This project will study the market processes focusing on the flow of fatty meats from the developed to the developing world, a flow that has become controversial given the increasing world-wide prevalence of diet-related life-style diseases. The project investigates the trade of lamb and mutton flaps (sheep bellies) as they are exported from New Zealand and Australia into Papua New Guinea, where they are consumed to the pleasure of many, and into Fiji, where they have recently been banned for health reasons by the national government to the discontent of many. The anthropologist researchers will study how this Pacific trade works: asking what sorts of understandings it takes to drive this trade; how much New Zealand and Australian processors and purveyors of lamb and mutton flaps know and need to know about the meaning of (fatty) meat to Papua New Guineans or Fijians in order to cultivate an existing market or develop a new one; how they decide whether to export a cut of meat as is, additionally process it so as to add value, render, or dump it at a loss (sometimes literally in the sea). The ethnographers will analyze how relationships are established and maintained with a culturally diverse range of importers and distributors. The field workers will study how and why Papua New Guinean and Fijian consumers embrace or eschew such cuts of meat, and how the governments of Papua New Guinea and Fiji reach decisions about what is good for their citizens, decisions which may go against consumer desires. Using a methodology involving participant-observation in four different contexts, this project will trace the flow of fatty meats from New Zealand and Australian pastures to Papua New Guinean and Fijian pots. In constructing an ethnographically grounded study of the flow of fatty meat, it will, thus, document the dilemmas and copings by a range of peoples and polities, which together make up - and sometimes regulate -- the market. Most broadly, this project will be presenting an important case study of the workings of global trade -- of international markets -- in shaping and in responding to local economies, diets, and governmental concerns. This new information will be relevant to public debates about the appropriate relationships between national sovereignty and consumer choice in a global marketplace. In essence, these are debates about whether the market should be regulated by governments deciding what is best for their citizens or be regulated by consumers deciding what is best for themselves.
