Everyday Moral Economies (eBook)

Marisa Wilson is a social anthropologist and Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago. Her present research involves political and moral economies of food and (un)sustainable consumption, especially in relation to uneven processes of globalization and neoliberalization in the Caribbean. She has published in both geography and anthropology journals, including Food, Culture and Society, the Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, the International Journal of Cuban Studies, and the Journal of Rural and Community Development.

Series Editors' Preface ix

Preface xi

Acknowledgements xxiii

List of Acronyms xxv

1 Introduction 1

2 The Historical Emergence of a National Leviathan 33

3 Scarcities, Uneven Access and Local Narratives of Consumption
73

4 Changing Landscapes of Care: Re-distributions and
Reciprocities in the World of Tutaño Consumption 99

5 Localizing the Leviathan: Hierarchies and Exchanges that
Connect State, Market and Civil Society 121

6 The Scalar Politics of Sustainability: Transforming the Small
Farming Sector 153

7 Conclusion 181

Appendices 199

Index 211

"The book will be of interest to geographers engaged in debates on diverse economies, as well as those pursuing work on food security, food sovereignty, and/or the politics of food." (The Canadian Geographer/Le Geographe Canadien, 25 October 2015)

"If I had to evaluate Everyday moral economies in just two words, these would most probably be 'useful' and 'balanced'. Useful because to my knowledge it is the most comprehensive treatment on the theme of food consumption and production in Cuba, providing valuable information on the theme from both historical and contemporary perspectives. Balanced because, although it deals with an utterly political side of Cuba and the Revolution, it does not hastily take sides between a (neo)liberal or a socialist mode of production and political organization." (Anastasios Panagiotopoulos, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 23.3, 4 August 2017)



"Wilson provides a hugely important corrective to our tendency
to take for granted the dominant systems of food production,
exchange and consumption. Her ethnographic account of how ordinary
Cubans live and link two coeval economic systems helps us to
appreciate the underlying scales and values that all economic
systems express. An excellent combination of the best of
anthropology and human geography."

--Daniel Miller, Professor of Material Culture,
University College London

"Everyday Moral Economies is a fascinating study of food
provisioning and the creation of value in contemporary
Cuba. Skilfully combining a geographical understanding of the
politics of scale with an anthropological sensitivity to the
vicissitudes of daily life, Marisa Wilson reveals how the
contradictions between food-as-commodity (within globalised
neoliberal markets) and food-as-entitlement (with a socialist
planned economy) are resolved in everyday social practice."

--Peter Jackson, Professor of Human Geography,
University of Sheffield