Guaraná

How Brazil Embraced the World's Most Caffeine-Rich Plant
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4696-7127-7
Verlag: The University of North Carolina Press

Buch, Englisch, 336 Seiten, Paperback, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 577 g

In this sweeping chronicle of guarana—a glossy-leaved Amazonian vine packed with more caffeine than any other plant—Seth Garfield develops a wide-ranging approach to the history of Brazil itself. The story begins with guarana as the pre-Columbian cultivar of the Satere-Mawe people in the Lower Amazon region, where it figured centrally in the Indigenous nation's origin stories, dietary regimes, and communal ceremonies. During subsequent centuries of Portuguese colonialism and Brazilian rule, guarana was reformulated by settlers, scientists, folklorists, food technologists, and marketers. Whether in search of pleasure, profits, professional distinction, or patriotic markers, promoters imparted new meanings and uses to guarana. Today, it is the namesake ingredient of a multibillion-dollar soft drink industry and a beloved national symbol.

Guarana's journey elucidates human impacts on Amazonian ecosystems; the circulation of knowledge, goods, and power; and the promise of modernity in Latin America's largest nation. For Garfield, the beverage's cross-cultural history reveals not only the structuring of inequalities in Brazil but also the mythmaking and ordering of social practices that constitute so-called traditional and modern societies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Garfield, Seth

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Sachkultur, Materielle Kultur
• Sozialwissenschaften Sport | Tourismus | Freizeit Kochen, Essen, Trinken

Über Autor(innen)

Seth Garfield is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. His most recent book is In Search of the Amazon.