Banana Wars

“As the first tropical fruit to fit into both a middle-class U.S. breakfast and a workingman’s lunchbox, bananas—yellow, soft, and innocent—were a slightly comical, faintly suspect, always welcome by-product of the Yankee imperial reach. These essays illuminate some of the geopolitical, environmental, and human costs of the banana’s enormous everyday popularity.”—Sidney Mintz, author of Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past
“This innovative, stimulating collection brings together the best of the new work on the social, political, and cultural impact of banana exports in the Caribbean and Central and South America. The essays provide insight into the evolution of trade regimes, popular forms of contention, and the banana in the American imagination from the early twentieth century to the present. They signal new paths for comparative work on tropical commodities, corporate strategies, the interaction of multinational companies with local governments, labor movements, contract farming, growers associations, race, immigration, nationalism, dependency, globalization, and economic development.”—Catherine LeGrand, McGill University
"Banana Wars provides us with a detailed account of its historical and current importance. . . . In describing the history, sociology, and current state of the banana export trade in the Americas, this book illuminates a sector of agricultural development that has important lessons to teach agricultural scientist and historians. . . . Agricultural historians will find it a rich lode of information on the origin and current state of the banana trade." -- Hans Christian Wien A * Agricultural History *
"This collection offers a fascinating and valuable panorama of the history of and current challenges facing the different actors involved in the production of bananas. It makes a welcome addition to the growing interdisciplinary area of commodity-system studies." -- Aviva Chomsky * Hispanic American Historical Review *
"[The book's] message and analyses are important for assessing how banana production has transformed the political, social, cultural, economic, and environmental landscape of several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. . . . The authors . . . have shown that truth often lies in the details. . . . An impressive collection." -- Lester D. Langley * International History Review *
"The editors have assembled an excellent collection covering a variety of topics across a broad expanse of time and space. . . . The range of perspectives and methodologies provides something for every taste, ranging from a standard business history to a study of discourse and counter-discourse on globalization. The result is entirely satisfactory, a great addition to the scholarship on the banana industry that is much more than a study of the United Fruit Company." -- Paul Dosal * The Americas *
"The new anthology Banana Wars sheds light on the complexities of the industry's social and economic history, deconstructing the already familiar images of the muscular United Fruit Company and its 'banana republics' and moving beyond them." -- David Glenn * Chronicle of Higher Education *
"This book is one of the most substantive academic pieces of work on the banana industry in Latin America and the Caribbean to appear in recent years." -- Frank Ellis * Journal of Latin American Studies *
"With this fine volume, the banana joins sugar and coffee as starring actors in the international drama of world trade, domestic social formations, and the creation of power. . . . Banana wars still simmer in various guises. At a time when globalization is greatly affecting our lives and our politics, this book is particularly compelling." -- Steven Topik * American Historical Review *