Mobile Grounds: From Ambulant Café to Take Away Coffee

Humans’ desire to drink coffee several times a day as part of their everyday routine brought about the development of various ways to prepare and consume coffee on the move. Since coffee drinking has become an addiction, makeshift coffee corners and ambulant coffee sellers have provided fresh coffee at temporary spots in cities in addition to coffee houses; later, take away coffee in disposable cups has become another way to enjoy a cup of coffee. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between manners, tendencies of consuming coffee on the move and related material culture in the Turkish context. For that purpose, traditional and contemporary mobile coffee making set-up, instruments and related patterns of coffee consumption in the social space will be analyzed by examining traditional Turkish instruments surviving today and visual documents like postcards, engravings, etc. showing everyday life and the use of space during the Ottoman period. Besides, the findings of a research made to detect the preferences and perceptions of coffee consumers in Turkey today will be discussed. One of the questions will be how movement as a functional requirement has changed the material culture of coffee throughout the time. When movement is concerned, relationship between material object and human subject based on multi-sensory experience and perception of coffee drinking in the urban space becomes another intriguing subject. Concept of mobility also inspires thinking on unstable and transitory nature of movement as well as the dual aspects of coffee, volatility and perpetuity.