Domesticating the world : African consumerism and the genealogies of globalization / Jeremy Prestholdt.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Prestholdt, Jeremy.

Series:

California world history library ; 6.

The California world history library ; 6

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Consumer behavior--Africa, Eastern.

Consumer behavior.

Globalization--Africa, Eastern.

Globalization.

Eastern Africa.

Physical Description:

xiv, 273 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2008]

Summary:

This book boldly unsettles the idea of globalization as a recent phenomenon-and one driven solely by Western interests-by offering a compelling new perspective on global interconnectivity in the nineteenth century. Jeremy Prestholdt examines East African consumers' changing desires for material goods from around the world in an era of sweeping social and economic change. Exploring complex webs of local consumer demands that affected patterns of exchange and production as far away as India and the United States, Domesticating the World challenges presumptions that Africa's global relationships have always been dictated by outsiders. Full of rich and often-surprising vignettes that outline forgotten trajectories of global trade and consumption, this book affirms the importance of African interests to the making of our relentlessly interdependent world. At the same time, Prestholdt powerfully demonstrates how contemporary globalization is foreshadowed in deep histories of intersecting and reciprocal relationships across vast distances.

Contents:

Similitude and global relationships : self-representation in Mutsamudu

The social logics of need : consumer desire in Mombasa

The global repercussions of consumerism : East African consumers and industrialization

Cosmopolitanism and cultural domestication : consumer imports in Zanzibar

Symbolic subjection and social rebirth : objectification in urban Zanzibar

Picturesque contradictions : taxonomies of East Africa.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-258) and index.

ISBN:

9780520254244

0520254244

9780520254237

0520254236

OCLC:

123079041