Global dimensions of domestic practices : kitchen technologies in Cuba

When people think of the Cuban revolution, the greatest transformations that socialism has brought to the island are usually imagined to have taken place in public and civic spaces. Popular ideas of socialist Cuba invoke such images as the public square full of cheering crowds, while the most famous reforms have occurred in such civil spaces as schools and hospitals. However, the ongoing project of a Cuban socialist revolution - albeit one that has repeatedly adapted and mutated in the face of global political and economic pressures - has also been materialized in crucial ways through the most banal and intimate practices and objects of the domestic realm. Everyday household spaces have often been the location in which Cuban citizens have most keenly felt the impacts of change in the more than fifty years of reform for which their nation has become famous.