Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures

I can honestly say that despite this being my third time reading Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures (that does not mean you assign it too much Dr. Bristol!), that I am still picking up some new appreciation for it each time.  Perhaps it is the writing style or as Susan pointed out, the way that Marcy Norton manages to draw away from the Eurocentric view of most commodities and instead focuses on how the Latin American usage was much more influential in these two commodities than in others.  For my part I believe I readily enjoyed that this book focuses on the evolving nature of European acceptance of both chocolate and tobacco.  Showing how it wasn’t simply the elites attempting to use the good, but the interplay between Church, State, Market, and Demand as to the evolving fate of the commodities.  Once more I appreciate the induction of the Portuguese merchant clans into the narrative and the interplay between the recently converted Jewish merchants with the fears of the Spanish Catholic Church.  While the various factions vied for what to do with the commodities, this narrative comes off as a tale of many people with the two commodities as the vehicle to tell that tale.  I would be hard pressed to say who has the most agency in this book, but calling back to Robbins’ article that we read at the beginning of the semester, I would personally say that Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures, does not fall into his “capitalism cheerleader” camp, but rather presents a story of two commodities from the New World being integrated by hook or by crook into the Old.