Goods, Power, History
Latin America's Material Culture

Explores the history of material culture and consumption in Latin America over the past 500 years.

Arnold J. Bauer (Author)

9780521777025, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 April 2001

268 pages, 32 b/w illus. 2 maps
22.9 x 15.3 x 2.1 cm, 0.364 kg

"Arnold Bauer offers us a beautifully composed and sweeping overview of the past thousand years of Latin American history, the present included, from the vantage of its "material culture." Goods, Power, History is that rare synthesis that offers a new worldview for its readers. Readers from all corners of the planet will be dazzled by Bauer's evocative details and his craft with the English language, which reveals passions rarely seen in run-of-the-mill academic texts." Journal of World History, Paul Gootenberg, Stony Brook University

Why do we acquire the things we do? Behind this apparently ingenuous question are several answers, some straightforward and others more interesting. To feed ourselves, might be the first response, for we can easily see that we expend much energy in the quest for food. Clothing and shelter as well would seem to constitute our basic needs. Yet we quickly see that even in the Garden of Eden, people want more than they need. This simple impulse has created the ever-mounting abundance we call progress and nearly all of the subsequent trouble on our planet. Four main interwoven themes run through this exploration of material culture and consumption in Latin America over the past five centuries: supply and demand; the relationships between consumption and identity; the importance of ritual, both ancient and modern, in what we buy; and the relationship between colonial and post-colonial power in consumption.

1. Introduction
2. Material landscape
3. Contact goods
4. Civilizing goods
5. Modernizing goods
6. Developing goods
7. Global goods.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Archaeology by period / region [HDD], History of the Americas [HBJK]