In sugar materialize social, cultural, economic negotiation processes of knowledge about historically grown and conflictual post-colonial interweavings. Based on my ongoing research this text aims to contribute to the discussion about the empirical basis of an ethnography of the political and on the methodological ways it can come about. Hypothetically, I assume that a link exists between small-scale individual acts of consumption and political resp. economic structures. The ethnographic view on sugar as a material that was and still is highly morally charged and in particular on its color characteristics, reveals the barely visible, but even more effective political regulations that affect its everyday presence in individual consumption practices and its moral evaluation.

Keywords
ethnography of the political, Europe, post-colonialism, sugar, material(ity), color, consumption, international trade, food