Lexington Books Not Even a Grain of Rice: Buying Food on Credit in the Dominican Republic (Crossing Borders in a Global World: Applying Anthropology to Migration, Displacement, and Social Change)

Christine Hippert examines buying food on credit in corner stores in Cabarete, an international tourism destination in the Dominican Republic and a hub for migrant laborers. The voices in this book highlight people's experiences with food, debt, and survival to reveal emerging social changes related to race, gender, class, and citizenship. Review Not Even a Grain of Rice: Buying Food on Credit in the Dominican Republic is an important contribution to various fields, including Dominican Studies, Caribbean Studies, Food Studies, Haitian Studies. Hippert offers a thoughtful and imminently readable account of how a common practice in the Dominican Republic--comprando fiao, or buying food on credit from small neighborhood colmados (stores)--offers a window into relationships between Dominicans, Dominicans of Haitian Descent, and Haitian (im)migrants in the northern coastal town of Cabarete, a popular ecotourism destination. Hippert argues that the commonplace anti-Haitianist rhetoric, discourses, and beliefs espoused by many Dominicans and their government alike should not be taken at face value. Instead, the equally salient social fact of class-based solidarity between and among the multi-ethnic residents of La Cienaga and Callejón de la Loma is evidenced in the moral economy of the fiao (informal credit) system. Simply stated, despite the surge in and institutionalization of contemporary anti-Haitian rhetoric and practices, Dominican colmaderos routinely label Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent gente responsable (responsible people)--a racialized assessment of trustworthiness upon which the ability to purchase the food necessary for survival hinges. As Hippert ably argues, this case exemplifies the co-existence of anti-Haitian discourses and everyday Dominco-Haitian solidarity practices.--Ginetta E.B. Candelario, Smith College; author of Black behind the Ears: Dominican Racial Identity from Museums to Beauty Shops Hippert's Not Even a Grain of Rice is a food related ethnography that shows the precarious relationships that develop to access food based on one's word as a currency and as a social glue to express social and economic solidarity in the Dominican Republic. This work is timely in addressing how people navigate their race, class, and gender in the wider realms of anti-Blackness where privilege and exclusion truncate the trust built on people's commitment to buy now and pay later. Throughout the Americas, shop owners have signs that read "hoy no fio y mañana tampoco," warning consumers their word is just not enough to honor the social contracts that have built community and have kept people alive for generations. This book makes a wonderful contribution to the scholarship on food insecurity, food sovereignty, and the ethnography of everyday life and making do in the Caribbean.--Guillermina Gina Núñez-Mchiri, University of Texas at El Paso Not Even a Grain of Rice disentangles race and racism, identity, and practices of reciprocity on the fraught, divided island of Hispaniola. Digging beneath the official anti-Haitianism, Hippert's rich ethnography of a Dominican town portrays a nuanced, complex understanding of everyday people's beliefs and practices, which don't always align.--Mark Schuller, Northern Illinois University; author of Humanity's Last Stand: Confronting Global Catastrophe Christine Hippert's eloquent storytelling nuanced through rich field notes broadens understandings of food security to include webs of social processes and power involved in buying groceries through the fiao credit system in the tourist town of Cabarate, Dominican Republic. Hippert's illuminating work aptly pushes the boundaries of food studies by using everyday transactions and interactions in colmados to surface a complicated history of race, class, gender, and citizenship for working-class Haitians and Dominicans.--Sarah Fouts, University of Maryland, Baltimore County Not Even a Grain of Rice brings to