). Moments and movements in the study of consumer culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Myers, F. (2005). Some properties of culture and persons. In R. A. Ghosh (Ed.), CODE: Collaborative ownership and the digital economy (pp. 45-60). Boston, MA: MIT Press. Myers, F. R. & Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, B. (2001). Art and material culture: A conversation with Annette Weiner. In F. R. Myers (Ed.), The empire of things: Regimes of value and material culture (pp. 1-23). Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press. Phillips, R. B. & Steiner, C. B. (1999). Art, authenticity, and the baggage of cultural encounter. In R. B. Phillips and C. B. Steiner (Eds.), Unpacking culture: Art and commodity in colonial and postcolonial worlds (pp. 3-19). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Read More