HIST 204 - Don’t Buy It: The Global History of Commodities

(3.00)

This course looks at how the mass demand for commodities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries changed the way people worked, lived, and saw themselves as they produced and consumed in radically different ways from their parents and grandparents. Long before the Internet, commodities circled the globe, connecting distant places to one another through chains of relationships created to produce, deliver and sell commodities. Commodities also linked people. They connected enslaved African producers to middle-class American consumers, Asian factory workers with Europeans taking beach holidays. Students examine both producers and consumers as they follow the chain of production of certain commodities-rubber, sugar, corn, bananas, and housing. For their final project, students will produce and show a two-minute mini-documentary on one product in one country.

Course ID: 102091
Consent: No Special Consent Required
Components: Lecture
Topics: Don’t Buy It