Abstract
Green honey is a substance reputedly made under the ground by a powerful bee endemic to Palawan Island. Stories of its mysterious origins have circulated for years across the Philippines. ‘Underground’ is a place on Palawan – a nationally significant subterranean river sometimes rumoured to be a source of green honey. But beyond this specific site, and in quite another sense, the underground can also refer to a space where production occurs through shared imaginings but remains unseen. This article explores how the circulation of green honey produced in this underground space has shaped the lived place of Underground. Multi-sited ethnography is used to investigate how the social lives of green honey across the Philippines, including their embedded politics, reorganize the value of ‘local’ honey on Palawan. Greening honey, the author argues, involves materializing the purported origins of substances through their forms as bottled objects.
Recently arrived in Metro Manila from Palawan Island, I am walking around a monthly farmers’ market popular with some middle-class Filipinos. In the absence of the air conditioning offered by Manila’s famous malls, crowds of shoppers are partially shaded in the heat by a few leafy green trees and covered stalls. Through transformation from the lot’s typical weekday use as part of the Central Business District, shoppers or families gathered for a weekend meal are able to purchase goods which are often marketed as artisanal and, as such, distinct from those available elsewhere. These distinctions include a particular emphasis on ‘local’ or ‘native’ food products, meaning specialty products from different regions of the diverse archipelago. Such products include several bottled honeys available at different stalls. As is common to bottled honeys in the Philippines, the appearance of those available for purchase at this market differ in that the variation in substances and containers results in a myriad of forms. The colour and texture of honey varies significantly from light, pale yellows to dark, reddish browns. Containers might be uniform jars purchased for this purpose, or a variety of clear glass or plastic bottles recycled from popular commodities such as soft drinks or liquor. Amid these variations, one type is distinguished from the typical palette of honey by its vivid green colour. Across the range of clear containers used to bottle green honey, the greenness of green honey makes otherwise different bottled substances recognizable. At the time of this 2012 account, green honey products are rarely being displayed with this prominence in the type of palengke markets frequented by Palawan residents in the capital city of Puerto Princesa, where the sale of green honey has been banned by the local government. This disjuncture indicates how associations between green honey and the place of Palawan are made beyond that Island. Sites such as farmers’ markets in Manila are important locales where knowledge about green honey is made. A potential customer browsing past green honey displayed at these stalls might hear statements of ‘Honey Ma’am’ or ‘from Palawan’ called by the tinderas (saleswomen) who often broker such transactions. Tinderas offer other potential insights into green honey’s purported origins – it is ‘natural’, ‘from bees’, from ‘the forest’ and from ‘in the ground’.
Introduction
Where are the origins of fakes apparent? In what regimes of value might fakes circulate as more, rather than less, than other kinds of things? How might such potential contribute to the power of fakes to shape knowledge produced about the origins and associated qualities of goods? The vignette which introduces green honey positions fakes as things which both complicate and constitute questions of authenticity. In this article, I examine the social lives of products circulating as a substance called green honey which is bottled, often labelled, and sold at outlets such as markets across the Philippines. This substance is reputedly made under the ground by a powerful bee endemic to Palawan Island, in the Philippines. The supposedly superior qualities of this substance are attributed to its rumoured manufacture by this underground insect. The greenness of the substance communicates these associations and origins to knowing and curious consumers. The tangible and intangible processes of adding greenness to honey have created products which are visually more identifiable as being from Palawan Island than any other honey. As a result, the social lives of green honey objects which circulate across the Philippines reorganize the value of ‘local’ honey on Palawan through a complex nexus of politics, place making and knowledge production.
I began encountering the topic of green honey through a multi-sited ethnographic study of value making and Palawan forest honey in the Philippines. What I refer to as ‘forest honey’ is harvested primarily by indigenous families from hives located on the branches or inside the trunks of trees in the tropical rainforest. In 2011, I was discussing types of honey with Marielle, 1 a woman whose business ventures included buying forest honey harvested by her indigenous Tagbanua neighbours. After discussing the differences between hives inside and outside of trees she interrupted herself to declare – ‘Ay! …The third one is … under the land!’ ‘Under the soil?’ I asked. ‘Yeah but I didn’t see it’, she replied. Our interview was taking place at her home, in one of three barangays (administrative divisions) surrounding the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park, an area that includes the keystone site often colloquially referred to as Underground. During the course of my research at Underground and beyond I was to hear from a diverse range of people who themselves had heard that such honey was produced by an ‘underground insect’. It is through such everyday exchanges that the often disparate underground origins of honey have been made over time. For years, these stories have circulated across rural and urban Palawan and even through the Philippine diaspora, and yet their own origins are also elusive.
In the narrative that follows, I discuss three different types of ‘underground’ origins and the relationships between them. The first refers to the rumours that a potent bee produces honey ‘under the ground’. The second refers to the place of Underground. The third refers to how, beyond this specific site and in quite another sense, ‘the underground’ can also be used to think about a space where production occurs through shared imaginings but remains unseen. This article explores how the circulation of green honey produced in such an underground space has shaped the lived place of Underground. Rumours that green honey is made ‘under the ground’ are an essential element of this underground production. It is much more common for green honey to be talked around as an elusive, mysterious matter than for one to declare knowledge that it is fake. Green honey is more often spoken of in an open-ended sense as a substance with the potential to be ‘real’, even as it is implied this is doubtful. To make green honey underground, therefore, creates the space for production to occur outside of direct observation. The underground manufacture of green honey is only partially known – its authenticity reliant on what is both dubious and wonderful.
The ambiguity of green honey has not diminished its capacity to produce and reorganize value. Rather, I argue in this article that materializing the supposed origins of green honey through their forms as bottled substances has often increased their potential to do so. I firstly frame the subsequent discussion by clarifying what it is that green honey fakes. I then focus on the specific aspects of green honey’s purported origins and the associations which are made between these origins and the reputed qualities of green honey. In doing so, I outline how contested claims regarding production are complicated by the biographies and properties of green honey. I conclude this narrative by suggesting that ethnographic insights from the place of Underground provide an important perspective for considering the politics of green honey’s underground production.
What does green honey fake?
Key studies have established that fakes are not a singular type of thing. A presumed line between what is ‘real’ and ‘fake’ concern ontological questions of categorization (Nakassis, 2012; Reyes, 2017). It is possible for such categorizations themselves to become disrupted by the social lives of the objects (Appadurai, 1986; Kopytoff, 1986). Examples include branded or imitation clothes which could be made from the same fabrics in the same factories (Crăciun, 2012; Nakassis, 2013), wax casts of sample food plates moulded by the impressions of real food objects (Cox, 2007), or synthetic sapphires which are in some ways indistinguishable from natural sapphires owing to the similar ways in which they are composed and produced, even though the former is made in a lab rather than in the ground (Walsh, 2010: 99–100). Rather than taking for granted some things as ‘fakes’, Constantine Nakassis (2013: 111) prompts researchers to consider the pertinent question, what is being faked?
When the ‘realness’ or ‘fakeness’ of green honey is debated within the Philippines, participants in these discussions are not necessarily denying that specific bottled objects are sold as such. That is, no one is suggesting that I imagined viewing the bottled objects I describe in this article’s introductory vignette. Rather, what is at stake are claims about the origins of green honey and its reputed associated efficacy as a result of material properties derived from a provenance: on Palawan, within forests, as made by underground insects. The bottled objects are accepted as ‘real’ enough, what is contested are claims about their biographies, composition and their associated qualities. What is particularly important to note about green honey is that its value is not established through attempts to imitate another original. While honey is produced on Palawan Island and has a reputation throughout the Philippines as being of good quality, that honey is not a vivid green colour. Green honey, then, is not an appropriation or imitation of a specific type of Palawan honey, but draws on a more general association with the place of Palawan. So, whilst labels might specifically name Palawan as the alleged provenance of the substance, the case of green honey differs in a significant way from many examples of governing terroir, for instance, where place names have been popularly used as generic terms for products, such as sparkling wine being referred to as ‘Champagne’ (see Barham, 2003: 128–129).
The question of what green honey fakes is also quite different to what is faked in the broader geopolitics of honey laundering, where adulterated or misprovenanced honey is sold on international scales (see Carter and Gunning-Trant, 2006: 1233; Molan, 1996: 259). What green honey fakes are associations with forms of ‘natural’ production which are assembled to suggest the invented origins and composition of bottled honey. This has similarities to, for example, practices in Venezuela where small insects such as ants are placed in bottles of fake honey as imposters of stingless bees, to suggest that the honey is somehow genuine by presence of these alleged producers (Vit et al., 2011: 786). In the Philippines, I met a vendor canvassing honey in Metro Manila who brought sections of honeycomb along with bottled honey to prove his claims about its production. These examples suggest that the appearance of bottled honey prior to these inclusions or accompaniments is not perceived to be suggestive enough of its alleged natural origins. 2 What then is suggested by an altering of form to appear more-than-natural? What does an added greenness say that other honey palettes do not?
Placing green honey as a forest wonder
Investigating green honey’s greenness requires examining particular aspects of substances’ purported origins and the associations which are made between these origins and the reputed qualities of green honey. Here I examine contested claims regarding green honey’s production and efficacy, including connections between greenness, forests, nature and place (of Palawan generally and Underground more specifically). Three specific but often interrelated aspects of origins are considered in discussing the biographies and properties of green honey: being sourced from Palawan forests; production under the ground by a mysterious insect which might utilize chlorophyll to make honey green; and, an association with the place of Underground, which has in recent years become a prominent ecotourism site following its inauguration as one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature.
From Palawan forests
Across the Philippines, honey sourced from Palawan Island has a significant reputation as a natural product which is particularly good for the health of its consumers as a result of being harvested from Palawan’s iconic forests. Such honey is often labelled as ‘wild’ or ‘forest’ honey to distinguish it from honey produced through apiculture. Within a domestic market the provenance of Palawan is enough to create an association with forest origins, owing to the relatively high level of forest cover on Palawan Island compared to the Philippines more broadly. Due to these forest associations, Palawan honey is promoted as not containing possibly dangerous or undesirable inclusions (like chemicals), while simultaneously containing beneficial natural properties that positively contribute to health (such as vitamins and antioxidants). The colours, textures, tastes and fragrances of Palawan honey vary significantly according to sources of nectar, seasonality and species of bees: stickier; from sweet to bittersweet; yellows that appear more white, red, orange or brown; honeys that smell of certain flowers to the expert nose.
The availability of Palawan honey in places like the Island’s capital of Puerto Princesa City, or across the Philippines in Metro Manila or Los Baños make it possible for those geographically removed from Palawan forests to consume a distanced-yet-local nature for the benefit of their (and often family members’) bodies and wellbeing. The reputation of Palawan forests for producing honey with such potential is well known across the Philippines, and Palawan honey is often priced accordingly. This view is well summarized by a businesswoman selling honey from northern Luzon at a Metro Manila weekend farmers’ market who appraised Palawan honey as, ‘very good, but very expensive’. This commonly perceived expense makes Palawan honey a distinctive product, affordable as a luxury for those who shop at urban farmers’ markets and upscale, boutique tiangge (grouping of covered stalls) in places like Metro Manila or purchase Palawan honey as a pasalubong gift during visits to Palawan.
Enter the infamous green honey, reputed to be a specialized product supposedly endemic to Palawan Island. 3 Green honey is not an imitation of the honey described above (which I refer to hereafter as Palawan honey). Rather green honey is a distinct kind of an already distinct product. Green honey is commonly sold as a bottled object, in a clear container such as a glass recycled drink vessel. Such containers allow the viewer to see its coloured contents even when, as is often the case, the bottle is affixed with printed, adhesive labels. Labels mark bottles of green honey with a variety, and sometimes combination, of names – Forest Wonder, Natural Wonders, Wild Green Honey, Healing Colors. What unites these different bottled objects across multiple kinds of containers and labels is its deep, dark green colour. This greenness has become established over years through the practices of different manufacturers and the circulation of narratives about the origins of green honey. This vivid green colour does not necessarily attempt to imitate a colour found in a specific natural substance, but materializes an association with forests more broadly, and with nature more vaguely.
This deep, dark green honey makes materially obvious the alleged natural source of the substance. The human manufacturers of such green honey products are doing what Palawan Island’s bees are not – making a substance so vividly green that a connection to its alleged forest origins appears obvious. These connections are themselves linked to green honey’s high value as a substance which is rumoured to be rare and supposedly of exceptional medicinal properties. Such value is both reflected in and constituted through the price of this honey, which is extravagant compared to Palawan honey. Between 2010–2012, I worked with manlalbet (Tagbanua honey harvesters) and their families at Underground and the surrounds. During the 2011 and 2012 honey seasons, it cost approximately PHP25–30 to purchase honey directly from these families in the unit of a ginebra bote (recycled gin bottle). A similar amount of honey, repackaged and perhaps processed by intermediaries could sell through retailers at the local tourism pier or in the Island capital of Puerto Princesa for between PHP80–200. Comparatively, green honey sold in Metro Manila during 2012 was priced between PHP300–1100 depending on the size of the bottle. This relatively expensive price is established and justified through the reputation of green honey as a more valuable kind of an already valuable product. That is, green honey is supposed to noticeably possess to a greater degree the qualities that make other Palawan honeys valuable.
An underground insect
The greenness of green honey is explained in a number of ways through the extensive rumours that circulate around green honey. These stories are pervasive in rural and urban Palawan Island as well as across the Philippines, and have been for a considerable number of years. Foremost amongst these stories is that an insect produces green honey under the ground, inside the earth or under the soil. Other, not necessarily discrete, explanations suggest that the honey is produced by a specific species of bee that selects only one variety of plant, and that the bee uses green algae to produce honey. Amongst these stories, the bee itself is often described as being particularly aggressive and powerful – endowed with a sting that can paralyse or kill those that attempt to harvest its honey. The tales that travel about this bee and its abilities reinforce explanations that green honey is difficult to harvest, rare and potent. A further testament to this value is that the bee only produces green honey in small amounts.
The ambiguous making of green honey origins is demonstrated through examination of a discussion that took place in 2012 during a meeting to share my research findings with Palawan scientists, government officials and civil society representatives. When one attendee asked how to distinguish real green honey from fake, others replied, ‘there is no such thing as green honey’. As attendees discussed green honey, someone stated, ‘they say it is underground’, to which a woman replied, ‘yes na sa underground daw, at ang honey daw ay napakakunti and very poisonous ang turong’ (yes, according to other people [it is] underground, and they also say the honey is very small in amount and the turong [insect] is very poisonous). One attendee shared his prior experience of buying green honey, beginning ‘I haven’t read the truth about green honey but way back in 1992 to 1994 I was able to buy one green honey actually and it was very expensive, 6000 [PHP].’ The man explained that at the time he was working for a Palawan university, and asked a contact to test the honey, the result of which was ‘I was able to find out that there are two amino acids that were not commonly found in the regular honey.’ Another attendee asked if the bought honey was supposedly produced by a turong, to which the narrator replied, ‘I think that was mentioned to me that it was an underground insect.’ A woman commented: ‘I wonder if you got your money’s worth of 6000 pesos [what the effect of the green honey was]’, to which the narrator replied that he sent the honey to his sister, who also investigated for herself the authenticity of the honey. Another attendee commented that her sister had also conducted her own investigation of green honey and assessed that, when available in large volumes, green honey must be fake.
When referring to ‘the truth about green honey’, the narrator is not speaking abstractly but in direct relation to a subject of our discussion – a statement entitled as such by biologist Dr Cervancia (2007). This statement has since been republished in national newspapers and circulated by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and politicians as part of their own campaigns against fake honey. Dr Cervancia explains that the insect called turong which is often attributed as the ‘bee’ which produces green honey is actually a wasp (Vespa sp.). Furthermore, she suggests that there is no satisfactory explanation as to how wasps could collect chlorophyll from green algae and combine it with nectar to make honey green. Her team at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) Bee Program have visited Palawan for the purpose of attempting ‘to trace the alleged natural sources’ of green honey, but have ‘found no evidence whatsoever of the existence of this product in nature, or confirmation of its alleged natural sources’.
Other parties concerned with the manufacture of green honey also suggest negative evidence as significant in determining the existence or otherwise of green honey. One Palawan government official commented to me that he had been unable to trace the source of green honey, despite offering a significant amount of money to anyone who could show him the location of a hive. Marielle’s earlier statement qualifying that she had not seen honey harvested from underground suggests doubt as to its existence. Many Tagbanua harvesters have told me that, although they have heard of the existence of green honey, they themselves had ‘no experience of that’. In saying so, these Tagbanua harvesters are suggesting that they cannot know or say for certain that green honey does not exist on the basis of negative evidence, but that they have not seen green honey despite their expertise and experience allows listeners to come to their own conclusions.
According to scientists at UPLB, the greenness of honey is not produced by insects at all. Chemical analyses at the Bee Program laboratory have confirmed that the greenness of the substance is produced through additions of blue and yellow pigments, such as food dyes, rather than being a result of chlorophyll ‘naturally’ added by bees (Cervancia, 2011, personal communication). So what then is the significance of claims that green honey contains chlorophyll? In a sense, chlorophyll is what makes plants green. Chlorophyll is itself a pigment; chlorophylls act in combination with carotenoids to colour plants and enable plants to process sunlight as energy during photosynthesis (Scheer, 2013: 498). In the promotion of green honey, a suggestion that its colour is sourced naturally from plants is strongly linked to the supposed superior qualities of green honey. While the inclusion of chlorophyll is often explicitly conveyed to consumers, the implications of its inclusion for making green honey valuable are often more implicitly and subtly communicated. But both explicit and implicit meanings are mutually reinforced as potential consumers encounter the bottled honey itself. One of the most important ways of conveying the inclusion of chlorophyll to consumers is labelling. Green honey bottles are labelled with claims such as ‘CONTAINS NATURAL CHLOROPHYLL’. One type of bottled honey advises through labelling that the colour of green honey is sourced from ‘Algae + Forest Herbs’.
Chlorophyll, bees and associations with the Underground River
In terms of understanding how the value of green honey is created, the example of chlorophyll illustrates how the information available about these products is often built around key words or phrases and their associations, so that the labelling, appearance and reputation of the product have become essential to the production of value. The authenticity of these claims is debated in numerous spaces, including online through social media, internet forums, sales websites, and via the comment sections of articles or blogs. Within these online spaces, claims about the presence of chlorophyll in green honey are contested and defended – not only by green honey middle traders who appear to develop markets and contacts through such avenues, but also by those who have bought or intend to buy green honey. Many of these past, present or potential customers relay stories about their own experiences finding, buying or using green honey. These discussions often centre on how the person came to understand the product as ‘real’ or ‘fake’, based on: its reported efficacy (successful or not in curing a cold; assisting fighting cocks to win); taste (bitter, unique flavour); and, the changing appearance of the contents (particularly the substance foaming up and exploding out of the bottle). Such comments sometimes suggest the possibility for consumers to test honey for themselves using accessible methods with household items. Consumers also engage with online discussions to contextualize their own encounters with green honey. In an entry entitled ‘Fu***** Green Honey’ from a food blog, the author describes their experience: Yes, we did. We bought it. Despite explanation at the back of the bottle that bees who produce this nature’s wonder live in underground river. Despite that line at the front of the bottle: Liquid chlorophyll. We were suspicious, but we were in the mood for trying new things and buying food. No, I’m not trying to justify myself. I’m just feeling like a moron. We came home and Google said: ‘the green honey is actually a synthetic sugar mix with food coloring and has no medicinal or nutritional value …’ (A Life in Two, 2012)
The author of this account suggests the ability of potential consumers to read these objects, and that information in the object arouses a curiosity that temporarily overwhelms suspicions. A claim that the substance is produced by bees residing in the Underground River is prominent amongst this information, which also includes an ambiguous reference to the inclusion of chlorophyll. An accompanying photograph shows bottles of honey lined up at a market stall, with labels including ‘Forest Wonder Green Honey’. The labelling of green honey as ‘Forest Wonder’ has acquired new significance in recent years. Following an extensive national promotion campaign, in 2012 the Underground River was inaugurated as one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature in an international, voter-determined competition (Webb, 2017). It could easily be assumed that green honey supposedly manufactured by bees living in the Underground River, or labelled as ‘Forest Wonder’ might have been invented during or after this promotional campaign.
However, green honey labelled as ‘Forest Wonder’ has been available in Metro Manila farmers’ markets since at least 2004 – years prior to the New 7 Wonders of Nature campaign (see Mercado, 2004). And yet the aforementioned account of a customer being both intrigued by and suspicious of a product supposedly made by bees living in the Underground River demonstrates how the rumours of an invented insect are developing through symbiotic productions of origins and other commodity flows spurred by tourism. 4 In such ways, those who make green honey do not merely attach meanings to an existing substance. Rather, they continuously manufacture products that materially manifest dynamic distinctions and qualities of nature and place that are valued by potential consumers. The circulation of these products is remaking the place of Palawan and the Underground River throughout the Philippines.
Considering green honey from Underground
So far, the social lives of green honeys have illustrated how certain origins have been materialized in the form of bottled substance sold in Metro Manila and Los Baños. Such origins include being broadly ‘from Palawan forests’, being produced through the ambiguous activities of an underground insect, and being associated with the prominent Underground River. But how has the circulation of green honey shaped life for those living at Underground? The productions of value and meaning created through the circulation of green honey do not merely make the place of Palawan elsewhere, they also shape the experiences of living at Underground for local residents. One of the particularly poignant impacts of green honey’s high value and mobility has been the devaluing and constrained circulation of honey from the forested surrounds of Underground – an effect felt most deeply by honey harvesters and their families.
For several years, scientists, NGOs and politicians have expressed concern about the potential of green honey to threaten the reputation and sale of Palawan honey (distinguished as unadulterated and being sourced from Palawan forests – as such, this would theoretically include the honey harvested by Tagbanua families in the Underground surrounds). In 2008, a government campaign under the direction of then Mayor Edward Hagedorn dramatically targeted the manufacture and sale of green honey in Puerto Princesa. Newspaper articles featuring photographs of a raid team ‘confronting’ alleged manufacturers during investigations to ‘bust’ green honey ‘syndicates’ reported Hagedorn’s declaration that: ‘members of the illicit manufacturing and marketing operation are now being hunted by elements of the Puerto Princesa PNP [Philippine National Police] Special Operations Group’ (The Manila Times, 2008).
By 2012, there were still significant accounts circulating – around Underground, across the Island in downtown Puerto Princesa City, and even beyond Palawan – which described the presence of honey testers and tasters employed by the government or NGOs. It was common knowledge at this time that it was dangerous for those ‘other people’ to make fake honey. Within Puerto Princesa City, the banning of green honey exacerbated existing mistrusts of fake honey. This included not only honey which was coloured green, but also that which had been adulterated to increase its volume. The problem, of course, was that determining which honeys had (or had not) been faked in such ways is more often ambiguous than certain. Just as green honey was circulating beyond Palawan as more-than-real, unadulterated honey from Palawan was often constrained in its circulation and value by doubts about its provenance and composition. Poor residents or thrifty tourists were anxious about spending money on a product that might not be what they believed it to be, while others were very afraid of being accused of selling fake honey (which now came with fearful consequences of serious punishment by state officials). A key concern was that such accusations could be extended to those selling unadulterated honey harvested from the forest. Just as it is difficult to detect ‘fake’ honey, it is hard to prove that honey is unadulterated during sale. So, in the context of caution surrounding honey, it became additionally difficult for those selling forest honey to convince consumers and middle traders that their honey was not, in some manner, faked.
Much of this blame was felt by Tagbanua families harvesting and selling honey. Around Underground, knowledge of these proceedings had contributed to concerns over fake honey even locally, and I encountered numerous instances of its manufacture being attributed to indigenous peoples by local honey buyers and government officials. Unfortunately, such imagined origins of green honey become another story about its production, even though studies support the claim that honey adulteration is far more likely to be perpetuated by transitory traders than local indigenous residents (Michon, 2005: 52). However, it was Tagbanua families harvesting honey who were certainly suffering from the market in green and adulterated honey. By 2011, some local resorts and restaurants described no longer buying honey directly from Tagbanua people. Similarly, many Tagbanua harvesters explained to me that rumours about fake honey were used by some buyers to negotiate down the prices of honey when buying from indigenous families by claiming that the honey was of a low or reject quality (see also McDermott, 2000: 169). In addition to these detrimental impacts on Tagbanua livelihoods and honey sales, many Tagbanua were also disappointed at the questioned integrity and expertise of local harvesters who take pride in the skills, knowledge and more-than-human relations required to harvest honey. This sentiment was well summarized by a prominent Tagbanua manlalbet, Artemio, who adamantly stated that, ‘the Tagbanua don’t know how to make fake honey!’
In 2012, Artemio and I hosted a workshop with Tagbanua families which included activities such as circulating digital images of honey products for sale and engaging with a collection of bought honey and beeswax samples that I had purchased from a range of locations across Palawan Island and the Philippines. The structure of the workshop focused on Artemio’s ability to offer relevant commentary and us both to answer questions of interest to the participants. My aim for the workshop was to disseminate some of the findings of multi-sited fieldwork in a way that could use objects and images to prompt discussion on some of the issues raised above and avoid my repeating to those present what they already knew too well. Jars and bottles of honey were opened, tasted, smelled, smeared and compared by participants to known varieties and qualities of honey. Tagbanua children are discerning consumers of fresh honeycomb harvested by family members from the forest and a girl sampling a piece of preserved honeycomb purchased at an international airport expressed a look of disgust and promptly rejected the item from her mouth. One young man joked about getting drunk from the sample of honey wine and another man suggested using it for dive fishing at night to keep warm.
Artemio’s adult son Jerome, also an experienced harvester, had his own suggestion for assessing the quality of the honey samples – testing them according to local techniques for determining the varied composition and qualities of different kinds of honey. As keen experts, and in many ways those with the most at stake, it is hardly surprising that Tagbanua women and men have a significant interest in tangibly investigating and assessing the authenticity and quality of different honey for themselves. One of the first conversations I had with Artemio concerned the ways people might recognize each other as Tagbanua, which include being able to determine which flower nectar had been sourced from by smelling honey. At Jerome’s request, we quickly assembled the required materials for several Tagbanua men to conduct a series of their own tests on the honeys. 5 The rest of us chatted and examined samples as these tests were conducted, with narration of the results interspersing our discussion. Many of the samples were determined by these experts to be of dubious quality.
One of the honey samples I had purchased to include in those examined was a bottle of green honey. In this aspiration, I was undone by the materiality of the bottled substance itself. After carrying the bottle around in my bag during a busy day in Manila, I took it out in the evening ready for packing into my luggage to fly back to Palawan. The contents of the bottle had foamed and exploded from the confines of the container and left the sticky substance throughout the plastic bag I had placed it inside. As a result, it was digital images of this product (displayed for sale, and documenting the process of the substance’s eruption from the container) rather than the bottled object itself that featured at the workshop. In discussing digital images of green honey and the association between its alleged health benefits, reputed origins on Palawan, and the substance’s greenness, Artemio summarized, ‘hindi maganda yan na ginagawa nilang sangkalan ang Palawan’ (it is not good that they [the producers of green honey] use Palawan for their own benefit).
I end this section which considers green honey from the place of Underground with one final point of disjuncture. Our workshop on this day took place in an open-sided communal structure used for meetings which is located by the only local vehicle access road. This meant that as we conducted our discussion and activities, we could simultaneously see the constant stream of mini-vans that daily transport large numbers of tourists to and from the Underground River – the place where some rumours of green honey claim that bees making this substance live. The Underground River is part of a karst limestone cave landscape called Taraw which, for many Tagbanua, is a key site in local honey production and indeed inhabited – but not, as labels on bottles of green honey claim, by the manufacturers of green honey. Rather, for the old women and men with whom I worked, it is certain diwata (spirits) who reside inside the Underground River and karst–scape, including those who have roles in producing local flows of honey (see also Dressler, 2005). The relationships between living Tagbanua, their dead, bees, birds and diwata are part of other stories about the origins and makings of other kinds of honey.
Made underground: Politics, place and the reorganizing of value
Another article might perhaps examine the social lives of green honey through ethnographically concentrating on the material practices of adding yellow and blue food dyes to a substance which is thereby rendered no longer honey according to international standards such as the Codex Alimentarius (CODEX STAN 12–1981: 3.1 and 6.1.5). Such work would involve spending time with its makers, in the spaces that this aspect of production occurs within. As a researcher who has focused such attention on this manufacturing and marketing dimension of the social life of Palawan honey, the possibilities for investigating value creation in such spaces are tantalizing. Yet here I have chosen to focus attention on the circulation of green honey as bottled objects, which has ethnographically meant examining their makers as absent and their making as underground.
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s (2012) work on political economy provides an important reminder that the complex networks through which production occurs often involve elements hidden underground – from interactions between orchids and fungi to under-the-radar alliances (p. 47). As such, examining production requires focusing attention on the material practices and politics which make making possible. The materiality of bottled green honey has a potency beyond the qualities claimed about its substances through labels and rumours – a power to reorganize value which is inseparable from the politics of knowledge production, class and social relations. I have suggested in this article that ‘the underground’ can be used to think about a space where production occurs through shared imaginings but remains unseen. What then are the politics of the underground? Who is sharing in such imaginings? If the potential to make and sell green honey is reliant on production outside of direct observation, whose observation can potentially disrupt this production?
The making of green honey underground concerns the politics of knowledge production and authenticity on several levels. The circulation and value of green honey are possible only where these bottled objects are considered to have possible efficacy by potential consumers. And yet the authenticity of green honey is not based on attempting imitation of another substance, such as Palawan honey. Green honey is not only green; it is greener than what is otherwise possible. Green honey circulates precisely because its alleged origins and composition are understood, by some, to have intriguing potential. These origins of green honey are materialized in its bottled form – through material additions like greenness and labels which intrigue but are never completely explained. Even those material qualities which threaten to reveal concealed biographies and compositions of green honey are highly contested. The tendency for green honey to foam up and explode out of its container is commonly cited as evidence of its dubious composition. And yet, for others, it is a testament to claims about the wondrous origins and potency of a substance so powerful it ‘cannot be contained in a sealed glass container’. The authenticity of green honey therefore is based on what is both dubious yet wonderful. But, it is also for this reason that it is likely that many consumers of green honey would consider the efficacy of the product compromised were they to witness the adding of food colouring to the substance. This certainly appears to be the case for consumers like the blog author who came to understand a substance mixed with food coloring as ‘synthetic’ and of ‘no medicinal or nutritional value’.
As consideration of online spaces such as lifestyle blogs suggests, examining how knowledge about green honey is produced inevitably concerns the class dimensions of shopping for, consuming and debating the efficacy of green honey. In many regimes these are limited to quite specific middle class or elite spheres. Examples here include not only the farmers’ market introduced at the beginning of this article where urban consumers with certain forms of privilege can seek out ‘local’ products, but also the specific interests of researchers, government officials and professionals working in the non-profit sector to protect the reputation of places and products. The seemingly benign aspirations of this range of social actors are part of a broader political economy of value, the impacts of which are unevenly distributed (see, for example, Bowen, 2015; Webb and Pertierra, 2018). However, while the circulation of green honey is possible precisely because it travels along such class lines, this is not to say that green honey is only of interest to middle class and elite consumers. Across Palawan, people who would certainly not consider themselves to be part of the middle classes are interested in the possibility of buying and selling green honey (although not necessarily in the form of the specific labelled bottled objects described in this article). Less wealthy residents of Palawan Island might not access spaces such as farmers’ markets for numerous reasons – because they are geographically inaccessible, too expensive, or potentially because they might feel too ashamed to enter such locales. But this does not mean that poorer people are uninterested in intriguing products. Indeed, local residents of Underground have long bought forest honey harvested by their Tagbanua neighbours for their own family’s consumption owing to its local status as a delicacy and medicinal product.
There are significant social relations concerned in the politics of green honey’s underground production, and the ability of green honey to reorganize value. Key amongst these has been the exacerbation of dynamics within the local political economy of honey and livelihoods at Underground. Local businesses refusing to buy honey direct from Tagbanua, local agents using the rumours of adulterated honey to negotiate down the price of honey bought from Tagbanua and the attribution of blame to Tagbanua together reproduce local social differentiations. The result is both a worsening of market relations and the broader devaluing of Tagbanua expertise as knowledge brokers of honey’s value. The theme of testing is one which reoccurs throughout this multi-sited work, with Tagbanua harvesters, anxious consumers, biologists and chemists, and government agents. These too are part of the politics of honey’s underground production – who has the knowledge and expertise to test honey, who can be relied upon to say that honey is unadulterated or ‘faked’, and who must be convinced for what purpose?
Conclusion
When people in the Philippines debate whether green honey is ‘real’ they are not necessarily denying the existence of specific bottled objects which are available for purchase in spaces such as farmers’ markets. Rather, what is at stake are claims about the origins of honey and its reputed associated efficacy as a result of material properties derived from this provenance. In this article, I have argued that these associations are materialized in green honey’s forms as bottled objects through the material additions of greenness and labels which intrigue potential consumers but are never completely explained. Green honey is not only green; it is greener than what is otherwise possible. In considering these associations, I discuss three different types of green honey’s ‘underground’ origins: the rumours that a potent bee produces honey ‘under the ground’; the lived place of Underground on Palawan Island, a nationally significant ecotourism site where Tabganua honey harvesters experience flow on impacts of green honey’s circulation within the Philippines; and, ‘the underground’ as a way of thinking about a space where production occurs through shared imaginings but remains unseen. In examining the relationships between these three underground origins, I have demonstrated how the circulatation of green honey across the Philippines reorganizes the value of ‘local’ honey on Palawan through a complex nexus of politics, place making and knowledge production.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
My thanks to the following for their contributions. The editor and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and in depth engagement with this article. James Eder and Robert Fletcher who generously gave invaluable feedback on preliminary drafts of this paper as conference discussants. Will Smith for feedback on drafts of this article. Wolfram Dressler and Anna Cristina Pertierra who provided key guidance in developing the research that this material is drawn from. Alvin Aurelio provided excellent research assistance during the workshop discussed in this article. My heartfelt thanks to those whose experiences and perspectives are the basis of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research received funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation via a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant. There is no conflict of interest.