I noticed this posting on the ETHNOHIS list, and while there does not
seem to be much cross-posting between that list and HISTARCH, this
looks like something that HISTARCHers would find interesting:
_________________________________________________________
Original Post by: Orlove, Ben <[log in to unmask]>
I thought I'd tell you about a new book, The Allure of the Foreign:
Imported
Goods in Postcolonial Latin America. I'm the editor, University of
Michigan
Press is the publisher, and I think that the emphasis on anthropology and
history of consumption and identity
would be of particular interest to people on the list, along with the issues
of material culture, nationalism, and daily life. Please note that the book
has a striking website.
The book focuses on the craze for foreign goods that struck Latin
Americans in the decades after independence that has continued to the
present.
People of all classes and backgrounds abandoned traditional, locally
made goods that had satisfied needs and wishes for centuries:
merchants in Costa
Rica replaced wooden benches with sofas; Indians in the remote interior
of
Bolivia used imported British cottons instead of homemade cloth; wealthy
and poor alike in Chile began to drink coffee rather than herbal teas. The
chapters in The Allure of the Foreign are balanced by discipline
(anthropology and history), century (19th and 20th) and region (South
America, Central America and Mexico). They all trace instances of the
demand for imported goods and their patterns of use--as well as the
smaller number of cases in which local goods retained their
popularity--to investigate why foreign goods became so popular only
after the creation of independent
Latin
American republics. The basic argument is that this fascination stemmed
from the cultural dilemmas of the new Latin American nations. Latin
Americans were caught between a desire to separate themselves from
their former rulers and the wish to join in a new global modernity, and so
they developed ways of using European and North American goods to
show off newly invented national identities. The introduction offers a
comparison to other post-colonial societies in Asia, the Middle East and
Eastern Europe.
The book addresses a variety of issues in consumption, daily life,
national identity and post-coloniality. It aims to integrate cultural history
with political economy, and to be entirely jargon-free. If you'd like to find
out more about the book, look at the website:
http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/orlove/home.htm
================================
Benjamin Orlove
Division of Environmental Studies
University of California
Davis, CA 95616
voice: 916/752-6756 fax: 916/752-3350 [log in to unmask]
http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/faculty/orlove.htm
================================
addresses in New York, from August 12 1997 to July 1998,
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
office:
Columbia Earth Institute
535 W. 116th Street, 405 Low
New York, NY 10027 phone: 212/854-9463 fax: 212/854-6309
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