Pacific Coconut: Comestible, Comfort and Commodity

As the title implies this special issue concentrates on the coconut in its older usages and its transformation into commodities. The coconut has many histories, with specific intersections with each Pacific island society, indeed each community and family. This brief introduction seeks to give an ov...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of Pacific history 2018-12, Vol.53 (4), p.353-374
Main Author: Bennett, Judith A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Capitalism
Coconut
Coconut oil
Coconut palm
coconuts
Commodities
commodity
Copra
Economic aspects
Historiography
Pacific
Penetration
Transformation
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:As the title implies this special issue concentrates on the coconut in its older usages and its transformation into commodities. The coconut has many histories, with specific intersections with each Pacific island society, indeed each community and family. This brief introduction seeks to give an overview of its penetration into the lives and societies at several levels, from small clans to major companies, from growers to governments, all implicated along the commodity chain. In spite of the coconut's ubiquity, the historiography has never addressed it fully but taken it rather as a given, one player in capitalism in the region, yet in fact, for over a hundred years, it was the star product upon which many governments and people across the tropical Pacific depended for income. We hope that some aspects of the coconut's complexity and meaning are brought to light in the following new contributions to its history.
ISSN:0022-3344
1469-9605
1469-9605
DOI:10.1080/00223344.2018.1523705