Not Just-So

How does one go about presenting a simple everyday item as an object of social inquiry and on that basis consider a political claim with say, something like a cup of coffee? Well, coffee is an item of immense trade and commoditization, from the plantations, wholesale trade, massive roasting sites, in short from the farmer to the barista, the coffee bean is spun into a complex web of social/economic relationships and procurement on a grand scale, like most commodities. Yet if one were asked what sat in front of him or her at a cafe or a local Tim Hortans, they would probably find humor in the question. Of course it is a cup coffee! The instantaneous intuitions response hands over its most immediate and obvious object. "It is coffee, I just bought it." In most contexts, an item is treated as a thing in itself, or in this case 'just a cup of coffee'. But for our purpose, the thing in itself gives very little room for inquiry into a social dimension or a critical understanding to any stage of its procurement, as it is. Property rights, also offer very little to the discerning eye. Thus, we may begin to question the validity of such a just-so status. For a social consciousness to emerge in this context, one is required to look farther into the object at hand, and engage in understanding the history of that very object, the modes of procurement, and the institutions that legitimize it and so on, in this case I would say, we should look into the context of coffee consumerism.