Insatiable Appetite
«This insightful work condenses and updates the original 2000 edition. Tucker explores the ecological destruction of tropical environments by US capitalists and corporations. . . . The author largely attributes tropical degradation to the insatiable appetite of the American consumer. Recommended.»
CHOICE
Now in a concise edition created expressly for students and general readers, this widely hailed study traces the transformation of the tropics in modern times. Exploring the central role of the United States in the ongoing devastation of tropical lands, Richard P. Les mer
Yankee investors and plantation managers mobilized engineers, agronomists, and loggers to undertake what they called the "Conquest of the Tropics," claiming to bring civilization to benighted peoples and cultivation to unproductive nature. In competitive cooperation with local landed and political elites, they not only cleared natural forests but also displaced multicrop tribal and peasant lands with monocrop export plantations rooted in private property regimes.
In a masterful narrative, Tucker highlights the unrelenting pressure that the demands of U.S. consumerism placed on fragile tropical lands. The forced domestication of widely varied natural systems ultimately led to a devastating decline in biodiversity. The author brings his analysis to life with a series of vivid case studies of sugar, bananas, coffee, rubber, beef, and timber—each a virtual empire in itself. All readers who are interested in environmental degradation and its links to the world economy will be enlightened by this nuanced history.
Detaljer
- Forlag
- Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
- Innbinding
- Paperback
- Språk
- Engelsk
- ISBN
- 9780742553651
- Utgivelsesår
- 2007
- Format
- 23 x 16 cm
Anmeldelser
«This insightful work condenses and updates the original 2000 edition. Tucker explores the ecological destruction of tropical environments by US capitalists and corporations. . . . The author largely attributes tropical degradation to the insatiable appetite of the American consumer. Recommended.»
CHOICE
«Richard Tucker has drawn on a lifetime of scholarship to produce a critical account of the ways American companies and consumers have contributed to the environmental degradation of tropical countries. Anyone interested in the American impact on the third world will benefit from the insights and information in this wide-ranging and remarkable study. The abridged paperback will find a place in a variety of classes, bringing this important story to a broader audience.»
David S. Painter, Georgetown University
«This investigation creates space for big history, using consumption to bring economy and environment together.»
Anthony Amato, Southwest Minnesota State University