Office of the Vice Provost for International Relations
Columbia and the World

Coffee, gold, and images of souls are three commodities that are produced in Papua New Guinea and bring money into the country. Coffee and gold do so in an obvious way, as commodities in world market exchange; however, souls also operate as commodities because missionaries use the image of "pagan" souls in need of saving to raise money to support their work. These three things are also important for bringing what many rural people in PNG see as valued development to their lives. Coffee and gold bring money, and Christian missionaries bring Western modernity. For these reasons, many people have begun to grow coffee, have converted to Christianity, and have encouraged gold exploration on their lands.

Coffee, gold, and souls are not only means to economic prosperity; they also figure prominently in the way that Papua New Guineans understand themselves as an increasingly modern people. Coffee production, gold mining, and Christianity also affect the natural environment in PNG. Coffee production and gold mining in obvious ways, through changes tied to shifts in agricultural production and through damage done to natural systems by mines. Conversions to Christianity have less readily apparent effects, but they are profound. Historic religious practices and ideologies in much of PNG were tied to the natural world, and this often had sustainable resource use as a by product of belief. Now, Christian ideas employing the Western nature/culture dichotomy have altered these traditional ways of using resources and understanding social relations with the environment. Christianity brings the lens of modernity to nature.

In this project I will study three sets of people: the Gimi, village residents in the Eastern Highlands Province of PNG; merchants in Goroka, the provincial capital of the EHP; and Australians living in Queensland, Australia. I will study the relationships between these people in the production, distribution, and consumption of coffee, gold, and images of souls as commodities extracted from rural PNG, processed and distributed in Goroka, and consumed in Queensland, examining the social, political-economic, historic, and ecological connections between the people in this commodity chain.

In tracing this chain of production, distribution, and consumption, I will also analyze how the people involved in these activities make meaning and imagine difference. Coffee, gold, and souls carry a particular symbolic meaning for rural Papua New Guineans. For them, they are material goods and ideological forms that carry the message, "we are modern." On their journey from production to consumption, these commodities travel through urban centers like Goroka, where to have value in the global marketplace they must carry the mark of the "exotic," "the Other," or the "traditional native," an image that the Gimi are trying to escape. And in Australia, the major point of export for PNG, because of its special connection to PNG as its previous colonial power, people are likely to respond to symbolizations of PNG in ways that are necessarily different.