How Universal is the Commodity Market? A Reflection on a Market Penetration and Local Responses in Timor-Leste

Abstract

This article analyzes the situation of coffee production in present-day Timor-Leste, in which productivity-oriented recommendations for coffee plantation management and site-specific cultural logic coexist. In effect, this situation can be connected to the problem of the lack of agency in local farmers' reactions to market penetration. A site-specific cultural dimension seems to illustrate agency on the rural farmers' side. However, the agency located only within local mediation is insufficient because the very function of mediating markets must be achieved primarily unintentionally under the logic of market penetration. In my opinion, this clearly suggests that local cultural values and economic rationality are interdependently constituted as guiding principles of composition elements of the situation set by the categorization of local institutional mediation of market penetration. It is therefore critically important to recognize that the categorization of social action such as "local mediation" at the base of a discursive space for political maneuvers constitutes the gap between "local" institutions and generalizable economic activities, and not the other way round. Thus understood, a comparative perspective on the commoditization process may direct our attention to the potential plurality in accomplishing the interdependent constitution of universal market and local institutions, suggesting that market penetration and local institutions should be treated as essentially interlaced social phenomena.