Description
About the Author
Sarah Besky is a cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor in the ILR School at Cornell University. She is the author of The Darjeeling Distinction: Labor and Justice on Fair Trade Tea Plantations in India.
Reviews
"A stimulating account of Britain's favourite drink." * Times Literary Supplement *
"[Besky's] nuanced study of Indian tea . . . is a refreshing brew of botany, business and culture." * Nature *
"Provides an unusual and rich understanding of the process of creating, reproducing, and evaluating the quality of tea." * American Anthropologist *
"A wonderfully layered and immaculately researched exploration of the enduring tastes of empire."
* Allegra Lab *"Tasting Qualities will be a beneficial read to a broad range of scholars with interest in food, labor, and commodity studies, the intersection of food, nutrition, and health knowledge, science and technology." * Food, Culture & Society *
"With a fine eye for detail and sparkling writing that makes the seemingly mundane fascinating . . . Tasting Qualities is a highly original, deeply researched, and theoretically sophisticated ethnography of Indian tea's modernity, which adds to the scholarship on commodities and capitalism." * Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society *
"Engages deeply with the theoretical aspects of assessing the quality and value of commodities through the lens of tea." * CHOICE *
"A fascinating view of the Indian tea industry. . . . Manages to easily deconstruct and demystify the space between the plantation and the cup of tea." * Tea Journey *
"Tasting Qualities is a persuasive ethnography of quality and its many unseen constituents." * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
"Tasting Qualities is a persuasive ethnography of quality and its many unseen constituents." * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
"With a fine eye for detail and sparkling writing that makes the seemingly mundane fascinating . . . Tasting Qualities is a highly original, deeply researched, and theoretically sophisticated ethnography of Indian tea's modernity, which adds to the scholarship on commodities and capitalism."
* Isis *"Combining ethnographic and archival description, Sarah Besky's Tasting Qualities: The Past and Future of Tea cleverly turns an analytic lens on the dependable and standardized aesthetics of modern capitalism." * American Ethnologist *
"Besky offers anthropologists and other interdisciplinary scholars an ethnography to teach, think with, and push their studies of work, agriculture, finance, and commodities a bit further toward our collective understanding of quality." * Exertions *
Book Information
ISBN 9780520303256
Author Sarah Besky
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint University of California Press
Publisher University of California Press
Weight(grams) 363g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 23mm