Eating and Being Eaten: The Meanings of Hunger among Marind

ABSTRACT

In this article, I explore how Marind communities in West Papua experience and interpret hunger. Drawing from Indigenous discourse and practice, I examine how agro-industrial expansion and commodified foodways provoke multiple, conflicting hungers among Marind – for sago, “plastic” foods, money, and human flesh. In tandem, Marind themselves are subjected to the insatiable appetite of various invasive entities – corporations, the government, roads, cities, and oil palm. I argue that hunger constitutes a symbolically charged, culturally constructed, and morally laden experiential mode through which Marind characterize and contest capitalist modernity and its more-than-human dynamics of eating and being eaten.

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© 2021 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor&Francis Group, LLC

KEYWORDS:

• West Papua
• Marind
• food
• hunger
• capitalism
• ecology

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Acknowledgments

I thank the Marind communities of the Upper Bian, the Merauke Secretariat for Peace and Justice, and Yayasan PUSAKA for their hospitality during my fieldwork. I extend particular thanks to Warwick Anderson, Elspeth Probyn, and Darmanto for their insightful comments and feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. Ethics approval for fieldwork was received from the Macquarie University Human Research Ethics Committee on 31 March 2015 (Reference Number 5201500051).

Notes

1. Pseudonyms are used for all persons and places, with the exception of major cities, provinces, and ethnic groups. Terms in Indonesian and logat Papua - a Papuan creole of Indonesian - are italicized and terms in Marind are underlined.

2. A revised version of this opening anecdote featured in a commentary published by the investigative journalism organization Mongabay as part of an advocacy campaign to curb oil palm expansion in Merauke and neighboring districts (see Chao 2020b).

Additional information

Funding

Fieldwork and research towards this article were supported by a Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (Ref: 9196), a Macquarie University Fieldwork Grant, and a University of Sydney Research Stipend and Faculty Research Support Scheme grant

Notes on contributors

Sophie Chao

Sophie Chao is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Sydney’s School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry. Her research examines the intersections of Indigeneity, capitalism, ecology, health, and justice in the Pacific. For more information, please visit www.morethanhumanworlds.com. Address correspondence to: Sophie Chao PhD, University of Sydney, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, Room K6.04, The Quadrangle, NSW 2006 Australia. Email: [email protected]. ORCID: 0000-0002-5434-9238.