A (Virtual) Conversation on the Plantationocene

Co-hosted by the Cross-Border Movements Program on Migrations at Cornell University, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Cornell’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, this set of virtual panels brings together a diverse group of scholars, activists, and practitioners to discuss the role that plantations and plantation agriculture have played in shaping the nature, structure and dynamics of the modern era. Although plantations have long been the subject of study, the Plantationocene as a concept emerged only in the past few years to describe the role of racialized, large-scale plantation agriculture in establishing a world system that to this day lives with the legacy and continuation of slavery, forced migration, dispossession and mono-crop extractive agriculture intended for export production. The below article serves as a frame or foil for the conversation:

Wolford, Wendy, 2021 “The Plantationocene: A Lusotropical Contribution to the Theory,” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, early view online.

Over the day and a half of roundtable discussions, scholars and activists from a variety of disciplines of critical social theory and practice, including agrarian studies, political ecology, development studies, black geographies and feminist theory, will discuss the concept of the Plantationocene and to what extent this conceptional framework may be useful, not just for analytical purposes but also for activism and practice. We invite you to attend as many of these sessions as you are able. A schedule with presenters for each session will be posted on the event website shortly.

Moderator:

Wendy Wolford, Robert A. and Ruth E. Polson Professor, Department of Global Development, Cornell University

Panelists:

Gerard Aching, Professor of Africana and Romance Studies, Cornell University

Yasmine Ahmed, Postdoctoral teaching fellow, The American University in Cairo

Sarah Besky, Associate Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University

Rachel Bezner-Kerr, Professor of Global Development, Cornell University

Jun Borras, Professor of Agrarian Studies, Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, the Hague

Natacha Bruna, PhD candidate, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University, the Hague 

Judith Carney, Professor of Geography, University of California, Los Angeles

Sharad Chari, Associate Professor of Geography, University of California, Berkeley

Youjin Chung, Assistant Professor of Energy and Resources Group and Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley

Andrew Curley, Assistant Professor of Geography, University of Arizona

Mary Jo Dudley, Director of the Cornell Farmworker Program, Cornell University

Christopher Dunn, Elizabeth Newman Wilds Executive Director of Cornell Botanic Gardens, Cornell University

Jennifer Franco, Activist and Researcher at the Transnational Institute (TNI), the Hague

Jenny Goldstein, Assistant Professor of Global Development, Cornell University

Euclides Gonçalves, Director and Researcher, Kaleidoscopio, Research in Public Policy, Mozambique

Carla Gras, Researcher and Professor of Sociology, University of Buenos Aires

Julie Guthman, Professor of Social Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz

Shalmali Guttal, Executive Director, Focus on the Global South, Bangkok

Tania Murray Li, Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto

Fouad Makki, Associate Professor of Global Development, Cornell University

Priscilla McCutcheon, Assistant Professor of Geography, University of Kentucky

Philip McMichael, Professor of Global Development, Cornell University

Gregg Mitman, Vilas Research and William Coleman Professor of History of Science, Medical History, and Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Sharlene Mollett, Distinguished Professor in Feminist Cultural Geography, Nature and Society and Associate Professor of Geography, University of Toronto

João Mosca, Director, Observatório do Meio Rural, Maputo 

Andrew Ofstehage, Postdoctoral Associate, Cornell University

Kasia Paprocki, Assistant Professor of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science

Deniz Pelek, Postdoctoral Researcher in the MIGRADEMO Project, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Nancy Peluso, Harvard J. Vaux Distinguished Professor of Forest Policy, University of California, Berkeley

Kimberly Pfeffer, Head of Research, Oxfam America

Prabhu Pingali, Professor of Applied Economics and Policy, Cornell University

Sergio Sauer, Professor in the Center for Sustainable Development, University of Brasília

Judite Stronzake, Activist in the Movement of Landless Workers (MST), Brazil and Professor of Education, Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados

Anna Tsing, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz

Michael Watts, Chancellor’s Professor of Geography Emeritus, and Co-Director of Development Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Wendy Wolford, Robert A. and Ruth E. Polson Professor of Global Development, Cornell University

Yunan Xu, Post-doctoral researcher, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam