"Tobacco Capitalism" tells the story of the people who live and
work on U.S. tobacco farms at a time when the global tobacco
industry is undergoing profound changes. Against the backdrop of
the antitobacco movement, the globalization and industrialization
of agriculture, and intense debates over immigration, Peter Benson
draws on years of field research to examine the moral and financial
struggles of growers, the difficult conditions that affect Mexican
migrant workers, and the complex politics of citizenship and
economic decline in communities dependent on this most harmful
commodity.
Benson tracks the development of tobacco farming since the
plantation slavery period and the formation of a powerful tobacco
industry presence in North Carolina. In recent decades, tobacco
companies that sent farms into crisis by aggressively switching to
cheaper foreign leaf have coached growers to blame the state,
public health, and aggrieved racial minorities for financial
hardship and feelings of vilification. Economic globalization has
exacerbated social and racial tensions in North Carolina, but the
corporations that benefit have rarely been considered a key cause
of harm and instability, and have now adopted social-responsibility
platforms to elide liability for smoking disease. Parsing the
nuances of history, power, and politics in rural America, Benson
explores the cultural and ethical ambiguities of tobacco farming
and offers concrete recommendations for the tobacco-control
movement in the United States and worldwide.
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