CafT Society

Over the last decade interest, analysis and comment on cafes has proliferated. Academic articles by social scientists have been complemented by anthologies and collections of autobiographical, artistic and photographic contributions. Philosophers, historians and 'psycho-geographers' have joined in. The volume proposed here reflects this intense and widening interest in the cafe scene, although it addresses a specific family of issues. While tracing the historical emergence of the cafe as a social institution and noting its multiple faces and functions in the modernity of the occident, three themes run like threads of varying texture through the chapters. The first and most obvious is social connectivity and inclusion: the cafe as a place of familiarity, communion and togetherness, as well as the potential inclusion of the otherwise (in family and/or workplace) marginalised. The second is work: the cafe as a surrogate office or workplace, a site for meetings as well as solitary endeavour. The third main theme is collective mobilization: the cafe as a site for the exchange of news, views and for planned action (what Scambler and Kelleher call the 'enabling sector' of civil society). A comparative perspective is accomplished by the selective inclusion of empirical and/or theoretical narratives from Britain, Scandinavia, Australia and the USA.

Aksel Tjora is Professor of Sociology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norway. His research is focused on the interactional production of community, in various areas; in organisations, between users of technologies, in relation to health-care delivery, in public space, and in relation to architecture and music. Tjora is also the editor of The Norwegian Journal of Sociology.

Graham Scambler is Professor of Medical Sociology at University College London, UK. He is author or editor of a dozen books on social theory, health and health care, sex work and sport, as well as over a hundred chapters and articles. He is a founding editor of the international journal Social Theory and Health. He is an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences, UK.