Heidi Tinsman (University of California, Irvine)

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273 Conference Room SSH
Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States

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Heidi Tinsman is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. She is the author of Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950-1973 (Duke, 2002.) Her latest book, Buying into the Regime: Grapes and Consumption in Cold War Chile and the United States (Duke, 2014) examines the rise of Chile's fruit industry, studying how income from grape production enabled fruit workers to buy commodities—appliances, clothing, cosmetics—flowing into Chile, and how this new consumerism influenced gender relations as well as pro-democracy movements. In the process, Chilean and U.S. businessmen aggressively marketed grapes as a wholesome snack. At the same time, the United Farm Workers and Chilean solidarity activists led parallel boycotts highlighting the use of pesticides and exploitation of labor in grape production.

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