The rise of yuppie coffees and the reimagination of class in the United States

This essay explores the rise of ''speciality'' coffees over the past two decades, examining the changing structure and organization of the coffee trade. It concentrates on the shaping of consumption as retailers have moved from mass to niche marketing, imagining a class and generational map of the United States in their attempts to capture a segment of a shrinking market. Shifts in the consumption and marketing of a single commodity, such as coffee, are related to a wider set of social and cultural changes, and the essay concludes with a consideration of these changes and of an anthropology that attends to them.