The Darjeeling Distinction - (California Studies in Food and Culture) by Sarah Besky (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Nestled in the Himalayan foothills of Northeast India, Darjeeling is synonymous with some of the finest and most expensive tea in the world. It is also home to a violent movement for regional autonomy that, like the tea industry, dates back to the days of colonial rule.

In this nuanced ethnography, Sarah Besky narrates the lives of tea workers in Darjeeling. She explores how notions of fairness, value, and justice shifted with the rise of fair-trade practices and postcolonial separatist politics in the region. This is the first book to explore how fair-trade operates in the context of large-scale plantations.

Readers in a variety of disciplines--anthropology, sociology, geography, environmental studies, and food studies--will gain a critical perspective on how plantation life is changing as Darjeeling struggles to reinvent its signature commodity for twenty-first-century consumers. The Darjeeling Distinction challenges fair-trade policy and practice, exposing how trade initiatives often fail to consider the larger environmental, historical, and sociopolitical forces that shape the lives of the people they intended to support.

From the Back Cover

"In the clear and evocative writing of Sarah Besky a landscape shaped by tea emerges as the changing terrain where rival ideas of justice are evaluated by the workers whose lives are most directly caught in their implications. Debates over fair trade, notions of terroir, and regional autonomy come together in this painstaking and pathbreaking work that generates terrific insights for anthropological studies of food systems, labor, commodities, and environmental issues from an Indian case of tea industry in the eastern Himalaya." --K. Sivaramakrishnan, Yale University

"Written with beautiful and engaging prose, this book traces three distinct efforts to bring justice and post-colonial modernity to Darjeeling's plantations, showing how the reinforcement of a 'third world agrarian imaginary' fails to confront the violence of plantations themselves. In doing so, The Darjeeling Distinction makes an original and crucial contribution to the growing literature on ethical trade." --Julie Guthman, University of California, Santa Cruz

Review Quotes

"An excellent example of local ethnography . . . an important contribution."-- "American Ethnologist"

"An important book and one of the very few to really understand that Fair Trade is refracted through local processes, ideas, and politics and needs to be understood in that light. It has an important and sober message to impart."-- "Review of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Studies"

"Besky has pushed forward several debates in sociology, anthropology, geography, and economics about the promises and perils of globalization . . . impressive theoretical analysis . . . essential reading."-- "Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal"

"Engaging . . . The Darjeeling distinction is an important critique . . . a vital and timely comment on the burgeoning ethical trade."-- "Social Anthropology"

"Extensive research . . . intriguing; Besky offers insightful solutions."-- "Gastronomica"

"Provides an important ethnographic contribution to the implications of long-distance trade and the deconstruction of different visions of justice in ethical trade."-- "Mountain Research and Development"

"The Darjeeling Distinction is a brilliant and entertaining book. . . . Its accessible and narrative style will surely appeal to a wide audience."-- "Alegra Laboratory"

"This is an important book and one of the very few to really understand that Fair Trade is refracted through local processes, ideas, and politics. . . . It has an important and sober message to impart."-- "Review of Agricultural & Environmental Studies"

"This richly detailed ethnography provides unique and important insights into the 21st century plantation economy.; Impressive field work.""-- "International Journal of Comparative Sociology"

About the Author

Sarah Besky is a cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor in the ILR School at Cornell University