Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment

Beginning in the mid-1800s, Americans hauled frozen pond water, then glacial ice, and then ice machines to Hawaiʻi--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 Hiʻilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart charts the social history of ice in Hawaiʻi 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 Hawaiʻi'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 Hawaiʻi and beyond.

Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award Recipient

Author: Hi'ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopu Hobart
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 12/16/2022
Pages: 264
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.63d
ISBN13: 9781478016557
ISBN10: 1478016558
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Ethnic Studies | American | Native American Studies
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
- Technology & Engineering | Mechanical

About the Author
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.