Economies of Care - by Olivia Barnett-Naghshineh (Hardcover)

About the Book

Examines emotional aspects of economic life in the marketplaces of Papua New Guinea, where market women's labour is a nexus for gender relations.

Book Synopsis

Economies of Careexplores how women market traders in Goroka, Papua New Guinea, navigate a complex moral economy rooted in care, reciprocity, and spiritual value. Challenging Western, individualistic assumptions of classical economic theory, this open access book foregrounds emotional labour and community responsibility as central to economic life.
Through vivid ethnographic storytelling, Olivia Barnett-Naghshineh reveals how women's economic choices are shaped not by personal gain, but by relational ethics and cosmological worldviews. Set against the backdrop of climate change, urbanization, and colonial-capitalist disruption, this book also proposes agro-ecology as a just and sustainable alternative.
A bold and timely intervention in feminist anthropology, Economies of Care speaks to scholars and students of anthropology, gender studies, Pacific studies, food studies and political economy.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the European Research Council.

Review Quotes

"This book is based on 12 months fieldwork in Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea that focussed on the gender dynamics of growing and selling food in the main urban fresh food market in the provincial capital Goroka. The study was part of a broader one which sought to understand the Goroka marketplace from the perspective of the actors most involved in it. Her fieldwork was spread between living in Goroka town, peri-urban settlements and villages throughout the province. She participated in marriage, death and birth feasts and transactions as well as compensation payments and church events. She illustrates how foods in different categories are viewed with one traditional food crop, winged bean (as bin), managed to produce edible tubers rather than beans, and an introduced food crop, broccoli. Her central arguments are that the gifting economy, in which the marketplace is embedded, is an economy where the emotions of others are marked by mutual recognition and displayed through exchanges of food, money and pigs. The book makes a significant contribution to discussions within economic anthropology on the distinction between gifts and commodities, the role of women in 'egalitarian' Highland societies and understanding women's agency." --Dr Mike Bourke, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University, Canberra

"Theoretically wide-ranging and engagingly written, Economies of Care makes substantial contributions to the anthropology of gender, food studies, debates about gift and commodity exchange, and women's marketing practices. Barnett-Naghshineh astutely demonstrates how women exercise agency and achieve recognition through the production, gifting, and sale of their market produce. I particularly loved the two chapters comparing winged bean (an indigenous, ceremonial, deeply valued crop) with broccoli (an introduced commodity crop). The comparison is groundbreaking in its consideration of the central role women play in producing both of these crops that so profoundly differ materially and epistemologically. Throughout the book, women's experiences, voices, and interpretations are prominent. This book has made me see Papua New Guinea markets, and the women who are the public face and central actors of markets, in a whole new way." --Holly Wardlow, University of Toronto, Canada

"In Economies of Care, Olivia Barnett-Naghshineh offers a deeply empathetic and analytically rigorous portrait of women navigating the intersection of gift and commodity exchange in Goroka's fresh food markets. The book illuminates how care-understood as emotional labor, reciprocal obligation, and ethical commitment-operates at the heart of Melanesian economic life. Through rich ethnographic detail, Barnett-Naghshineh shows how gendered labor in the marketplace not only sustains families and communities but also challenges simplistic binaries between tradition and modernity as well as subsistence and capitalism. By tracing how women generate value through acts of care and social recognition, Economies of Care compels us to rethink what markets are, how they work, and why gender matters. A vital contribution to feminist anthropology, economic ethnography, and Pacific studies, this book is rather magnificent." --Paige West, Columbia University, USA

About the Author

Olivia Barnett-Naghshineh is a social anthropologist and postdoctoral fellow at Aarhus University. She is also a Research Associate with the University of Exeter and the University of East Anglia. She has taught courses in Decolonising Anthropology and Postcolonial Culture and Global Policy at Goldsmiths, University of London.