Gary Y. Okihiro . Pineapple Culture: A History of the Tropical and Temperate Zones . Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of California Press . 2009 . Pp. xiv, 255. $24.95.

Abstract

This book by Gary Y. Okihiro is the second volume in a trilogy on history and its conventions of space and time. The first, Island World (2008), looked at the spatial categories of islands and continents through a history of Hawai‘i’s interaction with the United States, whereas Pineapple Culture “interrogates the tropical and temperate zones through the discursive and material career of the pineapple” (p. 1). The book reads a bit like two books. The first three chapters are a dense, at times slow-moving, but innovative exploration of the long historical material and discursive engagement between temperate and tropical zones. The pineapple itself is nowhere to be found in these pages, a hint that the book is not a straightforward history of a commodity or place (i.e., Hawai‘i) but rather a short history of the world that implicitly challenges the way we understand time and space. The first chapters look at how human wants fueled travel in the form of exploration, trade, and conquest, with a particular focus on how this travel not only forged empires in a material sense but eventually led Europeans down a path of geographic determinism in which “temperate” peoples were seen as inherently superior to their “tropical” counterparts. The narrative includes a fascinating discussion of the role of science and various bodies of knowledge in the building of empire, both materially and discursively.