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Placing coffee at the center of its analysis, Brewing Socialism links East Germany’s consumption and food culture to its relationship to the wider world. Andrew Kloiber reveals the ways that everyday cultural practices surrounding coffee drinking not only connected East Germans to a global system of exchange, but also perpetuated a set of traditions and values which fit uneasily into the Socialist Unity Party’s conceptualization of a modern Socialist Utopia. Sifting through the relationship between material culture and ideology, this unique work examines the complex tapestry of traditions, history and cultural values that underpinned the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR).
“In an exemplary fashion, Brewing Socialism highlights the power and cultural politics of consumption in the former East Germany. By focusing on one specific but important commodity, coffee, the author explores the connection between consumer demands and expectations and the political decision-making of the SED leadership. Kloiber does an admirable job in terms of exploring the fraught assumptions and long-term implications of these negotiations with socialist developing nations, in which socialist brotherhood was not always the most essential and driving motivation.” • Gerd Horten, Emeritus Professor of Concordia University
Andrew Kloiber earned his Ph.D. in 2017 at McMaster University (Canada). His work broadly examines the cultural history of Modern Germany – particularly the role of material culture in shaping identity, social norms and power. His work has received generous support from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the German Historical Institute Washington, the University of Exeter, and McMaster University.
Acknowledgments
List of Tables
List of Images
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1. “A Word on Coffee”: Coffee and Everyday Life in East Germany, 1945–1965
Chapter 2. Coffee and the “Modern Comforts” of Socialism
Chapter 3. Bitter Grounds: East Germany’s “Coffee Crisis” of 1977–1978
Chapter 4. Bread and Guns for Coffee: Searching for Coffee in Ethiopia and Angola, 1977–1979
Chapter 5. Cultivating Coffee, Brewing Solidarity in Laos and Vietnam, 1979–1986
Conclusion: The Taste That Remains
Bibliography