From Colonial Dependency to Finger-lickin' Values: Food, Commoditization, and Identity in Trinidad

In formerly colonised places like Trinidad, values for imported commodities like Kentucky Fried Chicken, and for modern experiences like shopping in an air-conditioned supermarket in a US-style mall, have consistently trumped official efforts to localise food. In what Daniel Miller (1994) claims to be the first modern area of the world—the Caribbean—they correspond to one side of an oppositional value system that emerged as a consequence of slavery and its aftermath. On one side lies the view that imported foods are more “civilized” than local farmers’ markets, while on the other are values of autonomy epitomized by official campaigns to “localise it.” These contradictory values, corresponding to what have been called “centripetal” and “centrifugal” tendencies in the Caribbean, characterize socialities of food consumption in Trinidad and Tobago, and to some extent all modern societies.