In her newest book Paige West sets out to examine neoliberal capitalism, its effects and global connections by tracing the production, distribution and consumption of coffee. More specifically her focus is on coffee produced by the Gimi speaking peoples of the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG). In an ethnographically rich description West shows how the Gimi produce coffee; attach meaning to it and how coffee production has profoundly changed the Gimi environment and subjectivities. By tracing the movement of coffee, she shows how the Gimi interact with Papua New Guinean buyers, what social worlds coffee creates among coffee workers and coffee producer elites of urban PNG and finally how coffee from Eastern Highlands is being sold in capitalism’s centers.Non peer reviewe

Tammisto, Tuomas

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https://helda.helsinki.fiBook review: West, Paige 2012. From Modern Production toImagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from PapuaNew Guinea.Tammisto, Tuomas2012Tammisto , T 2012 , ' Book review: West, Paige 2012. From Modern Production to ImaginedPrimitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea. ' , Oceania , vol. 82 , no. 3 ,pp. 328-329 .http://hdl.handle.net/10138/166425Downloaded from Helda, University of Helsinki institutional repository.This is an electronic reprint of the original article.This reprint may differ from the original in pagination and typographic detail.Please cite the original version.critique and engagement. Detractors, inside thediscipline and beyond it, who think of anthropology asa stodgy remnant of colonial oppression, mired in astatic abstraction of isolated and bounded cultures, willbe hard-pressed to recognize their stereotype here. Thefutures of Fischer’s anthropology are firmly groundedhere in the present pluralistic and rhizomatic state ofthe contemporary discipline as he envisions it. Takentogether, the essays articulate his continuingcommitment to anthropology as it could, and in hisview should, be.This is not the first time that Fischer has led thediscipline in new directions.  In 1986, with GeorgeMarcus, he proposed a critique of culture alongside theexpanded attention to the politics and poetics ofethnographic writing as the core activity ofanthropologists touted by Marcus and James Clifford.The excesses of that brief disciplinary flirtation withpostmodernism have since subsided to a productiveongoing legacy of reflexivity and experimentation.Anthropological Futures continues this initial train ofthought, but represents its elaboration in ways thatwould have been impossible (or at least unintelligible)even a decade ago. Fischer insists on an anthropologythat is always already interdisciplinary, bothphilosophical in a Kantian vein that is itself deeplypragmatic and pragmatic as an index of whatanthropologists actually do (89). In the course of hisrevisioning, he reviews and assesses for the present andfuture much of anthropology’s history – the emergenceof the discipline from larger philosophical contexts aswell as its internal turnings and preoccupations. Theendeavor is historicist, relational, emergent, symbolicor interpretivist, and cosmopolitan.  Fischer relies heavily on metaphors, particularlyfrom science and science studies (which in his handsbecomes deeply anthropological, a potent source ofreflexive critical theory). He argues that new metaphorsare needed because ‘contemporary societies constructthemselves’ around ‘technologies and technosciences’(36). He advocates a ‘recombinant anthropology’ (48),drawing metaphors from the discipline’s foundationalcommitment, unique among the social sciences, to thestudy of human biology as well as human culture.Fischer’s genealogies of anthropological praxis areplural and cross-pollinating. One of Fischer’s favouritemetaphors is the geoid, ‘a material-semiotic object,’ a‘transitional object’ (212) whose simultaneousmathematical and geological denotations lead him torefigure the geoid as old age and its accompanyingchanging personhood, personified in his experiencewith his aging mother’s struggle to accept loss ofprofessional stature and activity.‘Culture’ is primary among the ‘legacycategories’ (xii) of anthropology that Fischer attemptsto redefine. ‘When singularized, frozen or nominalized,culture can be a dangerous concept’ (1). ‘Culturalanalysis,’ in contrast, is experimental, pluralistic, andincreasingly ‘aware of its own historicity’ (46).‘Nature’ emerges as ‘un-natural,’ constructed againstthe limits of the real world rather than infinitelyvariable (ditto for the thorny conceptual legacies ofhuman nature and cultural relativism).Not all anthropologists will buy into Fischer’sbrand of futurism, and he is far from the onlyanthropologist to make parallel arguments, but hischallenging vision leaves room for multiplicities andpotentially convergent critiques. His cosmopolitanismintegrates the social sciences and humanities whilesituating anthropology centrally at the intersection ofcosmopolitics, techno-science and the emergentinstitutions and infrastructures of present and futurecosmopolitanisms. Anthropology’s disciplinarystrength is its capacity to work at multiple scales fromethnographic detail to ‘reflexive nostalgia’ (270) topolicy implications of cultural analysis. Theanthropologist of the future renews the discipline byplaying such analysis across ‘scales, explanations,structures, cultural meanings and social forces’ (271).If anthropology is to survive and reproduce itself forfuture generations, then the widening of subject matter,unabashed disciplinary borrowing, and grounding inthe cross-cultural study of meaning that Fischerrecommends are necessary antidotes to contemporaryanthropology’s seeming failure of nerve, itsineffectiveness in claiming a seminal space in the sunwithin the transnational circuits of a rapidly changingglobal world where human relations are increasinglydependent on technological innovation and effectivecommunication.   Regna DarnellUniversity of Western OntarioFrom Modern Production to ImaginedPrimitive: The Social World of Coffee fromPapua New GuineaBy Paige West.Durham and London: Duke Universi-ty Press. 2012Pp. xvii + 315Price: US$25.95In her newest book Paige West sets out to examineneoliberal capitalism, its effects and global connectionsby tracing the production, distribution andconsumption of coffee. More specifically her focus ison coffee produced by the Gimi speaking peoples ofthe Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG).In an ethnographically rich description West showshow the Gimi produce coffee; attach meaning to it andhow coffee production has profoundly changed theGimi environment and subjectivities. By tracing themovement of coffee, she shows how the Gimi interactwith Papua New Guinean buyers, what social worldscoffee creates among coffee workers and coffeeproducer elites of urban PNG and finally how coffeefrom Eastern Highlands is being sold in capitalism’scenters. Here West focuses on the fantasy images ofalleged ‘primitive’ producers that are being created andused to market speciality coffees and what very realand adverse consequences these fantasies have.West defines neoliberal capitalism as ideologies328ReviewsOceania 82.3 2nd prf:Oceania 79/3 1st proof  17/10/12  8:58 AM  Page 328and practices based on the reduced role of the state,decreased regulation, privatization andcommodification through the assigning of propertyrights (p. 26-27). Her discussion on neoliberalism Westbases heavily on the works of David Harvey and hisuse of Marx’s concept of primitive accumulation, or‘accumulation by dispossession’, which strives for the‘privatization of land and means of production’ (p. 30).In relation to coffee and PNG, neoliberalization hasmanifested itself as the deregulation of coffee marketsin the 1980s and the Structural Adjustment Programs,which restructured many coffee-producing states,including PNG, in the early 1990s (p. 43, 44). As aresult of deregulation, large companies got even morecontrol of the coffee markets and small roasters,importers gained for the first time entry into themarkets and at the same time – in the spirit ofneoliberalism - various voluntary regulation schemesemerged (p. 47, 97). One consequence of this has beenthat producers earn less money for their coffee, whileconsumers pay morefor it (p. 45, 233). Third partycertification has not changed this, and by adding valueto coffee by conjuring ‘fantasy images’ of primitiveproducers, it may have the adverse effects of portrayingfair and equitable working conditions as scarceresources and luxuries. When indigeneity and povertybecome linked through advertising of specialitycoffees, structural causes for poverty become easilyomitted and ‘culture’ and poverty are easily seen ascause and effect. The great strength of the book is combining richand vivid ethnographic descriptions of all the links inthe ‘commodity chain’ of coffee with good accounts ofstructural shifts and events in the markets of coffee.Particularly interesting are the accounts on how andwhy coffee markets became deregulated and howstructural adjustment affected PNG’s coffee markets.For example PNG shifted its focus on extractiveindustries such as mining on the advice of the WorldBank and International Monetary Fund or how with thedemise of a company regulating the export of coffee,rural growers lost a dependable and fair buyer (pp. 99).Along with large scale structural accounts, West offersrich descriptions of the ecology and production ofcoffee at the village level, how the Gimi situate coffeein a moral economy and how coffee creates strong tiesbetween them and buyers and how these socialrelations benefit all the parties (p. 150).While the book explores the coffee markets onmany levels and on the relevant sites where coffee isproduced, moved and consumed, more thoroughdescription of how deregulation and structuraladjustment was adopted in PNG by the local actorswould have given more nuances to the account. Eventhough these schemes were imposed by powerfulinternational actors, it would have been interesting toget a more detailed picture of how and why the PNGgovernment agreed to these. West gives a verypowerful critique of neoliberalism and especially ofcertification schemes, which seek to solve problemscreated by neoliberal practices by adhering to the verysame practices that brought the problems in the firstplace. However Harvey’s theories of accumulation bydispossession could have been problematized more inthe light of West’s own rich material, as the Gimi are –as she herself notes (p. 246) – owners of their own landand means of production and incorporate commoditiesinto their own moral economy that does not follow acapitalist logic. Despite the critique mentioned above, the book isa very powerful account of contemporary Papua NewGuinea and global capitalism. It critically examines thefantasy images so known to us through popular mediaand advertising of commodities and shows how veryreal consequences these fantasies have. Written in anextremely clear and vivid style, the book makesexcellent reading for courses on environmentalanthropology, neoliberalism and Papua New Guinea.It critically examines the seemingly well meaningcertification schemes, which raise questions amongboth academics and consumers alike, and this shouldallow for a wide-based readership. Finally, it simply isa very solid and well written ethnography based onlong periods of fieldwork, which gives a thoroughaccount of global coffee markets. Tuomas TammistoUniversity of Helsinki329ReviewsOceania 82.3 2nd prf:Oceania 79/3 1st proof  17/10/12  8:58 AM  Page 329

Book review: West, Paige 2012. From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea.

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Book review: West, Paige 2012. From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea.

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