Das Kaugummi: Geschmack, Raum und die ‘Schattenländer

Abstract

Michael R. Redclif t: Chewing gum: taste, space and the ‘shadow-lands’. The history of chewing gum is significant for our understanding of changing boundaries between local and metropolitan cultures, and processes through which consumer cultures have become globalized. It also bears on current thinking about environmental issues, levels of personal consumption and international political economy. Behind the mass advertising and sophisticated marketing that characterised chewing gum’s early history, lay the invisible process of chicle tapping in Mexico and the colonization of the tropical forests of Yucatan. The traditional chicle provided the raw material for the mass consumption of a novel product in the first half of the 20th century. The invention of synthetic gum and its widespread use in the second half of the century turned turned this product into the iconic artefact and globaly consumed commodity as we know it today