Early Modern Ottoman Coffeehouse Culture and the Formation of the Consumer Subject

We examine the socio-historical formation of the consumer subject during the development of consumer culture in the context of leisure consumption. Specifically, we investigate how an active consumer was forming while a coffeehouse culture was taking shape during early modern Ottoman society. Utilizing multiple historical data sources and analysis techniques, we focus on the discursive negotiations and the practices of the consumers, marketers, the state, and the religious institution as relevant stakeholders. Our findings demonstrate that multiparty resistance, enacted by consumers and marketers, first challenged the authority of the state and religion and then changed them. Simultaneously and at interplay with various institutional transformations, a public sphere, a coffeehouse culture, and a consumer subject constructing his self-ethics were developed, normalized, and legalized. We discuss the implications of the centrality of transgressive hedonism in this process as well as the existence of an active consumer in an early modern context. Copyright Journal of Consumer Research 2010 Preprint (not copyedited or formatted) 2 Please use DOI when citing or quoting Pleasure and leisure are two important characteristics of today’s consumer culture (Belk, Ger, and Askegaard 2003; Goulding et al. 2009; Hirschman and Holbrook 1982; Kozinets et al. 2004; Urry 2000). Masses of consumers enjoy leisure away from home and work in “third places” such as cafés (Kjeldgaard and Ostberg 2007; Oldenburg 1999; Thompson and Arsel 2004). Today we are surrounded by many cafés in various styles. Some are global-branded like Starbucks (Ritzer 2007). Some are local, defined either by anticorporate discourses (Thompson and Arsel 2004) or by hybridization of multiple local traditional and global forms (Kjeldgaard and Ostberg 2007). Today’s café culture has materialized with certain continuities and ruptures from its origins. Kjeldgaard and Ostberg challenge the global-local dichotomy and argue that neither global nor local coffee shops are authentic but rather are both globally and socio-historically formed, stemming from 17century European coffeehouses. The earliest form of the coffeehouse emerged in the mid-16 century Ottoman Empire and spread to the world in the next century. We investigate the socio-historical construction of the initial form of this sphere and its consumers. The coffeehouse, being a site of pleasurable leisure linked to both the birth of consumer culture and the less frivolous public sphere, is a significant entity. Commercialization and democratization of leisure—in coffeehouses, theatres, art galleries, concert halls, and gardens—in 18-century England is one of the markers of the development of consumer culture (Plumb 1982). Similarly, the increased popularity of the Ottoman coffeehouse in the 16 and 17 centuries, revealing its commercialization and democratization, indicates an Ottoman consumer culture. It seems that the British coffeehouse, deemed to have founded the 17-century public sphere (Habermas 1992), had its origins in Ottoman early modernity (Kömeçoğlu 2005; MacLean 2007; Öztürk 2005). In this study, we address the emergence of this significant site and its consumer in the unexpected Ottoman context rather than in an early modern western context—the usual home of modernity and modern consumer culture. In examining today’s consumer culture, consumption studies generally portray consumers as subjects who actively negotiate and transform market-mediated meanings to define and express their identities and social relations (Arnould and Thompson 2005; Fırat and Dholakia 1998; Fırat and Venkatesh 1995; Slater 1997). Researchers often attribute this active self-definition to the transformation from a modern to a postmodern condition, where structural divisions like class and gender lose their importance in ascribing identities, and, instead, marketing and media make available numerous symbolic resources to the consumers for use in constructing their identities themselves (Fırat and Venkatesh 1995; Holt 1998; Slater 1997). Researchers have investigated the self-constituting consumer in a variety of contemporary contexts (Brown, Kozinets, and Sherry 2003; Holt and Thompson 2004; Kozinets et al. 2004; Maclaran and Brown 2005; Peñaloza and Gilly 1999; Thompson 2004; Thompson and Arsel 2004; Thompson and Haytko 1997). However, as Borgerson (2005) also argues, the theoretical underpinnings of the concept of actively self-identifying consumer have not sufficiently been interrogated. That is, more research is needed on the conceptualization of the consumer and the context in which such a subject is formed in order to better understand the relationship between consumer subjects and their environments. In this research, our goal is to (re)examine the active consumer, who has usually been assumed to be the product of 20-century capitalism. By going back to an early modern period, we aim to explain how and under what conditions an active consumer subject was formed. Copyright Journal of Consumer Research 2010 Preprint (not copyedited or formatted) 3 Please use DOI when citing or quoting Scholars have linked the historical development of consumer culture to tendencies such as circumvention of sumptuary laws; spread of consumer goods, luxury, fashion, and leisure time activities to masses; and interactions among various consumer cultures (Arvidsson 2003; Brewer and Porter 1993; de Vries 2008; McKendrick, Brewer, and Plumb 1982; Mukerji 1983; Roche 2000). However, this literature does not explain if and how the consumer subject was formed during the development of consumer culture (Poster 1989). Instead, it supposes a rather passive consuming subject (Fırat and Dholakia 1998; McKendrick et al. 1982) shaped by numerous structural transformations. These transformations entail the emergence of a new class, the bourgeois between the aristocracy and peasantry (McKendrick et al. 1982; Mukerji 1983; Simmel 1957; Veblen 1899/1994), the growth of urbanization and commercialization (Braudel 1993; Polanyi 1957; Roche 2000; Schama 1987), the formation of new ethics (Campbell 1987; Mukerji 1983), the changes in the economic policies of the state from mercantilism toward liberalism (McKendrick 1982; Mukerji 1983), and the new role taken on by the market, supplementing, for example, religion and state, in determining received reality and truth (Agnew 1993; Slater 1997). Albeit such structural changes, we wonder, if consumer culture was in the forming, should not the active consumer also be in the forming. So, we examine if and how a consumer subject was constructed during the development of a consumer culture and if and how the consumer interacted with structural formations. Interrogating the supposed unidirectional link from structure to consumer, we focus on the Ottoman coffeehouse consumer. We address the following question: How did early modern people, supposedly tied to prescriptions, move from such prescribed manners of consumption to negotiated and at least partially selfdetermined modes? We focus on the 16and 17-century Ottoman era since this was the place and time of the emergence of the coffeehouse, which then spread to Europe. Upon its popularity, first in Istanbul and then elsewhere in the empire, Mediterranean merchants introduced coffee to Europe (de Lemps 1999) through the ports of Venice, Marseille, London, and Amsterdam (Schievelbusch 2000). Coffee reached Venice in 1615 (Braudel 1992). The first coffee shop was opened in London in 1652, followed by many others (Wills 1993). In France, in 1672, coffee was marketed with exotic Turkish images at stalls decorated with tapestries, mirrors, chandeliers, and preserved fruits (Ellis 2004). By the early 18 century, coffee was introduced to the Netherlands (Schama 1987), proliferating further the drink and its sites of leisure. The Ottoman Empire’s role in the world was not limited to the spread of coffee and coffeehouses. As a then-world power, it ruled the lands and trade routes in three continents— southeast Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa (Fisher 1971) and contributed politically, economically, and culturally to its period, including the European renaissance (İnalcık 1974; MacLean 2005). Consider painters like Holbein, Bellini, and Lotto’s depictions of Turkish carpets or Mozart’s Rondo Alla Turca, inspired by the Ottoman army band. Today, we have Dave Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” Ottoman influence is still visible in its former lands, and its much-less-powerful successor, Turkey, is among the G20. The 16and 17-century Ottoman society saw not only coffeehouses but also transformations in broader consumption patterns (Karababa 2006; Grehan 2007) and a decline in obedience to religious and legal prescriptions. Focusing on the coffeehouse, a precursor of the third place, and aiming to understand the formation of an active consumer and a coffeehouse culture, we examine the change in subjects—how they move from obeying prescriptions to rejecting them, or, from being sultan’s subjects to consumer subjects. We adopt an anthropological-historical approach in order to understand the formation and social construction of an active, yet early modern, coffeehouse consumer in relation to Copyright Journal of Consumer Research 2010 Preprint (not copyedited or formatted) 4 Please use DOI when citing or quoting market institutions—in this case, guilds as well as the state and the religious authority. Concurring with Peñaloza (2000), we examine marketplace interactions at the discursive and practice levels. At the practice level, we focus on the transgressions of the consumers, resistances of the guilds, enforcements of the state and the religious authority, and the changes in the discursive practices of these actors. At the discourse level, we examine the power struggles among countervailing discourses (Foucault 1980) to understand consumer resistances in the form of tactics (de Certeau 1988) and the ethical constitution (Foucault, 2000) of the coffeehouse consumer. De Certeau’s theory of practice complements later Foucault’s analysis of the structures of power in that the individual’s agency is enacted through the utilization of alternative meaning systems in the society. At both practice and discourse levels, and akin to Belk et al. (2003), we focus on the dialogic relationship between the pursuit of pleasure and religious morality. We delineate how these struggles composed an active consumer subject, the Ottoman coffeehouse culture, and a public sphere.