From sugar to indentured labourers, tobacco to reggae music, Europe and North America have been relentlessly consuming the Caribbean and its assets for the past five hundred years. In this fascinating book, Mimi Sheller explores this troublesome history, investigating the complex mobilities of producers and consumers, of material and cultural commodities, including:
- foodstuffs and stimulants - sugar, fruit, coffee and rum
- human bodies - slaves, indentured labourers and service workers
- cultural and knowledge products - texts, music, scientific collections and ethnology
- entire 'natures' and landscapes consumed by tourists as tropical paradise.
Consuming the Caribbean demonstrates how colonial exploitation of the Caribbean led directly to contemporary forms of consumption of the region and its products. It calls into question innocent indulgence in the pleasures of thoughtless consumption and calls for a global ethics of consumer responsibility.
- ISBN10 041525759X
- ISBN13 9780415257596
- Publish Date 27 February 2003 (first published 1 January 2003)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Imprint Routledge
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 256
- Language English