Tasting Qualities: The Past and Future of Tea Volume 5 (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780520303249)

What is the role of quality in contemporary capitalism? How is a product as ordinary as a bag of tea judged for its quality? In her innovative study, Sarah Besky addresses these questions by going inside an Indian auction house where experts taste and appraise mass-market black tea, one of the world's most recognized commodities. Pairing rich historical data with ethnographic research among agronomists, professional tea tasters and traders, and tea plantation workers, Besky shows how the meaning of quality has been subjected to nearly constant experimentation and debate throughout the history of the tea industry. Working across fields of political economy, science and technology studies, and sensory ethnography, Tasting Qualities argues for an approach to quality that sees it not as a final destination for economic, imperial, or post-imperial projects but as an opening for those projects.

Author: Sarah Besky
ISBN-10: 0520303245
ISBN-13: 9780520303249
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
Published: 05/12/2020
Pages: 256
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2021