Imagined Commodities: The Buying, Selling, And Producing Of Language And Words In Indonesian Agricultural Projects

Abstract

The proliferation of green capitalist opportunities for rural farmers has expanded market integration to the furthest corners of the globe. Fair Trade, organics, System of Rice Intensification (SRI) and other alternative development programs within agriculture have significantly changed the way that consumers, organizations, and producers interact. While these changing interactions between these groups have been studied, surprisingly little research has been done on the changing forms of the commodities being exchanged. This paper explores the complex nature of the commodities within green capitalism through an ethnographic study of an SRI project in West Java, Indonesia. I contend that the new world of commodities in green capitalism of agriculture has become delinked from the tangible, and that a new commodity being exchanged in this project is the idea of and the word organic. These "imagined commodities" are an important step in rethinking the importance of cultural and social values within economics.