Trends and traditions

Of great interest to me regarding this week’s reading is the author’s own background and experience with cloth manufacture and dying. In the brief “About the Author” segment at the opening of the book it is stated that Greenfield’s “grandfather and great-grandfather were dyers…” It’s nice to see her carrying on her family’s tradition in her academic work, whether meant for popular audiences or not.

It is becoming a trend in the assigned readings for authors to state that somehow the commodity they have chosen to dedicate years of their lives researching and writing about are somehow linked up with some fundamental aspect of humanity, e.g., Mintz’s claim that sugar is one of the first tastes infants recognize and from then on forever associate with receiving nourishment from their mothers. Greenfield is no exception claiming right out of the gate that “Although many mammals have trouble perceiving red, the human eye is strongly sensitized to the color,” and that, “red represents events and emotions at the core of the human condition…” [2], etc. Can we not find commodities interesting unless they possess this connection to human nature?