ABSTRACT
Due to their concentration of human activity, services, and operations, cities have become focal points of ongoing socioeconomic changes. New networks are formed, sometimes fitting in and sometimes cutting across national boundaries, and new subjectivities emerge, redefining the experience of living in the city. The proliferation of global chains is both the symptom and one of the major forces behind the urban transformation.
Coffee shops, as an institution with long and intensive affiliation with the city, offer a fascinating prism for exploring this transformation. The connection between global coffee shop chains and the contemporary city encompasses several dimensions – the coffee substance with its cultural properties, the social space nurtured by the chains, and the new subjectivities it generates. All of these are found in everyday interaction with the fabric of the city and the life trajectories of city dwellers.
How do branded chains integrate themselves into urban public space and shape experiences of urban life? How is the city experienced via the mundane practice of a coffee shop? This chapter tackles these and several other questions and is organized as follows: the first section explores recent trends in the evolution of the urban space, framed mainly by the commodification of the city, and outlines Japan’s particularities in this process. The second section focuses on the role of global coffee chains, examining the characteristics of the social space they construct – specifically, anonymity and communality, familiarization and ritual, inclusion and exclusion. The final section outlines the implications of these processes, discussing the issues of symbolic connectivity generated by global chains and their effect on the urban fabric.
