Robbins article lambasts many of the popular and even pseudo-academic histories for their glorification and overemphasis on the importance of commodities in shaping the world around us. One of the major issues in works on commodities is that they fail to put the commodity at the center of the history. What I mean by this, is many authors often use the commodity as a lens, which is a useful way to look at the world from a slightly different angle, but without putting the commodity at the center, they are failing to truly understand and analyze its importance. Kurlansky is a prime culprit of this as his books on cod and salt simply tell often told histories of the world through a commodity to make them more interesting, but not truly bringing any original thesis to the table. In this way, I think Appadurai's The Social Life of Things is very helpful in helping us think of ways in which commodities should be analyzed and all the different meanings that go into the creation of a commodity's meaning and "value".
Breen's Tobacco Culture is a book that looks at how the culture surrounding a commodity like tobacco does indeed shape the world. Tobacco required planters to stay more attached to the land then did sugar plantation owners, so the culture or histories of these different products was different in many ways. One could then add in the value to consumers of these products as tobacco was more a a lower class product from the start and sugar(through chocolate consumption) started more at the top and trickled down. A lot of the works on commodities fail to take the production and consumption of the commodity and put this at the center of the story, and they would be better for it. All of these commodities are very different, and my analyzing these differences that are specific to the commodity, a lot can be learned. This may be giving too much agency to the commodity, as Robbins is speaking out against, but the examples he attacks are popular histories which fall short in many ways.
One thing Robbins mentions is the fact that, "changing the world in the strong sense that Marx contrasted with merely interpreting it - changing the configuration of class and global power - is arguably more demanding than inventing a new flavor or cleaning fluid, impressive as those accomplishments are."(Robbins 454). He is right that many commodity histories have a similar trajectory of democratization which laud capitalism as empowering and helping give the people what they want. Unfortunately, many commodity histories do not deal with class effectively and ascribe too much buying power to lower classes. The commodity histories we often read are based on elite preferences, and it is extremely difficult to get at what the lower classes are consuming. People will often riot over higher bread prices or milk, but rarely over higher clothing, chocolate, or tobacco prices. Why is that? Perhaps the lower classes can't really even afford these higher class products that many commodity histories charge have "changed the world." Maybe they have just changed the world for middle to upper classes.
Breen's Tobacco Culture is a book that looks at how the culture surrounding a commodity like tobacco does indeed shape the world. Tobacco required planters to stay more attached to the land then did sugar plantation owners, so the culture or histories of these different products was different in many ways. One could then add in the value to consumers of these products as tobacco was more a a lower class product from the start and sugar(through chocolate consumption) started more at the top and trickled down. A lot of the works on commodities fail to take the production and consumption of the commodity and put this at the center of the story, and they would be better for it. All of these commodities are very different, and my analyzing these differences that are specific to the commodity, a lot can be learned. This may be giving too much agency to the commodity, as Robbins is speaking out against, but the examples he attacks are popular histories which fall short in many ways.
One thing Robbins mentions is the fact that, "changing the world in the strong sense that Marx contrasted with merely interpreting it - changing the configuration of class and global power - is arguably more demanding than inventing a new flavor or cleaning fluid, impressive as those accomplishments are."(Robbins 454). He is right that many commodity histories have a similar trajectory of democratization which laud capitalism as empowering and helping give the people what they want. Unfortunately, many commodity histories do not deal with class effectively and ascribe too much buying power to lower classes. The commodity histories we often read are based on elite preferences, and it is extremely difficult to get at what the lower classes are consuming. People will often riot over higher bread prices or milk, but rarely over higher clothing, chocolate, or tobacco prices. Why is that? Perhaps the lower classes can't really even afford these higher class products that many commodity histories charge have "changed the world." Maybe they have just changed the world for middle to upper classes.
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