Viorel Anastasoaie
Current Project


Viorel Anastasoaie

Curriculum Vitae

Current Project
My PhD project concentrates on the significance of work practices and the transmission of knowledge among peasant tobacco-growers in Cuba. More specifically I want to explore how knowledge about tobacco cultivation and preparation for manufacture of cigars is socially produced, transmitted and internalised by Cuban peasants. How these processes of knowledge transmission and economic learning are articulated with kinship and gender relationships? How are they contributing to notions of personhood, morality and social values?

My approach draws upon earlier works on anthropology of work (Susan Wallman), and on anthropology of economic learning (Charles Stafford) and knowledge transmission (Jean Lave, Esther Goody, Fredrik Barth and Maurice Bloch). It is also consistent with recent re-evaluations of cultural meanings associated with production and craftwork such as Roy Dilley's work on textile craftsmen in Africa and Robert Ulin's research amongst Southwest French wine-growers. These recent approaches have brought a fresh perspective in economic  anthropology  by  re-emphasising
the centrality of the learning process in everyday economic activities. Knowledge transmission and skill learning are embedded in social life, and realised in practice by situated learning. The cognitive anthropologist Edwin Hutchins has demonstrated in his rigorously conducted study of navigation on a US navy how cognitive processes are distributed in the social and material environments of the computation team. These processes cannot be reduced to internal, individual mental operations.
Tobacco field Vinales Valley 2001

My research builds upon the remarkable oeuvre of the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, The Cuban Counterpoint of Tobacco and Sugar, published in 1940 with a laudatory preface by B. Malinowski. It is an allegorical presentation of Cuban history as being moulded by tobacco and sugar as two antithetical modes of production and ways of life. Tobacco stood for the free enterprise of smallholding farmers; in contrast, sugar was a product of industrious labour and ingenuity based on large landholdings and on slave labour. They were the result of two different moral economies, with different conceptions of work, time, value and morality. Ortiz interprets tobacco production as a complex process of selection, individualization and distinction comparable to artisan or artistic work.

Whereas Ortiz provided rich ethnographic descriptions on tobacco's cultivation and classification, he nevertheless let untouched the question of knowledge and skill transmission in tobacco-growing communities. My goal would be to fill in this gap by researching the knowledge and skill transmission in a peasant tobacco community in the western region of Cuba (Vuelta Abajo), reputed for its best tobacco in the world. What is interesting about tobacco production after Cuban revolution is the fact that, in spite of various Agrarian Reforms aiming at reducing private land ownership and autonomy   of  peasant   households,  its   production  is
Tobacco growing community in the
Vinales Valley
mostly realised by farmers who own their land. Moreover, during the last decade, tobacco is expanding its economic importance in the Cuban economy, especially by its importance associated with mass tourism.

I plan to carry out fieldwork research for at least one year, covering a complete tobacco cultivation cycle. Participant observation of tobacco-growing and leaf preparation for manufacture and as well as extensive interviews on skills and knowledge of these processes would constitute my main research methods. Participant observation of community life - with special attention to civic, religious rituals and economic activities - will be essential for grasping a holistic picture of the chosen community. Interviews based on the genealogical method and life histories will be essential for analysing kinship relationships and their relevance to work relations and knowledge transmission. A household survey will permit an assessment of household resources and family structures. I will also, if possible, carry out archive research in Pinar del Rio and Havana in order to cover the transformations of tobacco growing after the Revolution.

Last but not least, the process of knowledge transmission is intrinsic to the transmission of social values and of becoming a full member of society as Michael Herzfeld has recently analysed in his fascinating book on Cretan artisans. Likewise, by researching the processes of knowledge production and transmission in a Cuban peasant community we could see how notions of personhood and morality, work conceptions and value creation can illuminate broader aspects of the current transformations of Cuban society.