Sweetness And Power

	Sweetness and Power is a historical study of sugar and its affect on society and economy since it was first discovered. Sugar has had a large impact on society and the economy that is not noticeable unless thoroughly studied. The following is an analysis of the work done by Sidney W. Mintz in his attempt to enlighten the "educated layperson".

	Mintz uses a very basic system for organizing the tremendous amount of data found within in the book. The book is divided into 5 chapters: "Food, Sociality, and Sugar", "Production", "Consumption", "Power", and "Eating and Being". Each of these chapters discusses different issues dealing with the main idea while moving in a more or less chronological order. For example, the chapter entitled "Production" begins by discussing the means by which sugar was produced in its earliest existence, and then ends by discussing more modern forms of production. Within the chapter, Mintz branches off and discusses various effects sugar has had on the economy and society. However, to fully understand the structure of the book, each chapter must be looked at individually to see how each is organized.

	Chapter one begins by describing the connection between different groups of society and the food that each of them eats. Mintz argues that food is a factor in which one can identify and categorize a society and/or those who belong to that society, which is shown on page 3 with the line "Food choices and eating habits reveal distinctions of age, sex, status, culture, and even occupation." Later in the book, Mintz will continue this contention by describing sugar as a symbol of power and nobility. Another important idea revealed to the reader in chapter one is the source of focus for the book, which is shown in this statement on page 5:

Specifically, I am concerned with a single substance called sucrose, a kind of sugar extracted primarily from the sugar can, and with what became of it. The story can be summed up in a few sentences. In 1000 A.D., few Europeans knew of the existence of sucrose, or can sugar. But soon afterward they learned about it; by 1650, in England the nobility and the wealthy had become inveterate sugar eaters, and sugar figured in their medicine, lit...

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...resented in the book. He does a good job of supporting all of his arguments with the proper source, however, he does not explain these sources to the fullest extent. The assumption is made that the reader clearly knows how the sources relates to the argument at hand, but sometimes the passages that Mintz cites are unclear. Also, Mintz understands that a field such as anthropology requires fieldwork to be strong. However, in that same line on page 213, Mintz states, "Those strengths continue to lie in fieldwork (there is little in this book I confess)." By this, Mintz himself has identified another one of the few flaws present in his book.

	Sweetness and Power is a strong study relating the evolution of sugar to societal growth as well as to economic change. Despite the flaws contained within the structure of the book and the lack of fieldwork, the book is an excellent collection of data regarding sugar, a topic that most people do not think of as being a major factor in the lives they live today. Mintz forces the "educated layperson" to look around the world today, and really think about what it would be like without the luxury of sugar.