Yali’s Question
Sugar, Culture, and History
9780226217468
9780226217451
Yali’s Question
Sugar, Culture, and History
Yali’s Question is the story of a remarkable physical and social creation—Ramu Sugar Limited (RSL), a sugar plantation created in a remote part of Papua New Guinea. As an embodiment of imported industrial production, RSL’s smoke-belching, steam-shrieking factory and vast fields of carefully tended sugar cane contrast sharply with the surrounding grassland. RSL not only dominates the landscape, but also shapes those culturally diverse thousands who left their homes to work there.
To understand the creation of such a startling place, Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz explore the perspectives of the diverse participants that had a hand in its creation. In examining these views, they also consider those of Yali, a local Papua New Guinean political leader. Significantly, Yali features not only in the story of RSL, but also in Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize winning world history Guns, Germs, and Steel—a history probed through its contrast with RSL’s. The authors’ disagreement with Diamond stems, not from the generality of his focus and the specificity of theirs, but from a difference in view about how history is made—and from an insistence that those with power be held accountable for affecting history.
To understand the creation of such a startling place, Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz explore the perspectives of the diverse participants that had a hand in its creation. In examining these views, they also consider those of Yali, a local Papua New Guinean political leader. Significantly, Yali features not only in the story of RSL, but also in Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize winning world history Guns, Germs, and Steel—a history probed through its contrast with RSL’s. The authors’ disagreement with Diamond stems, not from the generality of his focus and the specificity of theirs, but from a difference in view about how history is made—and from an insistence that those with power be held accountable for affecting history.
360 pages | 28 halftones, 3 maps | 6 x 9 | © 2004
Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture Series
Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology
Asian Studies: Southeast Asia and Australia
Economics and Business: Economics--Development, Growth, Planning
Geography: Cultural and Historical Geography
History: Asian History
Sociology: Social History
Reviews
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction: On Avoiding a History of the Self-Evident and the Self-Interested
1. What Do They (Should They) Want?
2. Factories in Fact and Fancy
3. The Peopling of a Place and the Placing of People
4. Clansman, Family Man, and Family-of-Man Man at RSL
5. The Life of Expatriates: Setting the Standards
6. Replacing Expatriates with Papua New Guineans
7. On Landowners, Outgrowers—and Just a Little Respect
8. On the Road, Mari Style
9. Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water
Conclusion: On Listening
Notes
References
Index
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction: On Avoiding a History of the Self-Evident and the Self-Interested
1. What Do They (Should They) Want?
2. Factories in Fact and Fancy
3. The Peopling of a Place and the Placing of People
4. Clansman, Family Man, and Family-of-Man Man at RSL
5. The Life of Expatriates: Setting the Standards
6. Replacing Expatriates with Papua New Guineans
7. On Landowners, Outgrowers—and Just a Little Respect
8. On the Road, Mari Style
9. Hewers of Wood and Drawers of Water
Conclusion: On Listening
Notes
References
Index