| Book Review | Environmental History, 11.4

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 11.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States. By John Soluri. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. xiii+321 pages. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. Paper $21.95.

Although John Soluri did not frame Banana Cultures along the lines of Arjun Appadurai's seminal work The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, 1986), the book fits Appadurai's model to a "T." Banana Cultures is all about the social life and cultural perspectives of bananas, the banana industry in Honduras, and markets in the United States. In fact, Soluri states that the book's "message" is to "acknowledge the dynamic relationships between production and consumption, between people and nonhuman forms of life, and between cultures and economies" (p. ix). That goal is met in a work that is a Central American, agricultural, corporate, environmental, transnational, popular culture, labor, political, and gender history (and a history of science and technology) of the banana industry. Thus it will be of great value for scholars and courses (history, geography, anthropology) interested in any of those interdisciplinary areas. Many readers will appreciate Soluri's blend of archival research and personal interviews with former plantation workers, and will enjoy the analysis of banana marketing that used "Miss Chiquita," Carmen Miranda, and familiar advertising jingles.

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