Research Associate, Buffalo Museum of Science

Adjunct Professor, College of Asian and Pacific Studies, School of Culture, History and Language, Australian National University

Customer Care

The Corporation in Anthropology

Things to Do with Brands: Creating and Calculating Value

Big Men and Business: Morality, Debt and the Corporation

The moral economy of mobile phones implies a field of shifting relations among consumers, companies and state actors, all of whom have their own ideas about what is good, fair and just. These ideas inform the ways in which, for example, consumers acquire and use mobile phones; companies promote and sell voice, SMS and data subscriptions; and state actors regulate both everyday use of mobile phones and market activity around mobile phones. Ambivalence and disagreement about who owes what to whom is thus an integral feature of the moral economy of mobile phones. This volume identifies and evaluates the stakes at play in the moral economy of mobile phones. The six main chapters consider ethnographic cases from Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Vanuatu. The volume also includes a brief introduction with background information on the recent ‘digital revolution’ in these countries and two closing commentaries that reflect on the significance of the chapters for our understanding of global capitalism and the contemporary Pacific.

The Moral Economy of Mobile Phones: Pacific Islands Perspectives

The P.G.T. Black Collection is one of the oldest and largest collections of material culture from the western Pacific Islands (Melanesia) made by a single person.  For the first time, an international group of scholars investigates the circumstances under which the Black Collection was assembled between 1886 and 1916, and transferred from Australia to the Buffalo Museum of Science (BMS) in 1938. Objects from the collection have been displayed not only at the BMS, but also at other leading museums in the United States.  The volume explains and explores how things in the collection have been and can be valued--sometimes in competing and contradictory ways--as fine art, ethnographic artifacts, and commodities to be exchanged.

Art, Artifact, Commodity: Perspectives on the P.G.T. Black Collection

This book explores globalization through a historical and anthropological study of how familiar soft drinks such as Coke and Pepsi became valued as more than mere commodities. Foster discusses the transnational operations of soft drink companies and, in particular, the marketing of soft drinks in Papua New Guinea, a country only recently opened up to the flow of brand name consumer goods. Based on field observations and interviews, as well as archival and library research, this book is of interest to anyone concerned about the cultural consequences and political prospects of globalization, including new forms of consumer citizenship and corporate social responsibility.

Coca-Globalization: Following Soft Drinks from New York to New Guinea

Materializing the Nation: Commodities, Consumption, and Media in Papua New Guinea by Foster, Robert J. (2002) Paperback

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Social Reproduction and History in Melanesia: Mortuary Ritual, Gift Exchange, and Custom in the Tanga Islands (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology) by Robert John Foster (1995-05-26)

In this theoretically sophisticated volume, contributors examine the process of nation making in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu- states that attained formal political independence between 1970 and 1980. The remarkable cultural diversity within these states demands close ethnographic study of different groups and their contesting definitions of nationhood and leads to highly original approaches. The essays explore the political conditions and cultural assumptions that inform how Melanesians variously imagine a national community. The authors interpret a wide range of materials, from political speeches and official ceremonies of state to newspaper advertisements and life crisis rites. They demonstrate both how the legacies of divisive colonial rule, the weakness of the postcolonial state, and the exigencies of capitalist markets undermine the processes of nation making in contemporary Melanesia and how new forms of popular and consumer culture potentially shape an emergent national consciousness.Comparative and historical in its orientation, this book will appeal to readers not only in anthropology but in political science, social history, and cultural studies. It will be of special value to those interested in comparative politics and history, Pacific studies, ethnicity and nationalism, and colonial and postcolonial studies.Robert J. Foster is Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Rochester.

Nation Making: Emergent Identities in Postcolonial Melanesia

The University of Rochester is one of the country's top-tier research universities. Our campuses are home to 200 academic majors, more than 2,000 faculty and instructional staff, and some 10,000 students.The University gives students exceptional opportunities for interdisciplinary study and close collaboration with faculty through its unique cluster-based curriculum. Its College, School of Arts and Sciences, and Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences are complemented by its Eastman School of Music, Simon School of Business, Warner School of Education, Laboratory for Laser Energetics, School of Medicine and Dentistry, School of Nursing, Eastman Institute for Oral Health, and the Memorial Art Gallery. 





University of Rochester

Foster is known for his research on globalization, media, consumption, and corporations. He has done extensive fieldwork in Papua New Guinea since 1984. His current projects include research on the history of the P.G.T. Black Collection of Pacific Islands artifacts at the Buffalo Museum of Science, where he is a research associate. He is also examining the role of information and communication technologies in shaping the moral and cultural dimensions of socioeconomic life in Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

Foster is the editor of two books and the author of three books, most recently Coca-Globalization: Following Soft Drinks from New York to New Guinea (2008). He has authored several book chapters and articles for academic journals including Cultural Anthropology, Museum Anthropology, and Anthropological Theory.

His research has been supported by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, the Australian-American Educational Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Spencer Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Lewis Henry Morgan

Melanesia

Commercial Media

Globalization

Material Culture

Social Theory

Nationalism

Corporations and Society

Mobile Phones

Papua New Guinea

Faculty Profile

Personal Website

The Year of Purchasing and Purging

‘Lewis Henry Morgan at 200’ reintroduces a landmark scholar

In remote regions of the South Pacific, cell phones have transformed daily life

Professor of Anthropology and Visual and Cultural Studies, Richard L. Turner Professor of Humanities

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