Indonesia's Cigarette Culture Wars

Contesting Tobacco Regulations in the Postcolony

Bibliographic Data

ID2109249
AuthorsMarina Welker (Cornell University, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume63
Issue4
Pages911-947
Publication date2021-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417521000293
OpenAlexW3206093399
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited66

This article juxtaposes representations of Indonesia's tobacco control as temporally backwards with a counter-discourse defending its clove-laced cigarettes-called kretek-as a form of distinctive cultural heritage. These opposing discourses, which I characterize as public health evolutionism and commodity nationalism, structure clashes over Indonesian tobacco regulations. Public health evolutionism can take the form of voyeuristic, exoticizing, and Othering representations, but it can also be used to argue for more equitable access to global tobacco control knowledge and practices. Commodity nationalists insist that the kretek industry should be a source of pride rather than shame, depicting tobacco control as a neocolonial plot to destroy an indigenous industry that benefits small farmers, factory workers, and home industries. This subaltern emphasis obscures the fact that a few large companies dominate the industry, which is increasingly foreign-owned and mechanizing to increase production while reducing employment. The cigarette industry takes advantage of both discourses by marketing supposedly safer products to consumers alarmed by public health messaging, while also promoting the cigarettes-as-national-heritage narrative and undermining regulations. The stakes of these debates are high in the world's second largest cigarette market, with over three hundred billion sticks smoked each year and more than two hundred thousand tobacco-related deaths

Commoditization · Commodity · Economics · Market economy · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Public health · Sociology · Tobacco control · Tobacco industry · Asian Studies and History · Law · Medicine · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

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