Posted on 08/24/2010 12:08:34 PM PDT by decimon
If you think that your favorite coffee shop is a great gathering place for discussion, you should have been around in the Ottoman Empire starting in the 1550s. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research examines the role of coffee houses in the evolution of the consumer.
Authors Eminegül Karababa (University of Exeter, Exeter, UK) and Güliz Ger (Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey) dug wide and deep into the history of coffeehouses in the early modern Ottoman Empire and found they offered their patrons a lot more than coffee.
They found that patrons engaged in gambling, taking drugs, meeting with "young beautiful boys," as well as performing or watching entertainments such as puppet theatres, storytellers, and musical and dance performances. The early coffee houses were controversial enterprises. "Formation, normalization, and legalization of such a site for transgressive pleasures was controversial since formal religious morality of the period (orthodox Islam) considered it as sinful and illegal. Thus, they were repeatedly banned by the state."
Yet, the coffee houses flourished, and by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Ottomans from all ranks of the society met to drink coffee, socialize, and have literary discussions.
Coffee house discourse often challenged the authority of the state and religion and led to changes in the society. "Simultaneously, a new Ottoman consumer, resisting the prescriptions of the state and religion, actively constructing selfethics, and taking part in the formation of the coffeehouse culture, was forming as well."
"Obviously, the early modern Ottoman context was very different than any modern capitalist system", the authors write. "But the active consumer may not be as recent or even a chronological phenomenon as many consumer researchers think."
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Eminegül Karababa and Güliz Ger. "Early Modern Ottoman Coffeehouse Culture and the Formation of the Consumer Subject." Journal of Consumer Research: February 2011. A preprint of this article (to be officially published online soon) can be found at http://journals.uchicago.edu/jcr.
Star bucks ping.
The story is herders in Turkey saw goats who had eaten wild coffee beans acting psycho. One said to the other - I want what they’re having.
Ancient? The 1550s?
Geeze. I sometimes joke that the difference between history and ancient history is that history is the stuff you remember from when you were a kid, and ancient history is anything that happened before you can remember. Somebody is taking that definition wa-a-a-y too seriously if they want to call the 1550s “ancient” history.
You could say a lot of things did. Trading Posts probably fall into this category as well.
Ah yes, muslims paved the way for modern consumerism. Hand held foods and international traders importing goods were just coincidental.
Doesn’t matter how many thousands of years man had been markerting goods.
“They found that patrons engaged in gambling, taking drugs, meeting with “young beautiful boys,” as well as performing or watching entertainments such as puppet theatres,”
..... sounds seriously perverted ....
Horsecrap.
Where did this guy get his degree? Sears?
Pompeii and Herculaneum had the thermopolium—ancient version of a fast food joint.
Another phony “We Owe It All to the Muslims” story...no doubt part of that BO plan to boost Muslim self-esteem.
For being such innovators in the 16th century, they certainly are backward today.
Yeah, those puppet theaters. ;-)
“meeting with “young beautiful boys,” “
I didn’t know Barney Frank’s ancestor’s were in the coffee business?
“meeting with “young beautiful boys,””
Like I said, seriously perverted.............
Their family motto was "We'll grind your coffee and cream it, too".
Sounds like an extension of the Turkish bath, which was taken from the Roman baths the Turks found when they conquered Constantinople.
Rosser Reeves is the father of modern consumerism. Guy was an evil genius.
He put the advertising industry on the map. Fascinating character.
“You deserve a break today.” - the basic essence of the man’s philosophy. You are entitled to a new car.
He broke the guilt complex around consumerism solidified into the culture by the Depression. Before Reeves, a person got what he could pay for, and should pay for what he needed.
Though in this case likely true. But if one reads the history of coffee, it´s more like an accident of proximity in that coffee usage seems to have originated in Ethiopia around 550-600 years ago.
mullahs from that period however, claimed that it was an intoxicating beverage and therefore prohibited by the quran. However, with typical hypocritical muslim abandon its usage took off throughout what was later to be termed the middle east.
Thus along with well established jihadi murder and mayhem, coffee drinking entered the muslim and hence, the wider world.
When was it that ottomans took up arms?
Our capitalist society has far more to do with coffee houses in England and France in the 18th century. Lloyds of London was born in a coffee house and coffee houses were where political issues were discussed. In France the coffee house was where the revolution was planned. Americans tended more toward taverns in the 18th century.
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