Episode 14 - Anissa Pomiès: Researching Materiality

Hello, and welcome to the Ethnography Atelier podcast, where we discuss research methods with accomplished qualitative researchers. Hello, this is Pedro Monteiro from Copenhagen, and Pauli Pagorinen from Stanford. Today, our conversation will be with Anissa Pomier, and we will talk about the methodological opportunities and challenges of studying materiality, the things that are pervasive of social life, but which for a long time have not been a direct topic of research and analysis. Anissa Pomiers is an assistant professor of marketing in the Lifestyle Research Center at Emilion Business School. Anissa completed her PhD at ESCPE Europe and Sorbonne University. She is trained as a sociologist and an ethnographer. Her research focuses on taste, market creation and transformation, and consumption practices. Typically she uses ethnographic methods to study these topics in combination with Acto-Network theory, practice theory, and similar approaches. Her research has been published in French and international journals, including the Journal of Consumer Research and Consumption, Markets and Culture. She also works to build bridges between fields, as well as between academia, private and public actors, and society at large. She is, for example, the organizer of the Taste Research Days, which makes academic researchers and practitioners, and she is also currently involved in an action research project that aims to improve food quality in prisons in France. Thank you for joining us, Anissa. Thank you. One of your research projects investigates the emergence of the specialty coffee shop niche market in France, and in this project you have paid particular attention to materiality, right? Yep. Okay, so can you tell us about this project and what actually led you to explore it with such a methodological approach? Sure, so basically the point of my research was to understand the evolution of the coffee culture in France, okay? And as you might know, France has an old culture of coffee consumption, so the first cafe opened in Paris in the 17th century, right? And cafes played a very important role in the history of France, and especially in the political life and artistic life of the country. And today, actually, cafes are really fascinating places that host people from different social backgrounds who go there to spend time with friends, with colleagues, family members, etc. And interestingly, like when consumers order a coffee, they always get a very bitter espresso. That is made by a waiter that is not trained to coffee preparation, okay? And interestingly, French consumers are used to this taste, right? So for them, this is the taste of coffee. This is what coffee should taste. But things started to change in 2009, 2010, okay? Because we could see independent coffee shops popping up in big cities, like, and when consumers enter a coffee shop, and when they order a coffee, well, Marissa asked them, do you want an espresso? Do you want a macchiato? Do you want a V60, an aeropress, blah, blah, blah. And do you want a Ethiopian coffee with notes of lemon, or do you want a Colombian coffee with chocolate notes, etc.? And this is really disturbing for French consumers. And in any case, they get a slightly acidic beverage that is made of Arabic beans, right? And sometimes French consumers do not like it, and especially those who have been drinking like Robusta for 30 years, okay? So I wanted to study this phenomenon. I wanted to understand how a taste-related niche markets could emerge when there is no demand from consumers. So how does materiality emerge as an important dimension of this project? So materiality proved to be extremely important in my project, but I must confess something because initially, it was not my plan at all to study materiality. When I started my projects, I was using a different theoretical lens based on the work of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. At that time, I believed in Bourdieu. I thought that baristas were competing for social status, right? But when I conducted, I conducted my observations in coffee shops, and when I did my first ethnographic interviews with baristas, I realized that I was totally wrong, and I found unexpected things. So first, I discovered that all the baristas were obsessed with espresso machines and with their grinders. I also found that baristas had a dialogue with coffee beans, and this is the word that they were using. They were talking about the dialogue with coffee beans. For example, when they were receiving a new batch of Ethiopian beans, they were making experiments to provide the perfect extraction time and to find the perfect quantity of wrong coffee to prepare an espresso shot. And in their view, their job consists in answering the needs of coffee. So according to them, some coffee beans require, let's say, 28 seconds for the extraction, whereas other beans require two more seconds, and some beans require 20 grams, 20 grams of coffee beans, whereas other beans require, let's say, 18 grams. So baristas make experiments, they taste, and they adjust until they find the perfect parameters. In the views of baristas, the perfect espresso shot is the outcome of a dialogue between beans and themselves. And the third unexpected thing is that baristas do not compete for social status, rather they collaborate together to collectively reach excellence, which means that they share tips with other baristas, and those tips, they often deal with technical devices to improve coffee quality. So because of these three elements, well, I needed to change my theoretical lens and to carefully study materiality, and that's why I thought that the act on network theory was the most appropriate theoretical framework. So this is all very interesting, and all the story you are telling us, right, how the baristas had to answer and dialogue with the coffee, I mean, it seems that they need to use their senses in order to do that work, and you yourself as an observer was trying to understand how they were using their senses. But I think the interesting thing is that historically, social science have always privileged more the written word or the spoken word, right, the more embodied dimensions of social life have only later become a topic and a dimension of analysis. So could you tell us how you went about collecting this data, you know, trying to leverage and understand the way in which baristas were using their whole body and their senses in this process? Okay, that's a really, really good point. And I totally agree with you. I found that social scientists tend to ignore senses, but fortunately, we can find some exceptions. And there is, like, at least in my field, an emerging literature on atmosphere that directly deals with sound, with smell, with taste. So but in my case, I must say I was lucky because the participants that I was studying and myself, we were sharing the same interest in senses, and we were facing the same issue. How can we emphasize how can we shed light on senses? So I decided basically to pay attention to my participants' efforts to grasp senses. And I discovered that participants, coffee lovers, they spent a lot of time describing flavors, describing aromas and textures. And they were spending time creating a very rich vocabulary for that, to describe those senses. So I decided to imitate them and to be as precise as possible in my field notes to describe tastes and sounds, etc. And another point is that when collecting data, I discovered that baristas and coffee shop owners problematize bitterness. So they claim that coffee that is available in traditional cafes is overly bitter. They pinch on the bitterness of coffee. And interestingly, baristas and coffee shop owners provide different reasons to explain why coffee is so bitter in French traditional cafes. And they argue, they blame that this is the fault, let's say, of coffee beans, because Robusta beans are more bitter and less aromatic than Arabica beans. They also blame espresso machines. And baristas believe that when the machine is not clean enough, or when the extraction time is too long, well, it develops the bitterness of espresso shots. And baristas also blame grinders, because grinders heats up ground coffee, which gives this burnt taste to the espresso. So in the end, if we believe participants and baristas and coffee shop owners, this is the object's fault if coffee is bitter in France. So Drache said it's the way that I found to analyze senses was to draw my inspiration of participants and to explore materiality. So can you maybe tell us a bit more in the methodological dimension of this work, right? When you were doing all of this, were you interviewing, you were with them, were you maybe collecting photographs? How was the process of collecting and trying to capture all this complexity? So that's a really important point. So when I began my project, I did not really know how I could study materiality, how it was possible to study materiality through observations. And I did not know especially how to collect and how to analyze data. And I will start with that analysis because for me it was the most complicated part. So I was reading papers, articles, using ethnography, using ethnographic methods. And when reading those papers, I was a bit disappointed, I must say, by the methodological section, because it often lacks details on observation data analysis. And I was obsessed with that question. So how do ethnographers collect and analyze their field notes? How do ethnographers analyze their pictures, the pictures that they take during that fieldwork? So I started to ask these questions to top scholars in conferences. And I must say that most of them were a bit embarrassed. And they confessed that it was a recollage, their observation data analysis. So it was a bit puzzling for me. So on one hand, we have tons of papers explaining how to do interviews, how to analyze interview data. But on the other hand, we have much less papers on how to analyze observation data. So I tried to find my own way. So that's why I decided to do a systematic and exhaustive coding of my visual data. And for that, I used EnVivo. So basically, when coding pictures, I focused on nonhumans and on humans. And when coding video footages, I focused on actions that I could identify in the material. And in this way, I could reconstitute coffee preparation and service practices. And I could make comparisons across participants and across settings, which means that I could identify the material components of practices. And I could identify the components that are systematic, those that are always present in all the coffee preparation and service practices. And I could identify the components that are just occasionally present in a coffee preparation and service practices. And I could also see some objects emerging in a setting. And this object, I could track its spreading in other settings. So it was a way to track innovations and to grasp the evolution of practices. So in order to grasp all this complexity, right, the sounds, the escapes, you probably had to get very close and you were describing that they were sharing with you the coffee. So how did process unfolded? How did you manage to get close to the phenomena? Okay. I really had to get immersed in the field, actually. I had no other option, because I had to train my sensory skills, because I told you that I conducted observations in various championships, in coffee shops, but also in workshops. And all the participants that I was meeting and talking to, they are all experts, right? They know what they are talking about. And if I wanted to create trust relationships with these people, I needed to show that I was also involved and dedicated, right? So that's why I decided to train, to taste coffee, and also to modify the way I relate to food in general. So I was paying much more attention to flavors, to aromas, to textures. And so, basically, it was all about training my sensory skills to gain legitimacy. And for that, I needed time and immersion was ideal, okay, for that. And yeah, so because of all this training and with this immersion, it was super insightful because I could become a certified judge at the Barista Championship. And it gave me a unique opportunity to conduct participants' observations in coffee contests and to understand how experts assess coffee quality, how they are detecting all those flavors, et cetera. So I would say that immersion in the field can be like a solution for scholars who are studying taste and research objects related to senses in general, because you are like body and soul dedicated to your research objects. So intellectually, you can relate to what participants are talking about, but with your body you can also relate to what participants are talking about. So one of the challenges of trying to study matter reality and bring all senses to a study project is that the amount of data can rapidly escalate. Also while we have standard ways to collect, analyze and represent oral and written data, conventions are less defined for other senses, right? So how did you handle such a unique course of data? Okay, it was not easy, I must say, because I had a really large data set, but I think that I tried to have a really systematic and exhaustive approach. So that's why I tried to give myself some really precise guidelines when collecting data and when analyzing it. So maybe being as careful as possible was the key actually to avoid being overwhelmed by data collection and data analysis. It's a really basic advice, but this is what I did. Maybe can you unpack a little bit more, right, how you did that? So it seems that you had images, you had footage, you have the interviews, you have your own experience writing, participating, all of that. So what was the analysis that you yourself constructed maybe to understand that, right? And also to both of them to analyze and also to be able to theorize in their writing and show the consequentiality of the senses of materiality in your work, right? Yes. So first, in terms of a methodological dispositive, I created like an atlas, that is like, let's say a methodological dispositive, like a tool for researchers using the actor network theory, but also the assemblage theory or that can be also relevant to study practice theory. And well, concretely speaking, the point of this methodological dispositive was to use both visual data and to collect discursive data, okay? And yeah, so to design this tool, I built on the work of the philosopher Michel Serre, who argues two things. So first, he argues that objects can see, and he also argues that if you want to look at something carefully, you need to diversify your standpoints, okay? So concretely, I decided to create like a tool that is composed of visual data, pictures and video footages, but also that is composed of discursive data, okay? So secondary data and ethnographic interviews. So concretely, visual data is produced from different standpoints, which means that during coffee contests, I took pictures and videos from the standpoints of the coffee machine, but I also took pictures and videos from the standpoint of the grinder, of the barista and of judges. So as you can guess, I did not see the same thing from a standpoint to another. But don't get me wrong. The standpoint was not to be omniscient, okay, and to see everything. I just tried to observe from the perspective of the main actions that were involved in the assemblage. So I collected my visual data in this, in coffee contests, in different coffee contests, but also in different settings, like coffee shops, for example, and cafes. And in the end, it was a way to analyze data, and it was a way to make comparisons across time and space, okay? And it was also a way to pay attention to details and to reflexive and unreflexive actions and to focus on changes and variations. I don't know if it's concrete enough. Yes. Thank you. Do you see any research topics or questions where this approach and an attention to matter reality in general is particularly promising? And what is the added benefit, so to speak, of attending not just what people say, but also the material dimension through which social life unfolds? So maybe I can say that it was beneficial to me, for me it was super useful. So maybe I have an anecdote that can show how useful it was to have this methodological approach. So when I went to a coffee contest for the first time, I was conducting non-participants observations, and I was in the audience just observing, watching contestants, preparing coffee and judges, assessing coffee, et cetera. Then I was trying to take, let's say, beautiful pictures. I was taking those pictures from different standpoints, et cetera. And I was really, really pissed because most of the time, there was a cameraman jumping in front of me, and I had half of the body and half of the face of a cameraman in almost all my pictures. At first, I was pissed because I thought that it would have a negative impact on my pictures. But since this cameraman was everywhere in my corporate software data, and since, as I told you, my goal was to produce an exhaustive and systematic coding of my data, I had to create a code for the cameraman and for all the cameras that were everywhere in championships. So at the end of my coding, the cameraman and camera was part of the top codes, one of the most important code in my list of codes. So I had actually to pay attention to it because it was definitely part of my data. And I decided to modify my interview guide. And when interviewing baristas, I asked them questions about cameraman and about coffee contests, et cetera. And all the baristas that I interviewed told me that they do watch all the videos of the French and the World Barista Championships, even baristas who do not participate in the championship as a contestant. So in the end, this cameraman that I really hated at the beginning of my field work proved to be super important. Because it made me, like by exploring this aspect of my data, I realized that the test regime that is at stake in coffee contest can spread in the market and shape the market precisely because of the presence of cameraman that are like sharing, let's say, what contestants and champions are doing. So in the end, it was an important part of my findings. And without the systematic coding of my data, I would not have found this. So this is very interesting. So maybe we wanted to ask you to maybe think, for what other kinds of projects do you see that this could have an added benefit, right? Certainly people that are interested like you on taste or in types of work in which the senses are paramount. But so maybe you can maybe tell us where do you see that this kind of approach would be beneficial. Yeah. I think that this kind of approach could be interesting and useful for scholars who are studying atmosphere. So actually in consumer research, there is a growing interest in atmosphere, especially in atmosphere, in food spaces, in stadiums, in festivals, and especially with the COVID, like analyzing the evolution of atmosphere in these kind of spaces would be super interesting. And this methodical approach would be totally relevant to do it. But more generally, for people who are studying practices and especially people who try to pay attention to variations and changes across space and time, I think that this approach can be useful. A lot of your approach seems to be very grounded in particular theorists, right? You mentioned Michel Serre, you mentioned actual network theory, right? And maybe you could elaborate a bit more since there are different ways to look at materiality and to introduce it into a research project, right? Materiality can be a site that you look at because it can review certain things. Materiality can be also a more kind of a more analytical perspective that as you were saying, you are looking at just as the humans making the coffee, but how the coffee was kind of speaking back to them in a way, right? So maybe you could tell us a bit more the different ways in which you see materiality playing a role, not in both in your project, but maybe more broadly in social sciences. Yeah. So sure. So there are different, as you mentioned, there are different ways of studying materiality and considering materiality in a research project. I must say that in our field, we do not talk about materiality. So we talk about the agency of objects. So that's why materiality is not exactly like my own framework. So maybe when I talk about materiality, it's not exactly aligned with you guys are talking about materiality in our organization. So it means different things. So the first thing is to take objects seriously by watching a phenomenon like a situation from their standpoint and also considering that it's not just about what humans are doing on objects. It's also about what objects are doing and how objects shape people's actions. And for me, it was like one of the best example illustrating the agency of objects and the ability of objects to completely ruin a situation. Like when I was a judge at the Barista Championship, I could see like many situations in which like the, let's say, the grinder completely stops working. And when the grinder stops working, like it completely changes all the situation because the contestants needs to improvise, to use a different object to do things, to, it modifies the way the contestant interacts with judges. It modifies the contestants actions. It modifies interactions with judges. It modifies the atmosphere, how the audience is reacting to the situation. So one, a defect of the grinder, like for example, the grinder refusing to work, it completely modifies an entire situation. So for me, it's like one of the examples showing that we needed to pay attention to objects, their agency, and how they completely shape the situation. So we may say that for you, objects are not just these passive elements, but they are co-actors in the drama of social life. So I think that in my research, from a theoretical perspective, I build on the actor-network theory, which means that I pay attention to what objects do and what they make people do. And from a methodological perspective, I also rely on the work of Michel Serre. And I do claim that objects can see. So that's why, methodologically speaking, I collected data from the standpoint of different objects. So in my work, objects were central from a theoretical perspective, but also from a methodological perspective. Could you share some advice for researchers working with materiality? For instance, for someone lost in their data on materiality and objects and not sure how to find their way out? I don't know if I have an advice. I would say that, OK, it's hard, but give yourself some time and some precise guidelines to collect and to analyze data. And I will also tell this person, don't give up, because studying materiality is a political act. Let's take an example. I think that history is often written by winners, the winners, right? And historical narratives tend to overlook alternative versions, the versions of the losers, right? So telling a story is therefore like a power game, OK? And I think it's the same with research pieces. So when we overlook objects, when we are blind to their importance, well, we perpetuate a human-centric position, OK? And I think that studying materiality is a way to listen to silent voices. It's a way to stand with the losers, so it's important. Thank you, Anissa, that was fascinating.