Some Discovered Practices of Lay Coffee Drinkers. Issue 1 (20th May 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Fele, Giolo; Liberman, Kenneth
• Other Names: Gibson Will guestEditor.; vom Lehn Dirk guestEditor.
• Is Part Of: Symbolic interaction. Volume 44:Issue 1(2021)
• Page Start: 40
• Page End: 62
• Publication Date: 2020-05-20
• Subjects: tasting -- ethnomethodology -- calibration -- objectivation -- accounts; Symbolic interactionism -- Periodicals; Interactionnisme symbolique -- Périodiques; 302
• DOI: 10.1002/symb.486
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0195-6086

Abstract

Abstract : When lay coffee drinkers taste the coffee in their cups, the flavors they note are shaped by the local interaction that provides the context for the occasion. Three methods they use for identifying flavors are examined and described: clustering, or how flavor descriptors are articulated in ensembles during a collaborative process; objectivating, the concerted work of transforming tentative suggestions into objective findings; and calibrating, how drinkers align their practice of tasting in order to conform with—and make meaningful—the objectivated accounts. These microsocial practices continuously intrude upon tasting, and a serendipitously developed local order guides their taste identification. This does not mean that there is no real taste, only that the taste never stands apart from the social contingencies and the discursive practices that are developed to describe it.