Black rice

As others in class have indicated, Judith Carney's Black Rice is more about the Africans who brought knowledge of rice cultivation from Africa to the New World than it is about the commodity itself. It is an attempt to restore agency to certain actors within the set of processes that we have come to know of as the Columbian Exchange. Carney focuses more on the actors within the production line (for example, women) and on production itself rather than the social or cultural impact of the commodity. This in itself sets the book aside from the others that we have read, specifically The True History of Chocolate and Tastes of Paradise. Carney is not attempting to make the commodity the actor within the production chain; rather, her goal is to reorient our thinking. Thus the commodity becomes the lens through which we understand the process of exchange. The goal here is not to discuss the importance of rice and its impact on global society, as Schivelbusch did with his discussion of coffee and alcohol among others. In this sense, and given our current definition of commodity history, Black Rice does not seem to fit.

However, an argument could be made for altering our definition of commodity history to broaden its scope. We have been searching for histories that make the commodity the actor, however it may be too difficult to associate agency with an inanimate object. This would be in line with what Robbins discussed in his article, and also pairs up nicely with Carney’s argument. She has attempted to shift agency away from Europeans back to Africans. Currently our definition of commodity history attempts to shift agency to the commodity itself, and perhaps we need to alter that line of thinking. I think that I am currently swinging in the direction of a commodity history as a lens through which to see other processes (such as the Columbian Exchange).