From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive

Klappentext An ethnography of the production of coffee from producer to consumer with emphasis on the effect of global commodity chains. Zusammenfassung West looks at the process from which coffee is grown! gathered! sorted! shipped! and served from the highlands of Papua New Guinea to coffee shops in far away places. She shows how coffee becomes a commodity! the different forms of labor involved! and the way that coffee shapes the lives and understandings of those who grow! process! export! sell and consume coffee.

Autorentext

Paige West is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Conservation Is Our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea, also published by Duke University Press, and a co-founder and co-editor of the journal Environment and Society.

Klappentext

In this vivid ethnography, Paige West tracks coffee as it moves from producers in Papua New Guinea to consumers around the world. She illuminates the social lives of the people who produce coffee, and those who process, distribute, market, and consume it. The Gimi peoples, who grow coffee in Papua New Guinea's highlands, are eager to expand their business and social relationships with the buyers who come to their highland villages, as well as with the people working in Goroka, where much of Papua New Guinea's coffee is processed; at the port of Lae, where it is exported; and in Hamburg, Sydney, and London, where it is distributed and consumed. This rich social world is disrupted by neoliberal development strategies, which impose prescriptive regimes of governmentality that are often at odds with Melanesian ways of being in, and relating to, the world. The Gimi are misrepresented in the specialty coffee market, which relies on images of primitivity and poverty to sell coffee. By implying that the "backwardness" of Papua New Guineans impedes economic development, these images obscure the structural relations and global political economy that actually cause poverty in Papua New Guinea.

Zusammenfassung
Looks at the process from which coffee is grown, gathered, sorted, shipped, and served from the highlands of Papua New Guinea to coffee shops in places as far apart as New York, Australia, and London.

Inhalt

List of Tables ix
Acknowledgments xi

1. The World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea 1
2. Neoliberal Coffee 33
3. Historic Coffee 69
4. Village Coffee 101
5. Relational Coffee 131
6. National Coffee 157
7. International Coffee 201
8. Conclusion 237
   Notes 257
   Bibliography 279
   Index 303