Eric brought up Mintz’s discussion
of the plantation as a proto-factory, in which the plantation holds many
characteristics that Mintz sees as industrial, such as, “the separation of
production from consumption.”[1] This relates directly to the motives
Mintz has for writing. While he
clearly is trying to understand why people consumed sugar, and set a paradigm
within anthropology, Mintz is also adding to the discourse on capitalism.
Not only does Mintz argue that elements of capitalism were present
in the early production and consumption of sugar, but he gives sugar the prime
place among commodities in the development of a mass market. Mintz’s examination is not economical
per say, instead he finds the characteristics he see as capitalistic in sugar
production, for example plantations functioning on borrowed capital or workers
in standardized jobs. The author
takes a stronger position when he examines the consumption side of the
commodity, describing how larger and larger portions of the population consumed
sugar. Mintz describes how sugar transitions
from an additive to a formal caloric source for working class Britons. However, he moves beyond the standard
route of a luxury good becoming a mass consumed product to hold sugar above
other commodities. Mintz argues
that products, like tea and tobacco, ease the worker into his newfound
proletarian role, but sugar, as a caloric substitute was the most effective. This directly relates to Mintz’s
anthropological notions, his, “anthropology is concerned with how people
stubbornly maintain past practices, even when under strong negative pressures,
but repudiate other behaviors quite readily in order to act differently”.[2] For Mintz sugar is what pushes people
to enter the industrial workforce, “sugar and other drug foods, by provisioning,
sating – and, indeed, drugging – farm and factory workers, sharply reduced the
overall cost of creating and reproducing the metropolitan proletariat.”[3]
Does Mintz think "sugar pushes people to enter the industrial workforce?" I also believe Mintz is unhappy about the plight of British workers. It is as if they were all happier in some earlier occupations. What would those be? Many of them were unemployed. They left the countryside for the cities to seek work. In the eighteenth century they drank lots of gin. Landlords had taken away their rights to common lands. Some of the lucky ones went to America where they took land away from Native Americans. This was a tough time. But it got better. I never get the impression that Mintz thinks it got better. Sugar was a consolation prize, but now it is just a bad habit.
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