A New Developmental Illusion?: Specialty Coffee and the Institutional Politics of Extension, Rupture and Avoidance

• In Event: 50460 - Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 3: Economics of Empire

Abstract

Development scholars have noted the importance of coffee production as a promising arena of post-colonial development for countries situated across the tropical “global coffee belt” regions of Africa, Asia, the Americas. The liberalization of the world coffee market in 1989 brought with it a widespread “coffee crisis” marked by heightened market volatility, falling rents, and rising economic precarity that undermined coffee’s developmental prospects into the early 2000s. Over the past two decades, however, new development opportunities have arisen in the “premium and specialty coffee” market. Highly valued “single origin,” “terroir,” and ethically labeled coffees have allowed farmers to circumvent corporate supply chains, generate direct relations with roasters, and obtain higher incomes while producing more ecologically sustainable coffee. But how exactly do farmers move into this specialty coffee niche? What must they change about their cultivation techniques and their understandings of coffee? And what institutions must be created to facilitate this market adaptation?
My research addresses these questions through a comparative analysis of the farming practices and developmental institutions of three major coffee producing countries: Colombia, Kenya, and Vietnam. Qualitative data was conducted in the central coffee-producing regions of each country between 2022 and 2024. This presentation presents some initial findings on their divergent institutional politics. In Colombia, movement into the specialty coffee market fostered an “extension” of the country’s historically developmentalist coffee institutions. Kenya’s move into the specialty coffee market, in contrast, has required an “institutional rupture” that has turned coffee farming into an object of national political contention. Finally, Vietnam’s specialty coffee farmers have developed new institutional practices through a process of “institutional avoidance” that circumvents, but does not disrupt, existing practices. These divergent institutional practices highlight both the durable power of post-colonial institutions and the emerging politics of 21st developmentalism.

Author

• Phillip A. Hough, Florida Atlantic University