Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 29

Studying sociology is not just a routine process of acquiring knowledge from books like this one. Learning to think sociologically means cultivating our imagination in a specific way. The sociologist must be able to break free from the immediacy of their own personal circumstances to see things in a wider social context. Practising sociology depends on developing what the American sociologist C. Wright Mills (1970), in a famous phrase, called a sociological imagination.

The sociological imagination demands that we ‘think ourselves away’ from the familiar routines of our daily life in order that we may look at them from a new point of view which may appear strange, at least at first. The best way to illustrate this is with something so ordinary it usually passes without comment: the act of drinking a cup of coffee. What could sociology possibly find to say about such a commonplace and uninteresting act?

First, coffee may be a pleasant drink, but it also has symbolic value as part of our day-to-day social activity, and the rituals associated with coffee drinking can be more significant than consuming the actual drink. For many people, a cup of coffee in the morning is the centrepiece of a personal routine and an essential start to the day. Morning coffee is then followed later in the day by coffee with others – the basis of a group, not just an individual ritual. People who arrange to meet for coffee are probably more interested in socializing and chatting than drinking, and, in all societies, drinking and eating provide occasions for social interaction – a rich subject matter for sociologists to study.

Second, coffee contains caffeine, a drug which has a stimulating effect on the brain. Many people drink coffee for the ‘extra lift’ this active substance provides. Long days at the office or late nights studying in the library are made more tolerable by regular coffee breaks. And though coffee is a habit-forming substance, coffee ‘addicts’ are not regarded as drug users. This is because, like alcohol, caffeine is a socially acceptable and legal drug, whereas cocaine and heroin, for example, are not. Yet some societies tolerate the consumption of cocaine but frown on both coffee and alcohol. Sociologists are interested in why these differences exist, how they developed and whether they are changing.

Meeting friends for coffee retains its place as part of a widespread social ritual. Yet today’s specialist coffee shops cater to younger consumers, offering a much wider range of caffeine drinks in fashionable environments that look and feel closer to bars and nightclubs than traditional cafés and teashops.

Third, when we drink a cup of coffee we are unwittingly caught up in a complex set of social and economic relationships stretching right across the planet. Coffee links people in the wealthiest and the most impoverished parts of the world, as it is consumed mainly in the relatively rich countries but grown primarily in relatively poor ones. Around 125 million workers depend on the coffee trade to earn a living (Fairtrade Foundation 2020), but many labourers are poorly paid and live in poverty. Around half of coffee workers in Brazil have no formal contract of employment, and inspectors have found that many workers earn less than the legal minimum. Most workers are paid around R$14 (US$3.43) per 60 litre sack they pick, which can take a whole day’s labour for some women (Teixeira 2019). Some of the largest coffee companies, including Nestlé, Jacobs Douwe Egberts and Starbucks, have admitted that some of their coffee beans have been sourced from Brazilian plantations that use child and slave labour (Hodal 2016; Canning 2019).

Coffee is one of the most traded agricultural commodities globally, providing many countries in South and Central America, Mexico, Africa, Asia and Oceania with their largest source of foreign exchange (ICO 2018). The production, transportation and distribution of coffee require continual transactions between people thousands of miles away from the individual coffee drinker. Studying such global connections is an important task for sociologists.

Fourth, sipping coffee is not a ‘natural’ act but presumes a long process of social, political and economic development. Along with other familiar items of Western diets – such as tea, bananas, potatoes and white sugar – coffee became widely consumed only from the late 1800s, though it was fashionable among social elites well before then. The drink originated in the Middle East, but mass consumption dates from the period of Western colonial expansion more than 200 years ago. Virtually all the coffee we drink today comes from areas such as South America and Africa that were colonized by Europeans. The drink is not a ‘natural’ part of the Western diet, however normal buying and consuming coffee appears to people today.

Finally, coffee has been ‘branded’ and politicized within debates about international fair trade, human rights and environmental damage. For instance, some people drink only organic coffee, decaffeinated coffee or coffee that is ‘fairly traded’ through schemes that pay the full market price to small producers in developing countries. Others patronize ‘independent’ coffee houses rather than ‘corporate’ chains such as Starbucks and Costa. Choosing a coffee is not only a lifestyle decision, it also has political significance.

When we begin to develop a sociological imagination, the morning coffee becomes a thing of great fascination which we approach with a new understanding. Indeed, as we will see throughout the book, the best sociological studies always tell us something we did not know before or make us see the familiar routines and patterns of life in new ways.

Coffee is much more than a pleasant drink for these workers, whose livelihoods depend on the coffee plant.