The Coffee Crisis: What Starbucks Coffee Company Teaches Us About Exploitation

Authors

• Chloe BakerFollow

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0007-6154-1029

Date of Graduation

5-14-2026

Semester of Graduation

Spring

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Department of History

First Advisor

Fawn-Amber Montoya

Second Advisor

Colleen Moore

Third Advisor

Gabrielle Lanier

Abstract

The average American consumer associates the coffee shop with an earth-toned color pallet, a comfortable seating arrangement, and a delicious beverage. American popular culture mimics that imagery, in television shows like NBC’s Friends and Frasier, and movies like You’ve Got Mail. Coffee shops are one kind of third place, a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe tertiary spaces to work and home where people commune and form community. But a darker side of coffee shops exists relatively unnoticed. This thesis demonstrates how popular cultural portrayals of coffee and coffee shops—small businesses and Starbucks Coffee Company—have both connected and hidden untold global histories. Three interconnected themes are considered. First, global commodities incentivize labor exploitation historically and today. Second, corporatization is a modern-day form of colonization that creates new labor and consumer markets that are disconnected from one another. Finally, coffee culture creates both community and labor exploitative practices. Ultimately, this thesis challenges readers to reconsider the global impacts of the coffee commodity trade upon historically vulnerable populations, American corporatization, and labor.