A stimulating account of Britain's favourite drink. * Times Literary Supplement *
[Besky's] nuanced study of Indian tea . . . is a refreshing brew of botany, business and culture. * Nature *
Provides an unusual and rich understanding of the process of creating, reproducing, and evaluating the quality of tea. * American Anthropologist *
A wonderfully layered and immaculately researched exploration of the enduring tastes of empire.
* Allegra Lab *
Tasting Qualities will be a beneficial read to a broad range of scholars with interest in food, labor, and commodity studies, the intersection of food, nutrition, and health knowledge, science and technology. * Food, Culture & Society *
With a fine eye for detail and sparkling writing that makes the seemingly mundane fascinating . . .
Tasting Qualities is a highly original, deeply researched, and theoretically sophisticated ethnography of Indian tea's modernity, which adds to the scholarship on commodities and capitalism. * Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society *
Engages deeply with the theoretical aspects of assessing the quality and value of commodities through the lens of tea. * CHOICE *
A fascinating view of the Indian tea industry. . . . Manages to easily deconstruct and demystify the space between the plantation and the cup of tea. * Tea Journey *
Tasting Qualities is a persuasive ethnography of quality and its many unseen constituents. * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
Tasting Qualities is a persuasive ethnography of quality and its many unseen constituents. * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
With a fine eye for detail and sparkling writing that makes the seemingly mundane fascinating . . . Tasting Qualities is a highly original, deeply researched, and theoretically sophisticated ethnography of Indian tea's modernity, which adds to the scholarship on commodities and capitalism.
* Isis *
Combining ethnographic and archival description, Sarah Besky's
Tasting Qualities: The Past and Future of Tea cleverly turns an analytic lens on the dependable and standardized aesthetics of modern capitalism. * American Ethnologist *
Besky offers anthropologists and other interdisciplinary scholars an ethnography to teach, think with, and push their studies of work, agriculture, finance, and commodities a bit further toward our collective understanding of quality. * Exertions *
