Kenneth Liberman 
Tasting Coffee [EPUB ebook] 
An Inquiry into Objectivity

Winner of the 2023 Distinguished Book Award presented by the Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis section of the American Sociological Association



At once ethnographic and phenomenological,
Tasting Coffee investigates the global chain of coffee production ‘from seed to cup, ‘ stopping at every stage along the way to describe the tasting practices of each stakeholder purveying coffee. The ethnomethodological care of these descriptions derives from an attunement to just how these stakeholders discover and describe the flavors of coffee and how they convert subjective experience into objective knowledge. The methods and protocols of sensory science are also examined and assessed in their lived details, making this study also a contribution to the sociology of science. Based upon a decade of research in fourteen countries, author Kenneth Liberman provides a nonessentialist ontology of coffee, its history, and its production. The world of coffee becomes a microcosm in which many realities of postmodern humanity are exposed and clarified—with the thoughts of Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schutz, Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Aron Gurwitsch, and Harold Garfinkel—even as these naturally occurring case studies provide fresh specifications for these thinkers’ ideas.

Table of Content

Acknowledgments



Introduction




Part I: The Story of Coffee Purveying



1. A Brief History of Coffee



2. Coffee’s Chain of Production




Part II: Objectivity and Its Labors



3. Historical and Epistemological Bases of Objectivity



4. Making Contact with the Object



5. The Dynamic Nature of Coffee




Part III: Tasting and Its Labors



6. Common Practices of Tasting



7. Down on the
Fincas and with the Exporters: Harvesting, Processing, Blending



8. A Palette for the Palate: Using Taste Descriptors to Find Flavor



9. Professional Tasting



10. Tasting for Excellence



11. Importers, Roasters, Myths, and Marketers



12. Some Discovered Practices of Lay Coffee Drinkers


(with Giolo Fele)




Part IV: Science and Its Labors



13. Science and Objective Practices



14. A Scientific Critique of Scientific Practices



Appendix: Sample Tasting Schedules



Bibliography

Authors Index

Subject Index

About the author

Kenneth Liberman is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Oregon. His many books include
More Studies in Ethnomethodology, also published by SUNY Press.