Wilk and his colleagues draw upon their own international field experience to examine how food systems are changing around the globe. The authors offer a cultural perspective that is mising in other economic and developmental studies, and provide rich ethnographic data on markets, industrial production, and food economies. This new book will appeal to professionals in economic and environmental anthropology: economic development, agricultural economics, consumer behavior, nutritional scien...

Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology is a collection of classic articles by some of the best known proponents of oral history, demonstrating the basics of oral history, while also acting as a guidebook for how to use it in research. Added to this new edition is insight into how oral history is practiced on an international scale, making this book an indispensable resource for scholars of history and social sciences, as well as those interested in oral history on the avocational lev...

A fascinating persuasive history of how sugar has shaped the world, from European colonies to our modern dietsIn this eye-opening study, Sidney Mintz shows how Europeans and Americans transformed sugar from a rare foreign luxury to a commonplace necessity of modern life, and how it changed the history of capitalism and industry. He discusses the production and consumption of sugar, and reveals how closely interwoven are sugar's origins as a "slave" crop grown in Eu...

Nel mondo occidentale lo zucchero ha conosciuto per secoli usi marginali o fortemente caratterizzati - farmaco, conservante, spezia, condimento, decorazione -, e soltanto a partire dall'Ottocento ha avuto una crescente, straordinaria fortuna, divenendo uno dei principali prodotti dell'industria alimentare. In questo classico di cultura antropologica e di storia dell'alimentazione, Sidney Mintz indaga le ragioni che hanno portato questa sostanza a divenire da cibo esclusivo dei re ingredien...

A sweet tooth is a powerful thing. Babies everywhere seem to smile when tasting sweetness for the first time, a trait inherited, perhaps, from our ancestors who foraged for sweet foods that were generally safer to eat than their bitter counterparts. But the "science of sweet" is only the beginning of a fascinating story, because it is not basic human need or simple biological impulse that prompts us to decorate elaborate wedding cakes, scoop ice cream into a cone, or drop sugar cubes into ...

As a young anthropologist, Sidney Mintz undertook fieldwork in Jamaica, Haiti, and Puerto Rico. Fifty years later, the eminent scholar of the Caribbean returns to those experiences to meditate on the societies and on the island people who befriended him. These reflections illuminate continuities and differences between these cultures, but even more they exemplify the power of people to reveal their own history.Mintz seeks to conjoin his knowledge of the history of Jamaica, Haiti, a...

This compelling look at the wellsprings of cultural vitality during one of the most dehumanizing experiences in history provides a fresh perspective on the African-American past.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Since the 1950s, anthropologist Sidney W. Mintz has been at the forefront of efforts to integrate the disciplines of anthropology and history. Author of Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History and other groundbreaking works, he was one of the first scholars to anticipate and critique “globalization studies.” However, a strong tradition of epistemologically sophisticated and theoretically informed empiricism of the sort advanced by Mintz has yet to become a corner...

A sweet tooth is a powerful thing. Babies everywhere seem to smile when tasting sweetness for the first time, a trait inherited, perhaps, from our ancestors who foraged for sweet foods that were generally safer to eat than their bitter counterparts. But the "science of sweet" is only the beginning of a fascinating story, because it is not basic human need or simple biological impulse that prompts us to decorate elaborate wedding cakes, scoop ice cream into a cone, or drop sugar cubes into ...

Markets in Oaxaca is a study of the regional peasant marketing system in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. It relates the marketing system to other aspects of the regional economy, to neighboring regions, and to the Mexican national economy. Combining ethnographic, theoretical, and regional analyses, it suggests new directions in the fields of peasant and development studies.Contributors to the volume describe the operation and nature of several marketplaces in the region, ana...

Contact and clash, amalgamation and accommodation, resistance and change have marked the history of the Caribbean islands. It is a unique region where people under the stress of slavery had to improvise, invent and literally create forms of human association through which their pasts and the symbolic interpretation of their present could be structured.Caribbean Transformations is divided into three major parts, each preceded by a brief introductory chapter. Part One begins with a look at t...

Originally published in Puerto Rico in 1956 as Los derrotados, César Andreu Iglesias’s novel about a fateful Nationalist assault on a U.S. military installation in Puerto Rico is now available for the first time in English.This tautly written story uncovers the personal histories of three middle-aged revolutionaries as they plan to kill a U.S. general. Andreu’s cool treatment of their political objectives does not obscure his compassionate recognition of their human limita...