I. Plantation versus Garden, continued

A. Tourists, officials, planters: tea gardens
B. Tripartite moral economy: workers, managers, and agro-environment

1. Industri

a. Planters: ensured workers' welfare through facilities, invested capital in land and workers
b. Workers took care of agro-environment
c. Agro-environment actively demanded nurture, shaped relationship

2. Bisnis

a. Extractive: most money from resources
b. Degrade environment, destabilize plantation life

C. Fair Trade: revitalized market, but promotes bisnis
D. Garden visions

1. Tourism: http://www.happytrips.com/darjeeling/travel-guide/darjeelings-most-charming-tea-estates/gs35784398.cms
2. Tea marketing: https://happyearthtea.com/blogs/blog/14945005-darjeeling-tea-gardens

 

II. Geographical Indication and the Construction of Darjeeling Tea

A. Tea Board of India: Darjeeling tea "just happens" (Besky 2014:89)
B. Geographical Indication status

1. Darjeeling tea, 1999
2. World Trade Organization regulated
3. Garden image on tea box: "Up in the mist-covered Himalayan Highlands lies Darjeeling, a sacred tea town. We pay respect by blending Darjeeling teas from only the best gardens for an extraordinary tea." "Ingredients: 100% hand-picked Darjeeling tea"
4. Locate products in place as rare, premium price
5. Besky: GI creates "a market in which the consumption of tea is linked to fetishized experiences of place and of labor" (91).
6. Presumed tradition, authenticity of production techniques
7. Terroir: taste of place AND intellectual property
8. Cultural performances and values of time-honored craft--> irony of tea's history of colonial, plantation production

C. Tripartite moral economy

1. Workers: mothers who nurture plants, care = work
2. GI: workers nurture plants, but aesthetic vision: care = idealized natural beauty of landscape and people
3. Darjeeling tea becomes rooted in place and patrimony of nation
4. Producers are made directly relatable to consumers (removed from tripartite moral economy)
5. Plantations = heritage sites

D. GI erases colonial heritage, replaces it with aesthetics

1. How to drink tea (Besky 2014: 97)
2. Women naturalized aesthetically as of the earth
3. Workers' care is timeless, sacred
4. "Third World agrarian imaginary in which low-paid workers are recast as 'natural' guardians of the landscape" (99)
5. No coolies, migrant workers, low-wage laborers

E. Intellectual property

1. Legal protections for 87 gardens in specific area
2. "Others" Nepali tea as imitation
3. Case against Republic of Tea for "Darjeeling nouveau"
4. Permeable borders become fixed
5. Place-based tourism in search of authenticity

F. Erasure of role of plantation management

1. Fetishizes relationship between workers and plants
2. What about social context for labor?
3. Empty relationship: "Increasingly, workers are asked to participate, not in a reciprocal relationship to land and management, but in a performative relationship to consumers" (112).

 

III. Fair Trade

A. Consumers can help producers through purchase
B. Began in Latin American coffee cooperatives, now includes hired labor
C. Late 1990s: Fairtrade Labelling Organizations (FLO) International began certifying Indian tea plantations

1. FLO sets minimum prices
2. FLO sets premium that producer community will distribute

a. Cooperative: members decide
b. Tea plantations: Joint Body of workers and management
c. Result: management has greater power

D. Besky: Fair Trade for Darjeeling tea plantations works against workers: http://www.ucpress.edu/ebook.php?isbn=9780520957602

1. Loans for individualized entrepreneurship: Prakriti and the cow
2. Can't address wages on plantations (set by Indian government)

E. Fair trade acts as if first-world consumer is only viable source of rescue
F. Darjeeling exception: Plantation owners use premiums to supply facilities (medicine, shelter, roads) already mandated by Indian law
G. Fair Trade doesn't change workers' situations, its individualized market approach ignores social and political context of welfare and rights, and makes privileged consumers think they have helped people
H. Hunger strike on a fair trade plantation: owners and workers are not equal, and consumers can't fix this with their benevolence (133).

 

IV. Can a Plantation become a garden, a farm or a homeland?

A. Workers see social investment in plantations as breaking down
B. GI, fair trade, and Gorkhaland don't address what workers see as injustice

1. Movement from industri to bisnis
2. GI, Fair Trade, Gorkhaland make tea workers consumable, "imaginary agricultural subjects" (176)
3. Disciplined forgetting of colonial histories, unequal power relations, and structural inequality (176)

C. Justice for workers = tripartite relationship with juridical, kin, economic, and ecological components
D. What houses signify
E. Is justice possible in the plantation model?

1. Management is accountable to workers
2. To whom are consumers responsible?

 

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