This episode, Angel Christou interviews Autumn Moore about her research experience on the CLAS Seminar & Field Trip this past summer. Autumn investigated the different cultural symbols present for coffee in Manizales, the coffee growing region of Colombia.

Autumn finalizes that "every Colombian is familiar with these two understandings of coffee and likely does not register them as different, in practice, they usually are not. The production structure of Colombian coffee that is founded on small-scale operations epitomizes this marriage between the social, presented by human caficultores, and the industrial, the business of a farm. What is different between the two is their rootedness in social practice. The coffee culture has expanded from its economic origins and reached independence such that economic fluctuations in the industry did not seem to introduce any worry over negative cultural implications. The culture that people identify with is much stronger than a quarter’s profit return. While highs and lows in the impact society by way of employment, income, and options, my research suggests that it does not usually affect cultural change, such fluctuations are too variable and short-term (a long-term industry evolution would be another matter). Coffee factors into identity in this region of the world, but it is not the coffee of industry, rather the coffee of everyday practice that holds the most cultural currency."