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Books : Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern HistoryIn association with Amazon.comby: Sidney W. Mintz  List Price: $16.00 Amazon.com's Price: $10.88 You Save: $5.12 (32%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 394.12 EAN: 9780140092332 ISBN: 0140092331 Label: Penguin (Non-Classics) Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics) Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 274 Publication Date: August 05, 1986 Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) Studio: Penguin (Non-Classics) Sales Rank: 5099 Related Items:
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 Rating:  - Want to Brush Your Teeth More OftenQuick Summary: Unlike many anthropologists out there, Sydney Mintz' style is quite accessible for the casual reader. In this particular book he takes us through the genealogy of sugar and begins to dissect that refined white stuff we put in our coffees and teas for what it originally was--a medicine or spice. He then walks us through shifts in the "meanings" of sugar as we began to develop a whole economy (around this very substance) and this economy, still exists today in the system ... Read More Rating: - Interesting insight into history of a food that we take for grantedSomeone scribbled the following on the first page of the introduction of my copy of this book: "NOTE: this work may be of marginal use!!" I disagree. Sugar is such a heavily-used part of most diets, yet we rarely stop to reflect how it came to be that way. Our dependence on sugar is surely not healthy, yet it is incredibly hard to wean oneself from sugaring so much of what we eat. I found Mintz's discussion on the history of the production and consumption patterns of sugar to be interesting, ... Read More Rating: - UniqueSidney Mintz is a worldly and humane scholar whose investigation of the role of sugar in the development of the modern world turns out to be three seperate books. The first, and most understandable might be called the History of Sugar Consumption. This is his story of the meaning attached to sweetness in the western world and how that meaning changed as sugar became more widely available. The second, could be called the Power of Sweetness. It is Read More Rating: - Bitter SweetMintz provides a fascinating history of sugar, placing it in context within the transatlantic world. Sugar acquired ever increasing importance as the means for its production improved, its availability spread and its price decreased. Underpinning the success of sugar was the tragedy of slavery. Not only did slaves serve the sugar plantations and mills, but Mintz makes a compelling case for sugar's being the single key force behind the firm establishment of black slavery in the western hemisphere. Rating: - Political Economy Canon; A Classic That Remade Anthropology and Cultural StudiesSidney W. Mintz's Sweetness and Power situates economic analysis in consumption rather than production. The author believes that a producer's labor and exploitation is not enough to understand the exploitation of production. One must unpack the mythos of demand. Central to this is the idea that rational choice leads liberal individuals to consume products because it is in their best interest. Mintz correctly implies that in the historiography of western consumers and colonial producers, this liberal individual ... Read More Browse for similar items by category:
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