I. Nationalist Repercussions: Photography in Indonesia

A. Colonial narratives of maps and identity often adopted by nationalists
B. Gandhi: India and later partition
C. Classify peoples, traditions, cultures
D. Role of photography (Strassler 2010): anxieties about nation, modernity, tradition in Indonesia
E. Ibu Soekilah's photo collection
F. Photos shape what people see as Indonesia

1. Landscapes, activities
2. Entwine personal narratives with historical events
3. Young man who "'smelled of the Communist Party'" (3)
4. "It is through the reflexive production and circulation of images that 'imagined' social entities like nations become visible and graspable, that they come to seem to exist prior to and independent of those images" (4).
5. Connect intimate and public

G. Genres: photojournalism, studio portraits, amateur photographers
H. Role of Chinese: "brokers of a specifically Indonesian modernity" (15).
I. Tension: global modernity versus nostalgic indigenous tradition
J. Colonialism enacted in specific ways

1. Power exercised through census, map, museum
2. Power felt and contested through self, family, technology

K. Complex, multiple claims about culture and identity get flattened or exaggerated in political contests over who "we" and "others" are or should be
L. Like census, map, or museum, photographs create categories and identities that they seem only to be documenting
M. Introductory activity: our own photos
N. Micro, unremarkable ways that people come to envision themselves and their worlds: Darjeeling tea and visions of justice

 

II. Darjeeling

A. Besky, Sarah. 2014. The Darjeeling Distinction: Labor and Justice on Fair-Trade Tea Plantations in India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
B. Topic [i.e., "this book..." statement]: "This book narrates how Darjeeling tea workers' ideas about value, plantation life, and social justice emerge through their encounters with tea's colonial legacy. It shows how these ideas have been reshaped by strategies to reinvent Darjeeling tea for twenty-first-century consumers seeking not only escape and refinement, but also, through 'fair trade' and other agricultural certification schemes, a sense of social solidarity in their daily cup" (2).
C. Central argument

1. 3 visions of justice: Fair Trade, Geographical Indication (GI), and Gorkhaland: "Each, then, attempted to put tea workers 'in the market' for the purposes of achieving different kinds of justice. If there is a market for justice, however, then some ideas (i.e., those of owners, consumers, and powerful politicians) will dominate while others (i.e., those of workers) will be suppressed" (21).
2. Plantation labor, in workers' eyes, offers some promise of sustaining people and plants over time, and fair trade, GI, and Gorkhaland, despite their claims to justice, ultimately provide little promise of improvement" (33).

D. Today: history of Darjeeling tea production and consumption
E. Wednesday and Friday: 3 movements that claim to be seeking justice for tea workers
F. Locating Darjeeling: Besky 2014: xxi

 

III. History of Darjeeling tea

A. Besky: emergence of production landscape through interaction of cultural, environmental, economic, and geopolitical processes
B. British East India Company, founded in 1600

1. Hill stations and health
2. Wars with Nepal (1814-16) and Burma (1824-26 and 1852): lands in the Himalayas come under the East India Company
3. Darjeeling comes from Dorje-ling monastery (thunderbolt place in Tibetan)
4. 1835: East India Company annexes small area to become hill station: uninhabited "wasteland"

C. Nepal, late 18th, early 19th c.

1. Gorkha rulers gave status to high caste Hindus
2. Eastern Nepalis displaced into the mountains, conscripted into kingdom's army
3. British respected the skills of "Gurkhas," soldiers against whom they fought

D. After 1814-1816, British annex Darjeeling
E. 1820s: East India Company recruits landless Nepalis for Gurkha regiments (wage labor)
F. British tea consumption increases

1. Problem of reliance on China
2. Intensive and extensive cultivation would "improve" Asian populations and land
3. Show off glory of empire through production and consumption

G. Darjeeling production

1. Research: "As part of 'improvement,' colonial governments needed to understand the florae, faunae, and geologies of these new colonies so that they could be integrated into commercial use" (49-50).
2. Assam, to the east, is not as similar in climate to Southwest China as Darjeeling
3. Commercial planting + on-site processing technology --> plantation system and economy of scale
4. Tea cultivation grows

a. 1866: 39 "gardens," 10,000 acres, annual production of 433,000 pounds
b. 1870: 56 gardens, 11,000 acres, 8000 Nepali workers, 1,708,000 pounds
c. 1873: Machinery introduced
d. 1874: 113 gardens, 20,000 laborers
e. Late 1800s: 64,000 laborers (1/3 of population of district), 96% were Nepali
f. 1940: 142 gardens, 63,059 acres, 23,721,500 pounds

H. Land: leases to "improve"
I. Labor

1. British saw Gurkha as hardworking, industrious, and loyal
2. Nepali recruiters
3. Today, most tea plantation workers are descendants of Nepali migrant laborers