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

About the Author
Hi'ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart is Assistant Professor of Native and Indigenous Studies at Yale University and editor of The Foodways of Hawai'i: Past and Present.

Reviews
"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 *

"Contributing to a rich, contemporary conversation of critical ruminations on materiality, the elements, and questions of race and indigeneity, Cooling the Tropics pushes readers to think about how indigeneity is shaped in colonial discourses. ... This well researched book will fascinate and keep readers on the hook."

-- Jen Rose Smith * Society and Space *



Book Information
ISBN 9781478019190
Author Hi'ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart
Format Paperback
Page Count 264
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 386g