Steeped in Tea

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Tea may have been inappropriately marketed a decade ago, but today no other commodity is better poised to capitalize on a convergence of societal trends. In one marketing narrative, tea is touted as a multifaceted health aid and as a salve for those who wish to rebalance a life accustomed to speed. In another, it is pitched as worldly, gourmet, and, when it is organic and fair trade, even virtuous. In one moment tea acts as a social lubricant, and in the next it occupies the center of personal ritual. Taken collectively, these approaches reveal-as much as they deliberately and shrewdly exploit-the contemporary American social moment.

Americans may still be gulping life rather than sipping it, but more are opting for the latter. The legions of 'downshifters'-those who value time over money-'are growing, and mainstreaming,' says Juliet Schor, professor of sociology at Boston College and author of The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer (Basic, 1998). When Schor first polled in 1995, 20 percent of Americans said they had made voluntary lifestyle changes, such as reducing the number of working hours and jobs, that resulted in their earning less money. In 2004, 48 percent said they had. Why? To reduce stress, most responded, as well as to have a 'more balanced life,' more meaningful or satisfying work, and a 'less materialistic lifestyle.'

'At various times throughout history,' boxes of Tazo tea read, 'Tazo has surfaced among the more advanced cultures of the day as a solution to the angst of daily life.' While Tazo marketing makes liberal use of historical license, more Americans are indeed opting out of the dominant consumer culture-the frenzied pace of life and associated angst, and inordinate concern for standard status symbols. The sociologist Paul Ray calls these people 'cultural creatives.' You might have seen them shopping at Whole Foods (rejecting the dominant consumer culture isn't tantamount to rejecting consumerism) or walking out of a yoga studio. Cultural creatives care about ecological sustainability, social justice, and self-actualization. They represent a countercultural movement that was born in the social upheaval of the 1960s and gathered a new generation of voices in the antiglobalization demonstrations of the 1990s.

If, over the course of our social history, coffee became bound up in the dominant American values of speed and productivity, then tea is now embraced as the opposing fuel, even as part of a lifestyle. 'For Americans,' argues historian James Norwood Pratt, author of The New Tea Lover's Treasury (PTA, 1999), 'tea represents a coffee recovery movement.'

On a December night in 1773, a group of Bostonians disguised as Mohawk Indians raided cargo ships docked in Boston Harbor and hurled chests of tea overboard. The Boston Tea Party marked an abrupt rejection of a beverage so integral to colonial life that John Adams, stopping at a tavern en route to sign the Declaration of Independence, asked whether it was 'lawful for a weary traveler to refresh himself with a dish of tea, provided is has been honestly smuggled and has paid no duty.' The landlord's daughter replied: 'No sir! We have renounced tea under this roof. But, if you desire it, I will make you some coffee.'

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