Coffee Culture, with Grazia Ting Deng

Rosie Hancock  0:07  
Hi, this is Uncommon Sense from the Sociological Review Foundation. I'm Rosie Hancock in Sydney, Australia.

Amit Singh  0:13  
And I'm Amit Singh in Manchester in the UK, filling in for Alexis. And this show is all about taking everyday words and ideas we often think we know about and finding a way to see them more critically. With a plan being that by the end, we've communicated what it means to think sociologically, in the broadest sense.

Rosie Hancock  0:31 
Today, we're looking at something very close to our hearts here at Uncommon Sense, because we are seriously spread across global time zones. Someone is always up really late, another person is always up super early in the morning and coffee is absolutely essential to our process. And that is going to be our theme for today. Coffee, or rather coffee culture.

Amit Singh  0:53 
It's something that might at first glance, to some, seem a little bit unacademic. But, actually, talk about coffee and you pretty quickly get to big themes like colonialism, capitalism, work, public space and – of course – conviviality, which, to me, is a notion that broadly refers to our capacity to live with difference in a kind of everyday mundane way. It's something that I've been exploring recently, along with colleagues, looking at the convivial possibilities in pubs that are often seen as traditionally English social spaces - for a particular focus on desi pubs, that is Indian owned pubs. Maybe more on that a little later.

Rosie Hancock  1:28 
Yeah, coffee culture has already been explored by some big name thinkers. Whether we're talking about Jürgen Habermas who wrote off the role of the coffee house in the rise of the public sphere in parts of Europe. Or, Ray Oldenburg who in the 80s developed the idea of the 'third place', which is something we're surely all more familiar with in this post-pandemic era of working from home or the local coffee shop.

Amit Singh  1:50 
And today, we're with someone who we're going to add to that tradition. She's the anthropologist Grazia Ting Deng, a European Commission Marie Curi postdoctoral fellow at the University of Venice and also affiliated with Brown in the US from where she joins us today. Her book 'Chinese Espresso' has just come out, exploring why and how coffee bars in Italy – typically seen as such distinctively Italian spaces – have been increasingly managed by Chinese baristas since the 2008 recession.

Rosie Hancock  2:18 
Hi Grazia. I mean, I guess if we were in a live studio, someone would be getting you a coffee. But, given our subject today, what, what would you be drinking?

Grazia Ting Deng  2:26 
More recently, I drink more tea than coffee. But when I have to write I always have a coffee, an Italian espresso. I have an espresso machine at home. So, American coffee for me is too much. It's just too strong. Yeah, you know how Italians call American coffee? They call it 'dirty water'.

Rosie Hancock  2:44 
So rude!

Grazia Ting Deng  2:48 
Italians are really proud of their own coffee, and coffee culture, of course.

Amit Singh  2:53 
Okay, hi Grazia. So, your research for 'Chinese Espresso' saw you base yourself in Bologna in around 2012, I think. And it all started when you heard – with initial disbelief – about coffee shops run by Chinese baristas. That sparked your curiosity about what you call in the book 'the paradox of Chinese espresso'. What is that? And what kind of research questions did that prompt for you?

Grazia Ting Deng  3:14 
I think in the beginning, more than the research question, is about my personal curiosity. So, I lived in Italy before. I know that coffee bars and espresso coffee are very important for Italians there. Also, it's an integral part of their local urban culture. But I never thought at that moment – the first time when I was in Italy – that there would be one day the Chinese taking over coffee bars and selling espresso coffee to local Italians. First time when I knew this become a thing,  I was like – I can't believe that. I would like to know more. So, I asked my friends in Bologna – and in other cities – so can you just go around to see if you can meet any coffee bars run by Chinese? And a friend in Bologna, told me that from his home to school, there were twenty. I was like – okay – this is my project. And talking about the research question, there are some things that I would like to emphasise before the question itself. So first of all, there are some facts. So espresso is kind of an Italian national icon, a symbol of "made in Italy", right? And the coffee bars are everywhere in Italy. So no matter where you go, in the cities, in the provincial towns, even in the countryside – you will meet coffee bars. The Italians, they call it 'bar'. And the Chinese immigrants in Italy are famous for not being integrated. They have, they have their own communities that don't interact with local populations that much, at least according to the Italian local populations. So when Chinese are buying local coffee bars, it's something that cannot be expected, right? You know, usually we say Chinese tea but not Chinese coffee, right? So it's kind of an incompatible, the two terms kind of incompatible. So my question, the first question – which is also like ethnographic question – is why and how these Chinese immigrants – who are supposed to be cultural outsiders – could make good coffee, and even manage coffee bars that are rooted in Italy's everyday urban culture.

Rosie Hancock  5:39 
I mean, it's so, you're right, coffee seems like such a quintessentially Italian thing. I've been to Italy once and spent – I think – every day, twice a day went to those little stand up coffee bars and just felt like it was – you know – oh, I'm so Italian doing this. And it's so interesting to think that it's, you know, that so many of it is not actually run by Italians anymore. And that, you know, it sounds to me that you're saying that the paradox of Chinese espresso is basically that the seemingly very Italian social and cultural tradition is actually being preserved by Chinese immigrants and their diverse clientele. And you came to all of this as an anthropologist, so – and someone who's fluent in Italian, I want to add – what kinds of things did you bring from the anthropologist toolkit to your research? What kind of ways of seeing?

Grazia Ting Deng  6:28 
So, first of all, I have my language skills. So to do such a research it's not that easy. So, it means that you have to be fluent in Italian, but also in Chinese. Also, I had my background in Italian studies. So, it's not just the language but also the familiarity of Italian culture. And, as a, as an anthropologist – before going into the field – I was prepared with some other skills like how to do the field work, like participant observation. So, I imagined that when I arrive in Italy, I should have frequent interactions with local Italians. So, I tried my best to find my host family – which is a local Italian – and live with them and join their everyday life to see how the coffee culture is part of their everyday life. And when I arrived, I didn't know any Chinese. But since I look Chinese – so I just enter, you know, the coffee bars run by Chinese, I tell them that I'm Chinese, I'm here, what I'm doing, do you want to talk to me? I was kicked out by several Chinese baristas. But some of them also accepted me, so I tell them – okay, I'm here, I'm a student. So, but sometimes it was difficult to explain to them what I'm doing. Some of them – you know – some of the Chinese immigrants, they didn't have academic training, so they don't understand what means 'dissertation'. So I had to find a way to explain to them what is a PhD dissertation. And also, I'm Chinese there, so I encountered a lot of racism or discrimination that other Chinese immigrants also experienced there. So I had to figure out who I am – so not just with other Chinese but also with other Italians. I speak fluent Italian but that's not enough not to be discriminated against, in some occasions. So, many things that I have prepared in advance, but more prepared like, it's like on the job training you know. I also developed my barista skills. I learned from other Chinese friends or interlocutors. I told them that I would like to learn how to make coffee so I can experience the whole process, right?

Amit Singh  8:58 
And so you also learned how to be a barista, working for one for a while part time in order to get to know the field better. So crucially, Grazia, can you make a good cup of coffee?

Grazia Ting Deng  9:08 
Yeah, I mean – if you don't mind – I'd love to make a coffee for you guys, but I'm not sure if it's good enough. I mean, espresso coffee – no doubt – it will be definitely good. But cappuccino, hmm, not now. Yeah, maybe 10 years ago, I could make better cappuccino because it needs a lot of practice. But I can introduce you to many good Chinese baristas in Italy.

Rosie Hancock  9:30 
Yeah, I've got an espresso machine at home, love making coffee. Although I have to admit that to being a bit of a geek about it and like ordering specialty beans to put through my grinder and doing all of the research. I'm maybe a bit too, too obsessed. But I, I want to get some historical context here. How did the Chinese Italian coffee bar come to be a thing? I think the 2008 financial crisis played a role, am I right?

Grazia Ting Deng  9:57 
Yeah, yeah. So according to the official statistics or – you know – they have annual reports about a coffee bars in Italy. So, the annual report of 2008 described the foreign ownership of bars in this way. They are really news in recent years. So, it means that before that it was not a thing – it is quite new, it's a recent phenomenon. And since then more coffee bars actually have closed then will open each year. It means that if there are no Chinese or other immigrants buy their coffee bars, there are even more closed than are opened. So there are, we should think about this phenomenon from two sides, from two ways. From the Italian side, actually, the many previous Italian coffee bar owners are just too old to follow the business. Many of them have reached the age of retirement and their children do not want to continue because they consider that this business is just too labour intensive. And these kids probably have received a better education, they went to the college, they would like to join the white collar labour market, they would not like to stay behind the coffee bar counter for more than 10 hours or 12 hours like their parents did. And for the Chinese side. So, the Chinese coffee bar owners – that I know – usually have been in Italy for at least 10 to 15 years, and many of them were seeking, were seeking new business opportunities. Either to survive economic crisis in 2008, or they tried to maximise their family income by using all the available family labour, because many of their children come of age, and they are looking for job opportunities. And many children they arrived in Italy in their teenage years, so they have language difficulties, they, either, they go to school, but they do not have the chance to go to college. And what can they do? Go back to family business and help their parents. Yeah. So Italians are selling coffee bars. Chinese want to invest in some small business? Perfect. That's a match.

Amit Singh  12:25 
Okay, fascinating. Yeah, that's all really interesting. Can you give us an idea of what these coffee bars actually look like? Do you mind painting a picture for us, perhaps of your favourite coffee bar? Or maybe even the one that you worked in?

Grazia Ting Deng  12:36 
This is actually a hard question. Let's say, there are all types of coffee bars in Italy. You know, you can find the fancy coffee bars, you can find, you know, those neighbourhood coffee bars that you you can never find online reviews for those right? There are bars where you can only find men. But there are also like gender balanced, friendly bars, where I can feel comfortable to bring my laptop to – you know – write or just, you know, spend my afternoon time. You know, those bars are similar to American you know, Starbucks or the bars, right. But if we talk about a typical coffee bar, if you ask the Italian, what kind of a – let's say – a traditional bar in their mind, they probably would not say any kind of bar similar to Starbucks. They will say a neighbourhood bar, a bar which has a tradition, which has a history. So, I'm not going to describe my favourite bar, but maybe one of the bars that I think is a typical bar and a bar that I frequented a lot for my research. This bar is where I learned barista skills. So, it is located in Bologna's historic centre, but on the back streets, so he's not that busy street. A local Bolognese friend described the location of the bar as the 'periphery of the centre'. So it is kind of a minimalist bar. It's not fancy at all and they don't have a lot of paninos to sell. But they do have all kinds of drinks, soft drinks and beers, wines. But they don't have a lot of choices of cocktails. They do have the Italian national drink - you know, spritz - but they don't have, for example, mojito. And if you want to buy cigarettes, you can also find the tobacco products there. And, for example, packed ice cream snacks. And they have a price list, which was printed on the white paper hanging just next to the coffee machine. So it's very minimalist. And, so that bar has – kind of – three semi-separate rooms. So that you enter, you'll see the bar counter, and then we saw a couple of tables. And then there is a separate room for slot machines. There is another separate room and in the afternoon, you will see a couple of retired men – pensioners – just stay there to play cards. They spent hours there, you know, to play cards in that tiny dining room. And if you see the coffee bar eatery with that kind of structure, this is probably a traditional bar with at least of, the history of 50 years or even more, like this bar that I'm describing started in the fascist period.

Rosie Hancock  15:46 
Yeah, interesting. I mean, I think you were talking about how – you know – even though it's traditional, you've got different people who will go there. I mean, this one that you've described is owned by Chinese people, in that, you know, you might go there and work, presumably other non-Italians would go there and visit it as well. And I wonder if we're kind of thinking about the way in which the different population groups in Italy might mix in these spaces, including this one, this coffee bar that we're talking about in Bologna. We're getting to the theme of conviviality, which – as Amit mentioned in the intro – is this idea, or maybe a particular standard, to do with living with difference. Although people do define that differently. We'll get to your own take on it in a moment, as well as how others might have seen it. But, for now, you found a number of things that challenge assumptions about what are sometimes called 'immigrant host relations', and we wanted to talk through those with you. So, one was how Chinese baristas in Italy were actually coming together with other populations – so native Italians, but also new immigrants – not to change an existing form of convivial local culture, but actually to preserve and perpetuate it. Can you tell me about that, this point about preservation rather than rupture?

Grazia Ting Deng  17:07 
So, when a Chinese family buys a coffee bar, they do not really want to change anything, they try to keep everything as the same as before. So, they tried to learn to make exactly the same coffee as before, as a previous owner, and they were, they were asked their customers – is my coffee good enough for you? They tried to get to know all the special requests from their customers and then to make – you know – to keep the, to keep the service and the products as the same as before. And in terms of social skills – you know – they tried to fit in the, in the community. For example, so before running the bar, they probably – you know, like us – we all know that politeness is very important in the service industry, right? And in the bar that I described, so my barista teacher told me that – yeah – that's a general rule. But it's not always the rule, because they know the customers, they know who wants what, right. And they, they kind of customerized the service. Someone likes teasing, and then someone likes – you know – it's not just the cold, fake smile, right? Someone really appreciates the, the real, like human interactions with emotions, with feelings, as not necessarily polite. And then they develop this kind of interpersonal relationship in their everyday social interactions. And that also maintains – you know – the vibe of the coffee bar, the sociality of the coffee bar as the same as before, at least they are trying to do that. That's why I always think that they are not trying to – you know – bring the Chinese culture into the Italian bar. Actually, they try to hide the Chineseness in the bar.

Amit Singh  19:05 
Yeah, that's really interesting. So I guess there's a tie with my own work here, in the sense that the English pub is often seen as in decline and under threat. Particularly in towns and cities across the UK that like in the 1950s, 60s, 70s had what we call here a colour bar – which is kind of de facto segregation – which kind of didn't allow Indian workers who were working in factories alongside white workers to actually drink there. But then, slowly, started to take over some of these pubs and ended up running some of these pubs, which we now call – kind of – desi pubs, Indian run pubs. But I guess a key difference is that they serve a range of different Indian food. So they maintain kind of the mundane, everyday elements of the pub – quite drab decor often, serving a range of English pints. But then serve Indian food, which I think is like an interesting difference against the backdrop of this like English pub. And it also makes me wonder whether it's maybe just easier to pour a pint than it is to make a cup of coffee. And maybe that's why it was bit more seamless. So, I think there is something in that in terms of thinking about the difference. So, why is it that these places remain so Italian? Is it the result of some kind of xenophobic pressure to maintain the authenticity? Or a genuine desire to preserve the culture? Or do you think maybe a bit of both?

Grazia Ting Deng  20:23 
This a good question. I don't think the Chinese baristas really have this idea of preserving Italian culture. It's for economic reasons, right? They are small business owners, they want to make money. So they think, they do think the coffee bars are Italian culture, and they know that their customers would, they know that their customers would like to continue this kind of a daily ritual. So, they try to do that. So, that's why – in my book – I emphasise that the coffee bars is a kind of everyday site of compromise and adaptation. So, so the Chinese – you know – buy the bars for economic reasons. And then the Italian customers goes here, because that's their culture practices, right? The immigrant workers go there, because they don't have, they don't have many other places to go for their social lives. So, different local populations go there for their own purpose, but somehow work together to construct a convivial space.

Amit Singh  21:36 
Yeah, that's really interesting. And I think that's something that's quite similar with the desi pubs and the idea that some of me and my colleagues are looking at. Because in the bars that you studied – and then pubs, so like I'm thinking about – the clientele is a lot more complex than people might typically think. So immigrant populations are also attending these coffee bars, right? And then another thing then that challenges this notion of the immigrant host relations.

Grazia Ting Deng  21:59 
Yeah, so I think the Chinese managed coffee bars are kind of a new form of contact zone, in critical theorist Mary Louise Pratt's term. So native Italians, Chinese immigrants and other immigrant groups – they meet there for different purposes and develop their social relationships. So, they all need to learn how to interact with each other. So the Chinese barristas, they learn to serve different and diverse customers and they deal with racism against them. And they, sometimes they also kind of deploy orientalism in their own favour. For example, the Chinese woman, the Chinese female baristas, sometimes they pretend not to understand the dirty jokes or harassment – because I'm Chinese, I don't understand, that's logical. Okay. And some Chinese would complain about racism and discrimination with other immigrants – you know – and some Chinese owners, they will also bring in some new dishes, for example. You know, the Chinese dumplings, you know. I saw a Chinese owner made dumplings for her customers for the Christmas, okay, saying that – okay, if you like it, just eat it for free. And then the customers would say – oh, this is so good, I would like to order some from you. And then she would make some dumplings for them. But these kinds of new dishes would not destroy the main – you know – the vibe, you know, the main product, product, product at least in their in their business.

Rosie Hancock  23:49 
I feel like some of what you're talking about here is getting, getting to this immigrant host relationship – maybe some nuance to this idea of conviviality – because you're talking about experiences where people might be experiencing racism, some kind of like clash in a way like a clash, sort of oppositional thing that could be happening with different groups in these spaces. But then at the same time – you know – that there's compromise and adaptation and agency. And I'm really interested to know how you see conviviality after being in these spaces and how you would talk about the way conviviality plays out in the Italian coffee bar of today?

Grazia Ting Deng  24:27 
Alright. So first of all, I would like to add one point to the previous question. So, I think convivial social space in the Chinese run coffee bars is often produced through – kind of – encounters of friction. Yeah. So anthropologist Anna Tsing defined friction as the awkward, unequal, unstable and creative qualities of interconnections across differences. Oh, this kind of frictions happening every single day. Probably, some mistakes happens, misunderstandings happens. But they have their own way to solve those kinds of problems and then still make friends – you know – construct their own social relationships. So, back to the idea, the concept, of conviviality. This concept, the conviviality literally means the art of living together. And so the whole book – 'Chinese Espresso' – is about how people from different backgrounds live together. Okay, so, the concept of conviviality has its roots in the Spanish term 'convivencia' and it is a kind of idealised notion describing – you know – ideal situation, the conviviality between Jews, Muslims and Christians in medieval Spain, Iberia. And recently this concept has been increasingly used by the migration scholars to describe this kind of coexistence, cohabitation and interactions between native Europeans and new immigrants from different parts of the world. And they often see – so in European scholarship of migration – they often see conviviality as some kind of a goal, an ideal goal to achieve. But in my book, I use conviviality as a reality that immigrants learn to deploy and cultivate in the face of – you know – economic uncertainties and structural inequalities. So, I take the immigrant's perspective – the Chinese immigrants perspective – to explore how they perceive and live within the new European society. But I want to make it clear that, so conviviality that I describe has its spatial boundary. So it's within that coffee bar space and it is characterised by contingency and compromise. And for me, so the Chinese espresso is emblematic – you know – is a symbol of life in pluralistic and postmodern urban societies. It's a kind of a new normal, in which immigrants would assume fundamental roles and positions of taste production and placemaking that people would normally think that only people from the local cultures, local society would be able to do.

Rosie Hancock  27:54 
The way that you're describing conviviality, it really sounds like you're walking this very – like – nuanced line between the political ideal that's described in theory, but then there's actually the, these, these sort of everyday practices that people are doing to enact it in real life. You write of 'everyday convivial bricolage' and it's, it's this very interesting kind of tension between the political ideal and then how it's actually lived out in these sort of bounded spaces and, and through particular practices. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Grazia Ting Deng  28:25 
Yeah, actually the Chinese espresso exposes the paradox between the apparent multi-racial and multi-ethnic conviviality within the coffee bar space, and the hostility against the immigrants prevalent in a wider white dominant European society. And this is a – you know – another paradox that, you know, the book is about.

Amit Singh  28:50 
Yeah, that's really interesting, because you touched on – kind of – the political climate in Italy, which I think is really central, right, to what was going on. So do you mind speaking a little bit more about how the Chinese espresso coffee culture you studied has evolved against this backdrop of the rise in the far right? And it's the same we hear about quite often in the UK in the media here.

Grazia Ting Deng  29:10 
Yeah, as I mentioned, so, the phenomenon of Chinese espresso is a good example, against the popular discourse of the rising right wing politics, right? They are not stealing our jobs. They are – on the contrary – they're maintaining the Italian culture, the local culture, the urban identity.

Rosie Hancock  29:32 
I really love the way that they're, that these sort of Chinese immigrant run bars are actually – you know – they're both sort of contributing to the maintenance of Italian culture, at the same time that they're challenging the idea that immigration is necessarily going to – you know – fundamentally transform what it is to be Italian. Like, there's a very interesting thing happening here. We're going to move on to our next section but before we do that, we're going to have a quick word from our producer Alice.

Alice Bloch  30:08 
Hi, we hope you're enjoying today's episode with Grazia Ting Deng, thinking differently about coffee culture and conviviality. We're now well into season three of Uncommon Sense, and whether you're joining us for pleasure or work or study, we hope it's a really valuable resource for you. And if you've had chance to look at thesociologicalreview.org – maybe to get some readings from our show notes, or hear our other podcasts – you might have noticed the Sociological Review Foundation is a charity. We're all about advancing public understanding of sociology, and you could say that this year – still – that's needed more than ever. So, we've a favour to ask. If you can, please consider making a contribution to help the foundation keep bringing this podcast to you. Just head to donorbox.org/uncommon-sense, that's donorbox.org/uncommon-sense. You can find that link in our show notes. And there you can make one off or repeat donations to directly support the making of Uncommon Sense. All gratefully received, and of course we're also grateful just for you listening in. Any feedback or suggestions, we're at uncommonsense@thesociologicalreview.org.

Rosie Hancock  31:27 
Okay, so Grazia each month, we ask our guests to tell us about something that gave them some uncommon sense. It could be a thinker, a book – I mean, sometimes, even just one sentence that stuck with them. And I don't think I've ever mentioned mine before, so I'm gonna throw mine out there now. I remember reading the Italian social movement theorist, Alberto Melucci, as a PhD student, and it totally changed how I think about politics, and it's – you know – still influences how I think about it today. Maybe more on that on another show. Amit have you ever had a similar moment? Maybe someone who's made you think differently about conviviality?

Amit Singh  32:02 
Yeah, likewise, it was when I was muddling through the PhD, and didn't really know where I was going, or what I was thinking. But I remember reading Les Back's seminal 'New Ethnicities and Urban Culture' in my first year, and it really helped me make sense of what was happening in my field site, particularly what he calls the 'metropolitan paradox', which he uses to refer to how instances of rich multicultural exchange – kind of like some of the instance you were talking about earlier Grazia – can happen proximate to instances of like racism. Which I think is a really instructive way to think through some of the complexities of urban multi culture and convivial encounters more broadly – especially against the backdrop of the looming shadow of racism within and outside of those.

Rosie Hancock  32:47 
I also really love Les Back. We did an episode of the show with him, called 'Listening' a while back, I was such a fangirl in recording that episode. He's also, one of those great things when you – you know – meet someone whose work you really like, and they're also just really nice to chat with as well. It was so good. Okay, well Grazia, I understand you wanted to mention 'The Invention of Tradition', a collection from the early 80s, edited by the historians Eric Hobsbawm, and Terence Ranger. It looks at how what appear to be old traditions are sometimes – in fact – rather recently created, often to serve particular ends. Can you tell us more about that book and what's in it?

Grazia Ting Deng  33:25 
Yeah. So, so the book actually talks about like many traditions that appear to be very old or claimed to be very old are often quite recent in origin – and sometimes even invented, right. So, this phenomenon actually is often associated with construction of national identity. A national culture as if a cultural practice is ahistorical, that automatically implies continuity with the past. For example, Hobsbawm gave the example of the Highland tradition of Scotland. So, the supposedly, ancient Scottish clan taverns were actually quite modern. Yeah. So, this historic perspective inspired me to think about the notion of tradition and modernity to examine – you know – the Italy's well known coffee tradition. So, probably you all know that recently Italy has applied to UNESCO to add Italian espresso to its official list of intangible heritages of humanity. And they promoted these espresso as a symbol of what was made in Italy, Italian lifestyle that combined the tradition and the modernity. So, when I did my research and I discovered that actually espresso is quite a recent invention. You know, the, the first espresso machine was invented in late 19th century, but the popular use of espresso machine only happens after the World War Two. So, the Italian coffee industry promoted espresso as a symbol of what was made in Italy, an Italian lifestyle that combines tradition and modernity. They also branded themselves as defenders of Italian coffee culture that usually traces back to the early modern Venetian coffee houses. But, when I interviewed local Italians, the native Bolognese – who are more than 70 years old, or 80 years old – they all gave me a different story. They told me that, so when I mentioned so, 'are bars in the old days called cafe?' – you know – coffee house in Italian there was a man – 'no, no, no'. So in, in the, in the past, so there were always like two or three cafe in the city centres in, in Italian cities. But most of the bars derived from Australia – you know – the nowadays people would think osteria as a local tavern, traditional wine house. But for many local Bolognese, osteria actually was a previous version of coffee bars.

Amit Singh  36:30 
Yeah and just generally, I think it's so important – isn't it – to challenge the assumption that food and ethnicity just neatly map onto each other? Because in reality, what appears often to be a national food culture in Italy or beyond is often in fact wrapped up in global change, right, both of product but also of labour.

Grazia Ting Deng  36:47  
Yeah. So I mean, the food – in this case, you know, espresso coffee – so the taste of espresso coffee is actually industry regulated. So, it's not related to ethnicity, so they do not have a natural connection. So – as I mentioned earlier – so the Chinese baristas in Italy mostly acted as the final technicians in the coffee making process. They do not necessarily have an understanding of coffee blending or the global commodity chain of coffee. They only need to develop their technical, manual skills of this highly standardised commodity through the operation of the espresso machine. So, it is the standardised industry production that has made the mass consumption of coffee commodity possible, but not the ethnicity of the barista. But if you go to Italy they will – you know – now probably not, but in the beginning when Chinese immigrants started running coffee bars. If you ask an Italian at that point, they would say 'Chinese? Can they make coffee? That's, it's not possible'. But now – you know – many also realise that actually many Chinese make better coffee than Italians, because it's their own small family business. They care about their families, they are not hired labour, right.

Rosie Hancock  38:12 
Hmm. You know, we've just been talking about a book whose ideas have inspired you and it definitely sounds like they apply to the case of Italian coffee or indeed Australian coffee for that matter. But I wanted to also note that your own book is very richly written full of really great descriptive passages. I wonder whether there's someone who's writing then has given you a kind of uncommon sense, has shown you that there's more than one way to write a captivating ethnography. And by ethnography, I should add that we mean, in the most basic of terms, a descriptive written study of a particular community or culture, typically based on actual close observation and engagement by the researcher.

Grazia Ting Deng  38:51 
I will say, the first time when I read Clifford Geertz's ethnography about the 'Balinese Cockfight', I was really amazed by his thick description of the everyday drama, and how he was accepted in the local community. I was like - oh, so we can write ethnography in this way? It's not just full of jargons – you know – all of those terms that no one could understand except anthropologists?

Rosie Hancock  39:19 
Yeah, I mean, I, I also really liked reading rich ethnographies. I think one of my favourite is Courtney Bender's 'Heaven's Kitchen' book, which is kind of suitable to this because it's talking about – kind of – relationships between people in a kitchen. This is, this is sort of like a kitchen in New York that was preparing meals for people who are suffering in the AIDS crisis. But, you know, the sort of really rich descriptions of spaces and interactions within them and kind of the way culture comes out in these places is just such interesting to read for me. Amit, is there anything that you've, that you really like reading that helps you to write as well?

Amit Singh  39:56 
Yeah, the first ethnography I read was Philippe Bourgois' 'In Search of Respect' which is an ethnography of people selling crack in el Barrio in New York, in Spanish Harlem. And there's a lot going on. And there's a lot going on that's probably a little bit – you wouldn't get away with today, let's say that, with modern ethics committees. But it's like really amazing and really rich. And obviously, I love a bit of Les Back.

Rosie Hancock  40:21 
Of course. We're going to put all the recommendations, for all of these books, are going to be in our show notes. And including that Clifford Geertz recommendation from you Grazia. But – you know – our time's almost up. Before we go, we wanted to talk to you about pop culture, and we're looking for a recommendation from you that speaks to our theme – or themes – today. Coffee, culture or conviviality. While you're having a think about it, I'm going to throw one in which is the Jim Jarmusch, 2003 film 'Coffee and Cigarettes'. It's a series of vignettes of famous people having a chat over coffee, basically, and they are often disagreeing with one another, but in a very amicable way. My absolute favourite is the chat between Iggy Pop and Tom Waits. Amit, is there anything that you want to check in here?

Amit Singh  41:07 
Honestly, I'm just not a very cultured man. So I've got nothing, I'm afraid. Grazia, what would you want to mention?

Grazia Ting Deng  41:15 
So my book is about coffee and coffee bars, so I also have several ethnographic descriptions of coffee bars. But if you want to have an image, I will say that we can see the convivial coffee bars in many movies and TV shows that were set in Italy. For example, the movie 'Call Me By Your Name'.

Rosie Hancock  41:35 
Yeah, I love that movie.

Grazia Ting Deng  41:37 
So yeah, so for example – you know – I think in the first five minutes already, the two guys entered a bar in the piazza, and then the bar was full of retired men, except for the female barista behind the bar counter. And all the men were sitting there chatting, smoking, drinking, playing cards – and that is a typical neighbourhood bar in Italy. And potentially bought by the Chinese immigrants. And more closely related to the Chinese espresso is another movie – Italian movie –  called 'Shun Li and the Poet'. It was directed by Andrea Segre, released in 2011. So, that movie is about the friendship – at the margins of the romance, of course – between the Chinese barista, who is also a single mom and undocumented migrant, and a local fisherman, originally from Yugoslavia in the Venetian town. I have very conflicted feelings about that movie. So, the movie actually captures – you know – that kind of mutual distrust stereotypes of both Chinese communities and local Italian society. And it also shows it's anti-racist, anti-xenophobic intent. But, it also – ironically – adopts a orientalist description of Chinese immigrants in Italy. So, it implies that the Chinese mafia is a mastermind behind the Chinese businesses in Italy. And this is why there are so many Chinese people running coffee bars. And in my book, I specifically commented on and criticised this kind of a rumour about the Chinese mafia in Italy.

Rosie Hancock  43:39 
Thanks so much for those recommendations. That is all we're gonna have time for today. Thank you so much for the, for telling us about your book and about your research. And it's been really great to chat with you.

Grazia Ting Deng  43:49 
Thank you.

Amit Singh  43:53 
And that's it for this month. As ever, you can catch today's show notes – including a great reading list with pieces from the Sociological Review journal and magazine, plus the thinkers we've discussed today – by digging into the Uncommon Sense section on the podcast page at thesociologicalreview.org.

Rosie Hancock  44:10 
And given our theme, I'd like to suggest you go back and take a look at our episode on 'Cities' from season one with Romit Chowdhury. There's also 'Spatial Delight', another podcast from the Sociological Review Foundation, hosted by Agata Lisiak, and all about space, society and power inspired by the geographer Doreen Massey. I'll be back next month with Alexis and more 'Uncommon Sense'.

Amit Singh  44:32 
Our producer was Alice Bloch and our sound engineer was Dave Crackles. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.

Rosie Hancock  44:37  
Bye