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Paper short abstract

This paper shows how ruins of colonial copra estates in Fiji continue to shape discussions about economic realities and emerging possibilities of future transformation, as new configurations of economy appear to be on the horizon.

Paper long abstract

In this paper, I examine how collective memories and material remnants of the colonial plantation economy shape discussions about economic realities and emerging possibilities in eastern Fiji. First, by exploring the political economy of coconut farming and circumstances of economic stagnation in the archipelago of Lau, I show how remnants of the colonial era continue to inform an ambivalent field of negotiation between past and future transformations of rural villages. Ruins of copra estates and their plantations evoke nostalgic sentiments that are not orienting people towards restoring colonial order, but appeals to recover a formerly proven economic potency when the archipelago was more fully integrated into an expansive world economy. Second, I trace how labor practices of the contemporary coconut economy are viewed and how they influence debates on development and value. Some contend that copra and its ruins belong to the past and that communities should prioritize other ventures, such as virgin coconut oil production, to access global “high-value markets” and potentially catalyze larger industrial transformation. In addition to implying different labor arrangements and gendered divisions of work, these alternative economic modes fragment the coconut’s potency into competing visions of future change. To ethnographically explore these temporal and emergent forms of economic life, I develop the analytical framework “imminent economies” to show how past social arrangements and materialities are folded into transformative imaginaries, and how processes of ruination and restoration are perceived as new configurations of economy appear to be on the horizon.