Chewing Gum

The Fortunes of Taste

By: Michael Redclift

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Hardcover | 27 May 2004 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
205 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
20.9 x 14.0 x 1.91

Hardcover

RRP $273.00

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Not long after the Civil War, three-time Mexican president and Alamo victor General Santa Ana introduced chicle--a rare ingredient from Mexico that was the basis for what would become chewing gum--to a Staten Island inventor. Both were down on their luck, and little did they know that their chance meeting would help create an icon of the modern age. A functionally useless product that simply makes us happy, gum popped onto the American scene with a bang, quickly becoming an icon for baseball, movie stars, adolescent rebellion, and "attitude." A barometer of modernity, it was one of the first products to be advertised on billboards--a scheme hatched by the Wrigley brothers of Chicago.
But there was another side to the story as well. For not only was gum a mass culture archetype, it helped fuel a long indigenous revolution in the jungles of the Yucatan. And ironically enough, it was gum manufacturers like Wrigley who ultimately funded the Mayan Indians who collected the chicle as they fought for autonomy from the Mexican government.
In "Chewing Gum," Michael Redclift deftly chronicles the growing popularity of gum in the U.S. alongside a fascinating history of peasant revolution led by charismatic Indians in the jungles of southern Mexico. Until the 1950s, the production of gum relied on the chicle harvested by Mayans. For seventy-five years, demand had steadily grown across the world. After World War II, however, synthetic gum replaced chicle, putting many of the "chicleros" out of work and ending a colorful epoch. Today, due to the current rage for "natural" products, chicle has made a comeback in a new role as natural chewing gum.
Vivid and absorbing, "Chewing Gum" is at once an American cultural history and an emblematic cautionary tale about the how the resources that fuel modern pleasures often come from scenes of violence, chaos, and oppression.

Industry Reviews

"A scholarly work, 'Chewing Gum-The Fortunes of Taste' makes a solid case for gum's pre-eminence in the realm of mass consumption and popular taste. Even in today's multitasking society-where workers find little time to break away from one job or another or another-gum still has a vital role to play."
-- Santa Cruz Sentinel
"...A well-rounded overview of the history of chicle-based chewing gum, and it provides unique insights into globalization and mass marketing... a fascinating glimpse of an overlooked cultural phenomena." -- Rochelle Caviness, History in Review
"In Chewing Gum: The Fortunes of Taste, author Michael Redclift investigates the history of chewing gum and its impact on peasant revolutions in Mexico, where the production of chicle fueled a decades-long conflict between the Mayan Indians and the Mexican government. Beginning with the chance meeting between three-time Mexican president and Alamo victor General Santa Ana and an American inventor who, at first, sought to make rubber tires from the chicle, the book goes on to chronicle the "functionally useless" product, which made people millionaires and held a lasting influence on Mexican-American relations and culture today.
." -- History Magazine
"...Chewing Gum: The Fortunes of Taste is a stunning accomplishment, linking seemingly trivial details together into a web that shows us just how interconnected the world really is.
." -- Dennis Chute, The Edmonton Journal
39:2/3
"But what may interest readers most in this book is Redclift's presentation of chewing gum as a commercial product." -- Winterthur Portfolio

' Redclift deploys a rewarding interdisciplinary and international historical approach... This pioneering study of a commodity that is often overlooked or even resented as crude and messy is a compelling and engrossing case study of not only the contested, but also the perverse, nature of globalisation... it would serve wonderfully courses on world history, commodity chains and food.' - Latin American Studies

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