Brazil’s multiple coffee markets: an ethnographic study of coffee production from family growers to coffee gourmets

ABSTRACT

The article contributes to the studies of “multiple markets” based on ethnographic reflections on the process of singularization of the coffee market in southeastern Brazil. Our discussion is based on two different in-field investigations that happened separately and at different times and places, compared here with the purpose of mapping the multiple coffee markets in terms of the valuation frameworks that are used by a family-based agriculture production and by tasting specialists of specialty coffee. Looking at these instances of coffee valuation, we investigate different attempts to increase the coffee value in the marketplace by emphasizing local traditions and values or by producing an objectively refined value coffee. Nevertheless, we argue that both sites produce frameworks to construct coffee value through future projections of commercialization, defined here as an analytical mechanism for the identification of “multiple markets” that have not been noticed by the current specialized literature yet.

KEYWORDS:

• Multiple markets
• Brazil coffee production
• special coffee market
• singularization
• family growers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 We employ single quotes (‘) to denote the words of our interlocutors in the context of fieldwork; regular quotes (“) for citations from other works; and italics (i) for emic categories presented by our interlocutors. All the names in the present article have been altered to protect the anonymity of our interlocutors.

2 The idea of market niche has an extensive relationship with the populational ecological perspective instrumentalized by economic sociology (Fligstein and Dauter 2012, 487). In observing the formation of frontiers between markets, niches are defined as a strategic positioning in relation to the competition. By that way, this strategy is characterized by a production of a specific demand in a market segmentation, differentiated production of value, personalized relationships and prices (Hammervoll 2013).

3 Specific credit categories were created according to the diverse forms of family-based agriculture in Brazil and their requirements for capital with an eye to providing different annual interest rates for (Grisa 2012, 144).

4 As Comerford relates (2003, 31) in the Zona da Mata of Minas Gerais, these communities are lived as territories that create exchanges, mutual aid, and favors: “ever-moving circles” of intense exchange and mutual moralities.

5 Frank Cochoy twists Callon's (1998) market performance argument, transmuting it to a discussion of performance not of economic thought but of market actors (Cochoy 2007). He proposes a rethinking of Callon’s calculation model, which focused on moments of capturing value in market milestones and framings. Defined as an “intermediate” moment where social actors are faced with making a quantitative definition (numerical and proportional) at the same time as a qualitative one (judgments and values), qualculo (Cochoy 2008) is the word Cochoy employs to argue that it is possible to mediate the relationship between subjective judgments and objective measurements without superimposing one relationship on the other or stipulating both as separate dimensions. To contemplate “qualculation” is therefore to think about the arrangement of devices and judgments that act the markets as traces of a collective order of calculation of both qualitative and quantitative dimensions, embedded and simultaneously coordinated in market relations.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ-E -26/200.415/2021); The São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP): [2019/22199-0].

Notes on contributors

Paulo Augusto Franco de Alcântara

Paulo Augusto Franco de Alcântara holds a doctorate in anthropolpgy from the Programa de Pós-Graduação em Sociologia e Antropologia (PPGSA) of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). He is currently a post-doctoral researcher in the Anthropology Department of the Universidade de São Paulo (USP), with his research financed by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP).

Igor Mayworm Perrut

Igor Mayworm Perrut (MA in Sociology, PPGSA/UFRJ) is a high school teacher and PhD student in the Postgraduate Program in Sociology and Anthropology (PPGSA) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) with a scholarship from the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (Capes). His research focuses on pragmatic economic sociology and market sociology. [email protected].