ABSTRACT
Drawing on ethnographic and archival research on the production, exchange, and consumption of artisanal chocolate in France and the United States, this chapter explores the renewed interest in the conditions of craft production and the specialized consumer knowledge of prestige foods that inform the search for distinctive chocolates. It explores the discursive, conceptual and moral claims made about twenty-first century craft as a distinctive type of production. The chapter considers the ways that craft goods such as handcrafted chocolates mark and disrupt boundaries central to anthropology, namely work and labor, autonomy and standardization, tradition and modernity, artisanship and art as well as nature and culture. It examines the global gentrification of chocolate taste and the promotion of dark chocolate as the standard of distinction for consumers. The chapter compares and contrasts the ways that French and American producers, consumers, and taste makers construct knowledge about and assign value to good chocolate.
