SOC317H5 Study Guide - Final Guide: Social Capital, Cultural Capital, Specialty Coffee
Document Summary
Article #1 - coffee brands, class & culture in a canadian city by sonia bookman. It focuses on the 3 most prominent coffeehouse brands in canada. **examining the brands, it shows how they offer consumers distinctive, themed experiences such as cosmopolitan connoisseurship" that shape meanings and practices of coffee consumption. Through interviews w/ consumers and employees of the brands, article illustrates how consumers draw on the brands and the cultural frames they afford as a means to co-construct notions of class and perform distinction. This occurs in a complex brand consumer dynamic in which class antagonisms are expressed and boundaries co-produced in the specific arena of coffee consumption. Timmies is a coffee and donut chain marketed to ordinary canadians", while starbucks is a specialty coffee franchise oriented towards discerning coffee connoisseurs". The brands each offer unique experiences, encompassing different languages", ways to handle yourself", and a specific attitude", that shape meanings and practices of coffee consumption.
