Tobacco Agriculture in Upland Java: An Ethnographic Study of Wealth, Ambiguity and Gender

Objective

Even though tobacco is the leading cause of preventable deaths worldwide and its consumption has received considerable scholarly attention, little is known about the social conditions of the crop’s production. This is especially the case in countries of the Global South such as Indonesia, the fourth biggest producer of tobacco globally. TOBACULT explores the lives and livelihoods of tobacco farmers in upland Central Java, Indonesia. By focusing on Javanese smallholders’ understandings and practices related to tobacco agriculture, the central aim of this project is to examine how smallholders navigate morality and economy in the context of cultivating a crop that they perceive as profitable yet morally ambiguous. This is a social anthropology project that is informed by an interdisciplinary approach connecting perspectives from colonial history, gender studies and agrarian studies. The objectives of this project are: (1) to develop an innovative relational approach to wealth as it underpins the ambiguous moral economy of tobacco agriculture; (2) to investigate how gendered relations of power pervade Javanese smallholder farming and shape the rural inequalities prevalent in the lucrative agro-industry; (3) to analyse how the history of colonial and postcolonial interventions into Javanese agriculture continues to shape smallholders’ experience of tobacco farming. These aims will be reached through one month of archival research in The Hague and seven months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Temanggung Regency in upland Central Java. I will conduct fieldwork based on participant observation, visual recordings, and interviews with smallholders, non-farming residents, bureaucrats, and businesspeople. My methodology will be honed through pre-field training and the research results will be disseminated through an academic and public engagement strategy that includes two journal articles, an academic workshop, and a public blog series.