ABSTRACT
The Caribbean has been repeatedly imagined and narrated as a tropical paradise in which the land, plants, resources, bodies, and cultures of its inhabitants are open to be invaded, occupied, bought, moved, used, viewed, and consumed in various ways. It is represented as a perpetual Garden of Eden in which visitors can indulge all their desires and find a haven for relaxation, rejuvenation, and sensuous abandon. Nevertheless, some of the deepest ethical dilemmas associated with capitalist modernity occurred in relation to the transatlantic commerce in slaves and in products produced by people enslaved in the Caribbean, and these debates involved an anxious introspection about the limits of human desires and pleasures. With the abolitionist boycotts of slave-grown sugar and the emergence of forms of ethical consumption in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, movements for consumer responsibility and accountability began to acknowledge the power of consumption to drive the global economy – and to bring misery to people in distant locales. Today the ethics of consumption are again becoming a major issue for social movements and protest groups, who are refocusing attention on the conditions under which consumer goods are being produced in far-away places, including the Caribbean (Enloe 1989; Deere et al. 1990; Klein 2000).
