A Network of Perspectives

Abstract

Marketing officers for soft drink corporations regularly declaim them-selves in trade journals and business magazines; they even write books expressing their points of view. By contrast, the points of view of consumers themselves are more elusive, qualitative research notwithstanding. Do consumers encounter in heavily marketed and advertised soft drinks recognizable images of themselves (even if “realistic” in the highly stylized way that Schudson attributes to capitalist realism)—images that reinforce their decisions to purchase certain brands? Or do they confront alienated versions of themselves that provoke resentment or, given the inevitable gap between generic image and particular reality, frustration? Or, perhaps, indifference? When these questions are posed in the course of debating globalization, and especially with regard to Papua New Guinea, they ineluctably lead back to the two opposing views represented by The Gods Must Be Crazy and The Cup. That is, the issue ultimately concerns the efficacy of consumption work: are people able to domesticate the global commodities they use (consume) locally, and, if so, on whose terms? The answer to this last question is rarely unambiguous—despite the predilection of anthropologists to line up on the side of The Cup and to celebrate “the resilience of ‘local’ cultures against some of the exaggerated claims that have been made in the name of globalization” (Jackson 2004, 165).

To the expatriate executives of Shell, we Papua New Guineans are working very hard to take our place in the modern world … We want the world to know that we are civilised and decent and can survive anywhere on this planet … Don’t treat us like primitives.

—From a 1995 letter to a PNG newspaper in reference to a television ad for Shell gasoline