Beginning in the mid-1800s, Americans hauled frozen pond water, then glacial ice, and then ice machines to Hawai?i-all in an effort to reshape the islands in the service of Western pleasure and profit. Marketed as ""essential"" for white occupants of the nineteenth-century Pacific, ice quickly permeated the foodscape through advancements in freezing and refrigeration technologies. In Cooling the Tropics Hi?ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart charts the social history of ice in Hawai?i to show how the interlinked concepts of freshness and refreshment mark colonial relationships to the tropics. From chilled drinks and sweets to machinery, she shows how ice and refrigeration underpinned settler colonial ideas about race, environment, and the senses. By outlining how ice shaped Hawai?i's food system in accordance with racial and environmental imaginaries, Hobart demonstrates that thermal technologies can-and must-be attended to in struggles for food sovereignty and political self-determination in Hawai?i and beyond.
Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award Recipient
By:
Hi'ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart
Imprint: Duke University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 522g
ISBN: 9781478016557
ISBN 10: 1478016558
Series: Elements
Pages: 277
Publication Date: 16 December 2022
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Note on ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i Usage vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Feeling Cold in Hawai‘i 1 1. A Prehistory of the Artificial Cold in Hawai‘i 21 2. Vice, Virtue, and Frozen Necessities in the Sovereign City 47 3. Making Ice Local: Technology, Infrastructure, and Cold Power in the Kalākaua Era 71 4. Cold and Sweet: The Taste of Territorial Occupation 91 5. Local Color, Rainbow Aesthetics, and the Racial Politics of Hawaiian Shave Ice 113 Conclusion: Thermal Sovereignties 137 Notes 147 Bibliography 205 Index 233
Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart is Assistant Professor of Native and Indigenous Studies at Yale University and editor of The Foodways of Hawaiʻi: Past and Present.
Reviews for Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment
"""Cooling the Tropics offers a compelling model for future research focused on the simultaneously sensorial, biopolitical, and ecological implications of colonialism’s thermal infrastructures."" -- Hsuan L. Hsu * The Senses and Society * ""Fascinating and thoughtful. . . . Recommended. General readers and advanced undergraduates through faculty."" -- F. Ng * Choice * “Cooling the Tropics is well worth reading. … With many revealing and fascinating examples, [Hobart] tells an engaging story of the American colonisation of Hawaii that is open, unfixed and challengeable.” -- Helene Brembeck * Review of Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Studies *"