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Call for abstracts: Symposium on Constructing the Coffee Landscape
in the Southeast Asia Region: Commodity, Culture, and Knowledge in Transition

DATE 27-28 November 2026 VENUE: Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University

Organized by Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD) & Center for Ethnic Studies and Development (CESD), Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University National Centre for Borderlands Ethnic Studies in Southwest China at Yunnan University, School of Ethnology and Sociology, Yunnan University

Timeline

●      Deadline for abstract submission: 20 September 2026

●      Deadline for paper submission: 31 October 2026

●      Coffee Conference: 27-28 November 2026

Registration Type:
Individual/Joint paper - Abstract not more than 300 words ● Panel Discussion - Panel Convener/Organizer, Paper presenter/Panelist, Chair, Discussant ● Roundtable - Abstract not more than 500 words
Key Themes of the symposium

1. Southeast Asia coffee history: coffee’s colonial and missionary legacy in Southeast Asia; coffee, frontiers and the nation-state; history of the development of production and coffee in the diverse contexts of the region; 

2. Coffee agriculture and agroforestry under climate change: Species and varieties of coffee cultivars; cultivation, land and resource use; technologies of coffee; climate change and new vulnerabilities; productivity, resilience, and livelihood; coffee agroforestry, carbon and sustainability

3. Coffee as commodity: coffee, industrialization and globalization; capital, finance, logistics, and infrastructure in the coffee economy; coffee and the tourist economy; markets, networks and the urban/rural divide

4. Coffee culture: coffee as “invented tradition”; the social space and relations of coffee consumption; coffee and ethnicity: branding, image and taste; coffee transformations: mass, specialty, third-wave, and beyond

5. Coffee in agrarian transition: land rights and resource conflicts; coffee’s role in development and modernization; gender and ethnicity in coffee production and the market; coffee, migration, and labor

6. Coffee and knowledge production: Coffee entrepreneurs, information and market; innovation and technical development; sensory knowledge: taste, aroma, cupping, and look; new skills and occupations: roasters, graders, baristas