Content area
Full Text
ENGAGING WITH CAPITALISM: Cases from Oceania. Research in Economic Anthropology, v. 33. Edited by Fiona McCormack, Kate Barclay. Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2013. x, 357pp. (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 thejuxtaposition of the "partible" or "dividual" of personhood associated with Melanesian ontologies and models of "possessive individualism" associated...