A sense of taste with a sense of place : coffee identities across the United States
      and El Salvador

Dougherty, Deirdre Mayer.

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and El Salvador

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Dougherty, Deirdre Mayer.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Georgetown University, 2008.; Includes bibliographical references. Salvadoran exports of specialty grade coffee increased from 8% to 30% of total coffee exports between 2002 and 2006 with the United States purchasing the lion's share (Consejo Salvadoreno del Café 2007). Specialty coffee, a product that differentiates itself in the market in terms of quality and the emphasis placed on the singularity and traceability of its origins, has altered the ways in which producers and consumers of coffee identify themselves in relation to one another. "Taste" and "place" become tropes that allow us to understand the trajectory of coffee culture in time and space where culture is a "... historical product and historical force--shaped and shaping, socially constituted and socially constitutive" (Roseberry 1989: 53). Coffee allows us to explore the construction of individual and collective identities amidst diverse experiences with capitalism and to consider what it means to be a producer and a consumer of commodities in a global context.