ABSTRACT
As a contribution to the understanding of the postcolonial capitalist international commodity trade system and applied design research theory and practice, this chapter works at unravelling the socio -economic lifeworlds of the farmers and consumers of black pepper. The sites of ethnographic research are supermarkets in Eindhoven where Dutch consumers buy their pepper and the farms in Shimoga where Black Pepper is grown. The Indian farmers and Dutch consumers being the two endpoints of the complex international trade have been chosen to identify mechanisms at work in the trade across countries through a subjective lens. This design research jumps between my personal experience, primary research and secondary research lying at the intersection of personal, interpersonal, and national subjective experiences.
