Urban Transcripts (Nov 2020)
A journey through agro-industrial territories of palm oil production in Southeast Asia
Abstract
In 2015 a group of anthropologists proposed the concept of the Plantationocene to describe the current practice of agrarian production and the alienation of plants, property, and labour, joining a long list of “-cene’s” which recently try to frame processes of human/non-human entanglement (Chthulucene), the role of humans as a geomorphological agency (Anthropocene) or the dominance and influence of capitalism (Capitalocene). While all of these concepts capture crucial elements of contemporary worlding, the Plantationocene’s focus on modes of capitalist agrarian production implies a valuable spatial perspective intrinsic to architectural and landscape architectural practices. Although products such as sugar, palm oil, soy, and cotton are ubiquitous, the circumstances of production and their spatial effects—from territories of extraction to spaces of trade and accumulation—are largely understudied in the field of architecture and urban studies.
