Research in Economic Anthropology, v. 33. Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2013. x, 357 pp. (Illustrations.) £72.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-78190-541-8.
This edited volume brings together attempts by anthropologists to understand the consequences of capitalism in Oceanic communities. In the preface McCormack and Barclay indicate that they were guided by the question of “how people may get what they want from capitalism without losing the vibrancy and importance of other ways of being in society” (ix). Anthropologically most interesting are the contributions by Ploeg, Mosko, Dalsgaard, and Boyd, as they see capitalism as relations. Ploeg’s article is exceptional in that it defines capitalism from the outset—“a form of socioeconomic organization in which capital: land, knowledge, and skills, and movable assets, especially money, is employed for financial profit” (258)—and finds elements of it among the Me of West Papua at a time when capitalism was not brought to them from the outside. We discover that the precolonial life of the Me included a number of capitalist elements, such as currency, accumulation, and unequal division of labour. Ploeg highlights the misleading characterization of the present as a period marked by an increasing and ever more threatening penetration of capitalism into the domains of indigenous communities.
Mosko’s chapter discusses recent intensifications of commoditization among the North Mekeo of Central Province, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Those familiar with Mosko’s theoretical interest will not be surprised that his framework of analysis revolves around the juxtaposition of the “partible” or “dividual” of personhood associated with Melanesian ontologies and models of “possessive individualism” associated with market societies. Mosko argues that the latter holds less explanatory power than the dividual personhood models and related Maussian gift exchange when it comes to explaining recent social change among the Mekeo. Despite growing degrees of commoditization, Mosko discerns on-going Melanesian dividuality among the Mekeo. Dalsgaard, in his study of the politics of remittances and the role of returning migrants in Manus Province, PNG, highlights how people differentiate between local “traditional” systems and capitalism in the world of villagers who have moved elsewhere for wage labour. Over the years, gaining access to the remittances of these migrants has become crucial in sustaining internal social and economic activities as well in maintaining relationships to the outside world. Dalsgaard highlights the social and moral tensions of the transactions between migrants and villagers. People negotiate different systems in terms of different values and different ways of living. Boyd’s chapter takes us to the highlands of Papua New Guinea in the period following World War II until 1996. It details the Irakia Awa response to capitalism in the form of the creation of an alternative local version of modernity. After decades of participation in labour migration for earning cash, people returned home and set about creating a more modern and inviting village lifestyle.
The chapters by McCormack and van Meijl focus on new models of ownership that have emerged as a result of engaging with capitalism in New Zealand. Van Meijl examines the impact of the settlement of the Waikato-Tainui claim on socio-economic development of the tribe, while McCormack looks at the negative outcomes for Maori of the privatization of fishing rights that prevent Maori from fishing. McCormack compares her New Zealand materials with the situation in Hawai‘i where a less rigid system gives way to the co-existence of a “gift economy” with a “cash economy.” Shedding more detailed light on the strategies created by subaltern groups is the chapter by Horan. Grounded in thorough ethnography, this chapter shows how Cook Islanders in New Zealand create opportunities for the production of tivaivai cloth for a commercial purpose while still pursuing “their own non-capitalist aims of strengthening sociality and accruing prestige within their own worldview and understanding of value and what constitutes valuables” (102). With less ethnographic evidence, the chapter by Barclay and Kinch on sustainability in coastal fisheries raises the point of assumed capitalist work ethic at the level of communities that have become the beneficiaries of donor-funded development projects in Solomon Islands and PNG. But because the participants approached their activities with communal concerns in mind and the project design did not accommodate this, the projects fail.
Analysing landowner business development around large-scale mining in Papua New Guinea, Bainton and Macintyre continue the discussion around the continuity of Melanesian ways of doing things. The conclusion of their careful and well-developed discussion is that even though mining has produced significant economic opportunities for local communities, many of the evolving local businesses have divided people and entrenched inequalities. Yang’s chapter aims to understand how the Bugkalot (Ilongot) of the Cagayan River in Northern Luzon, Philippines, respond to large-scale logging. Not surprisingly Bugkalot see that envy and desire drive their pursuit of a capitalist economy and Yang also identifies an emerging new notion of the self. Sharp’s chapter brings us back to PNG and documents how local ideas about sociality and exchange shape rivalry and companionship in Mount Hagen betel nut trade. This is the first detailed study of betel nut trade in PNG. In their concluding piece Curry and Koczberksi’s return to the guiding question of the volume in an attempt to draw together its key themes.
These chapters, some more successful than others, remind us that there is of course no one abstract theory of capitalism that is not affected by the cultural and historical contexts within which capitalism as we label it evolves. Hence capitalism can only be researched as contingent, diverse, and embedded in local contexts, not as some vaguely defined entity that is affecting local contexts. The ethnography offered in this book underpins the importance of seeing capitalism as being embedded in a locality in terms of relations. Nevertheless most of the analyses shed light on embedded meanings of capitalism in terms of symbolic or metaphoric discourses that directly address problems related to the ordeal of the everyday life of capitalism. To say that these discourses speak about capitalism is one thing, but to assert that they have capitalism as their object and to imply that they can be read as an apprehension of capitalism is something altogether different. Despite my criticism, this volume is a good source for development work as it teaches lessons about how communities respond to projects premised on simple capitalist notions of market mechanisms.
Jaap Timmer
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
pp. 951-953