The Empire Filters Back: Consumption, Production, and the Politics of Starbucks Coffee

The recent emergence of a host of new cultural practices associated, at least initially, with the gentrified landscapes of North American inner cities has coincided with renewed interest among geographers and other social scientists, many of them influenced by postmodern theories of signification and identity, in the modes, spaces, and politics of contemporary consumption. These cultural studies of consumption, in turn, have been criticized for their tendency to downplay the global forces and power relations in which such local practices are embedded. Starbucks Coffee, the remarkably successful coffee bean and beverage retailer, illustrates perfectly the need to reconcile these approaches. To appreciate fully the Starbucks phenomenon requires an evaluation not only of the microgeography of North American coffee consumption but also of the political economy of coffee production and the persistence of colonial culture in the late 20th century.