sociology – The Concordian

The impact caffeine has on Canadians and how it became a cultural dependence

It’s 8 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, and the first thing you do after getting out of bed is probably make coffee. Whether you are having a shot of espresso, an Americano or a latte, there is nothing like that coffee aroma filling up your kitchen. As you pour it into your mug, add a splash of milk or teaspoon of sugar, you can already feel the warmth rising from the cup. Finals are right around the corner and, for many students, coffee is the go-to beverage for all-nighters and staying alert.

This is no surprise given that caffeine, the stimulant in the coffee, is a psychoactive substance that has physiological and psychological effects. Coffee is also ingrained in our society. According to the Coffee Association of Canada, Canadians drink an average of 3.2 cups of coffee per day. Here is a deeper look at how caffeine actually affects your body and how it has become a vital part of our daily lives.

What does coffee do to your brain and body?

According to Uri Shalev, a Concordia psychology professor whose research focuses on drug abuse and behavioural neurobiology, caffeine typically doesn’t have many negative effects when consumed in reasonable quantities. However, when a person drinks coffee, Shalev explained, the caffeine interferes with signals in the brain being sent from neurotransmitters to their receptors. Caffeine acts as an antagonist, essentially blocking the adenosine receptors, which are inhibitory sensors in the brain that calm the body and mind.

Since caffeine interferes with this calming effect, the body becomes more alert and awake, Shalev explained. That is why drinking coffee increases heart rate and blood pressure, and keeps you awake longer. The physiological effects caused by this over-stimulation can negatively affect a person’s mental state. Sylvia Kairouz, a Concordia sociology professor and the chair of research on gambling addiction, emphasized the risks of sleep deprivation caused by excessive coffee consumption. Since coffee keeps you alert, it also risks disrupting your sleep cycle, which isn’t something you want to happen during a stressful period like finals, Kairouz said.

According to Shalev, the physical reaction coffee causes can result in increased anxiety among people who are already prone to anxiety. This happens when the body interprets a faster heart rate and increased alertness as a sign of danger and raises stress levels. “I become stressed when I have more coffee than I’m used to,” said Sara Betinjaneh, a second-year political science student at Concordia.

Yet many students, including first-year sociology major Yasmin Mehri, rely on coffee to stay awake to study or finish assignments. Drinking coffee to stay up late can work to a certain extent, but too much can cause an imbalance in sleeping patterns, Kairouz explained. “It’s a loss more than a gain when you are not adopting a healthy lifestyle during finals,” she said. “Students should focus on an equilibrium.” Shalev reiterated that, as long as coffee consumption is moderate, it is not considered an addiction—not until it negatively affects the functioning of your daily life.

Why is coffee part of your day?

“My day is organized around my coffee,” said student Betinjaneh. “That’s when I take breaks.” According to Kairouz, “the ritual, the habit and the routine of having coffee daily limits the capacity to remove coffee from our daily life.” This dependence on the drink is also sociological because there is a whole experience that comes with drinking coffee, she explained. Drinking coffee has become a very popular social activity—when people meet up, it often happens over a cup of coffee.

“There is a connection that exists in people’s lives between working or studying and drinking coffee,” Kairouz said. The accessibility of coffee also plays a huge role in society’s growing dependence on coffee. Kairouz offered the example of Montreal’s Mackay Street, where there are at least six coffee shops. “I love the idea and the feeling of sitting in a coffee shop and having my coffee,” Betinjaneh said. The stimulation from an environment filled with coffee shops has impacted our caffeine consumption, Kairouz said.

Easy access to caffeine has impacted the amount we consume since a single press of a button can make our coffee right at home. According to the Coffee Association of Canada, coffee makers are increasingly popular in Canadian homes with 47 per cent of households owning a drip coffee makers and 38 per cent using single-cup machines. Kairouz added that the consumerist environment we live in plays a role in people’s coffee dependence as well. Since coffee has become ingrained in our culture, this leaves a looming question: are we having coffee because we need it or because we just walked by a cute coffee shop that serves the best latte art?

Photo by Kirubel Mehari.

Eric Weissman’s PhD defense wins rare honour

As an academic, one can only dream that their work could have a real-life impact — or at least one should strive for that endgame as far as Concordia sociology professor and recent recipient of the Canadian Association for Graduates Studies Distinguished Dissertation Award Eric Weissman is concerned.

Weissman won the award, given for a dissertation that makes an unusually significant and original contribution to a field, as a PhD graduate from Concordia’s Individualized Program (INDI) project, a Graduate Studies program created to cater to a limited number of exceptional students wishing to undertake specific individual research.

“I think if you’re in school you need to be academically rigorous but you also need to apply your eye, your lens and your skills to solving social issues that need to be resolved,” said Weissman on the overlap between the longtime project and his PhD studies and the research that is changing not only the way but where many live their lives.

A filmmaker, author, and ethnographer in addition to his sociology professorship, Weissman can’t really be placed in a box. His dissertation, “Spaces, Places and States of Mind: a pragmatic ethnography of liminal critique,” looks at the United States’ first city-sanctioned shantytown, Dignity Village. Dignity Village, on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, came about when dozens of homeless individuals banded together and used social activism to create an independent community catering to their needs. The camp fought the state of Oregon for recognition of important American values like the right to shelter and organized themselves with lawyers, campaigns and housing advocates, eventually getting Portland to recognize it as, in the words of Weissman, an “ emergency transitional campground.”

What they also did is create a model for other communities wishing to put that creative spin on putting a heavy dent in homelessness. Dignity Village pitched a homeless utopia as part of their case for shelter: their vision entailed community kitchens, enterprises and gardens in an aesthetic, rustic environment.

“They pitched this perfect utopia. They never managed to live up to that,” said Weissman. Cost as well as poor location (it was built on a section of asphalt near the Portland airport) left their utopian gardens a dream on the drafting papers.

Weissman said he hopes his dissertation, highly critical of Dignity Village and its chronic problem of self-medicating with alcohol and drugs that left inhabitants unable to self-govern, helps make it so that similar intentional communities have the groundwork, and its potential mistakes, laid out for them.

“Dignity Village can’t really run itself because they’re too busy fighting with each other,” Weissman explained of the problems plaguing the community. “These new places [by contrast] have strict policies on drugs and alcohol.”

Weissman has personally visited six such communities in the United States, all based on the same kind of utopian model as Dignity Village, though there are possibly hundreds more. One example is Community First! Village in Central Texas. The 27-acre community aims to give not just shelter but a home to 200 people and has already successfully provided for 99 disabled and chronically homeless residents. The community is built of canvas guest cottages, repurposed mobile homes, and trendy tiny homes.

“These new villages appeal to this mass sentiment about living smaller, leaving less of an imprint.” Weissman said. When Weissman visited the Community First! Village, the director explained to him that, “this isn’t a political statement [like Diginity Village], it’s a way to give people affordable housing again.”

That, Weissman thinks, is the real issue with homelessness. “It’s not about drugs, it’s not about addictions, although people who become homeless tend to exhibit those problems after some time,” Weissman said frankly, “it’s about affordable housing.”

Being able to provide housing is the first step in aiding a host of social problems, and Weissman says it almost always adds to the dignity and quality of life of participants. Take for example Chez Soi/At Home, a four-year cross-Canadian experiment in five major cities, including Montreal. The study looks at housing as a first method of managing homeless and mental health problems, along with medical and psychological support. The results not only improved the residents’ situations by limiting the associated recidivism of street life but saved a substantial amount of money in the process: inpatient costs were offset on average by an estimated $14,003.

“I think that we need to know that we can change the way people think about the solutions to our social problems,” said Weissman, who is certainly doing his part. His next destination is San Antonio, Texas as a keynote speaker for the Texas Homelessness Network, and he will be in good company, bringing along two Dignity Village residents to talk about their experiences. “I don’t really do things unless I see that it can have a concrete result,” concluded Weissman. And his results have literally been laid in concrete, canvas, and community.