1. Early Modern Ottoman Coffeehouse
Culture and the Formation of the
Consumer Subject
Eminegul Karababa and Guliz Ger

2. 1. What problem are the authors
addressing?
• The State and Religion vs. Rising Consumer Class
• Goal: To reexamine the “active consumer” that is currently
thought of as a product of 20th century, western culture. The
authors attempt to assert that today’s consumer is actually a
result of 4 centuries of consumer culture that originated in
Ottoman society.
• Thesis: Due to the popularity of coffee and coffeehouses as a
leisure activity in the 16th and 17th centuries, the practices of
consumers and marketers challenged the state and religion
through discursive negotiations and resistance, thereby
convincing them to reform their opinions of coffeehouses.

3. 2. What evidence do the authors
present?
• They use historical research and data
sources, such as: Ottoman historical
literature, decrees, fatwa's, festival books, various
poems, books, travelers’ notes, drawings, etc.
• They trace the connection between a Consumer
Subject-the Coffeehouse and-the Public Sphere
• They ask-Under what conditions did an active
consumer come to be?
• “We focus on the dialogic relationship between
the pursuit of pleasure and religious morality.”

4. Ottoman Consumer Culture: 16th and
17th Centuries
• Ottoman Consumption Patterns Change
– Urbanization and Commercialization picked up speed, upward and downward
mobility increased, urban popular culture emerged and disparities in religious
norms, which defined appropriate ways of consumption, surfaced.
• “Ascribed identities could no longer persist” given these transitions.
– The origins of Ottoman consumer culture are the circumvention of sumptuary
laws; increase in amount of possessions and purchases; interest in comforts
rather than just necessities; spread of consumer luxury goods to masses; and
the interactions among various consumer cultures.
• Sumptuary Laws
– Issued by the State to maintain social and economic order, prevent sinful
conduct and avoid waste.
– Prohibition of Coffeehouses: wasteful, against Islamic work-ethic
– They are circumvented beginning in 16th Century. (Perhaps indicating a
widespread use of consumer goods?)

5. Ottoman Consumer Culture: 16th and
17th Centuries
• Increase of acquisitions is evidence of the spread of
consumption in urban areas.
• Personal and Household possessions were no longer limited to
the elite, which is consistent with the fluid social structure that
allowed interaction of people from difference classes.
– Cheaper versions of luxury items available
• Leisure activities were democratized and commercialized-
popular sites included: coffeehouses for men, bathhouses for
women.
– Site of production of goods or entertainment shifts from the home
to the market.
– Change of tastes and preferences spread via ports and trade cities
from East to West
– Ottoman Coffeehouse traveled to early modern Europe-
reconstructed in various cultures and seen as a “global leisure site.”

6. Ottoman Coffeehouse Culture: 16th
and 17th Centuries
• 1550s in Istanbul-first 2 coffeehouses
launched by entrepreneurs from Aleppo and
Damascus
– Alternative Sites/ “Fourth Place”
– Ritualistic
– “Leveler”/”Neutral Ground”
– Socio, physio, ideo pleasures

7. Ottoman Coffeehouse Culture: 16th
and 17th Centuries
• Public Sphere
– Habermas: “a discursive sphere where people
from different parts of the society get together
and engage in debates about matters of mutual
interest, thus forming public opinion, and if
possible, reaching a common judgment about a
debate.”
– Ottoman coffeehouse = Ottoman public sphere
– State considers them to be places of resistance

8. Ottoman Coffeehouse Culture: 16th
and 17th Centuries
• Multiple Discourses-shape the practices of coffeehouse
guilds, the State, and religious institutions
– Pleasure-Paradise purchased in the coffeehouse, pleasure
sought and found in a commercial site
– Orthodox Islam-Coffeehouses are Immoral, Illegal (Fatwa
issued and also banned by Sultan)
– Sufi Islam-drinking coffee is a Holy activity, diffusion of
Sufism in the culture makes the discourse
pervasive, potent
– Health-Harmful or Beneficial activity? Fatwa by
Bostanzade affirms coffee as a beneficial drink (releasing
pain, preventing vomiting, sharpening thinking, preventing
sleepiness, etc.)

9. Ottoman Coffeehouse Culture: 16th
and 17th Centuries
• Resistance/Transgressions-imply an active consuming subject
• “The diversity of the discourses provided the potential for
subjects to define themselves as consumers of leisure and the
coffeehouse as a legitimate site of leisure.”
• Consumers’ Three Unofficial Discourses/Tactics:
• Leisure as Escape
• Leisure for the Sake of Poetry
• Limiting Leisure
• “Concurrent with the transformation in the state and the
religious institution, the consumer subject who resisted the
order and was active in defining self-ethics was normalized
through interactions within the newly emerging public
sphere.”

10. Ottoman Coffeehouse Culture: 16th
and 17th Centuries
• Consumers:
– Poets: Gulami, Ata, and Belig. They reveal that the practices and
tactics of consumers were not bound by their social positions. Men
from different social classes consumed coffeehouses in unprescribed
or unexpected ways.
• Gulami: 16th century poet of slave origin, known for an addiction to narcotics
and seen in coffeehouses in a state of drowsiness. He eventually completed
theological school and became a member of the ruling class.
• Ata: a court physician who spent most of his time in the coffeehouse as if it
were his home->even a person close to the palace and with an education
based in orthodox Islam could transgress the work ethic and become a
coffeehouse regular.
• Belig: a janissary, famous poet and known for merging transgressive tactics
with the dignified joys of poetry, which was unexpected for a janissary.
– Consumers could combine their own personal tactical resistances to
define their particular manner of coffeehouse consumption.
– “It is clear that many did not accept the moral codes but instead
constructed their own ethics.”

11. Ottoman Coffeehouse Culture: 16th
and 17th Centuries
• Transformation of the State and the Religious Institution
– Coffeehouse owners and their guilds’ resisted political and
religious authority by retaining their businesses despite bans
and punishments.
– The state’s inconsistent conduct signals its concession to
negotiating with the consumer and the marketer.
– Coffeehouses economic input: taxes levied upon the sale of
coffee shifts the role of the market from maintaining social
order to generating state revenue.
– 2nd Fatwa legitimated coffee consumption-used a
secular, rational reasoning (coffee does not make people
drunk, and its health benefits) and this led to the lifting of all
bans against coffee in the 17th century.

12. Ottoman Coffeehouse Culture: 16th
and 17th Centuries
• To sum up:
• “The formation and normalization of Ottoman coffeehouse culture and its
consumer subject rest on the fundamental tension between Ottoman
man’s pursuit of socio-, ideo-, and physiopleasures and his pursuit of
morality.”
• “This reveals a transformation from an obedient (sultan’s) subject to a
consuming subject who resists order and utilizes alternative discourses to
define his own pleasurable practices and self-ethics.”
• “What was regarded to be appropriate about coffee, coffeehouse, leisure
and pleasure was defined by market relations instead of religion.”
• Consumer and Coffeehouse Culture were enabled by:
– Emergent Public Sphere
– Multiple Discourses
– Consumer-Marketer Alliance in Resistance
– Increasing flexibility of political and religious governance

14. Discussion Questions
• In what ways has coffeehouse culture evolved
since the 16th and 17th centuries? Would you
still consider it a public sphere?
• How do consumers engage in rebellion today
in order to achieve leisure, pleasure, and
luxury items that are at odds with the state?
• How and when did women start getting
portrayed as the dominant “consumers”? Is
this a global phenomenon or culture?