2024/09/21 by Alexios Tsigkas · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Neuroscience · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Aesthetics #Art #Art History and Market Analysis #Business #Cultural Industries and Urban Development #Economics #Neuroscience #Psychology #Social and Cultural Dynamics #Taste
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/sea2.12330
published in Economic Anthropology 12(1) (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2024/09/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract How are taste judgments made and shared? Drawing on fieldwork among Ceylon tea brokers and buyers, the industry's de facto tea tasters, this article offers an ethnographic account of aesthetic judgment in practice. I ask, what makes a tea good? Tea tasters' unanimous response amounted to a market relativism of sorts that shifted attention away from the tasted object: “It all depends on the market.” Following my informants' contention, I show how industry actors are able to enact a tentative resolution to the fundamental paradox inherent in the judgment of taste, namely, its ostensibly subjective nature and simultaneous claim to objectivity. “The market,” invoked time and again by tea tasters, and imagined as inherently objective, affords the seamless translation of taste judgments into prices, intelligible and shareable quantities, prompting a reimagining of taste as an economic fact.