Cultivating 'Care

Colonial Botany and the Moral Lives of Oil Palm at the Twentieth Century's Turn

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2109303
AutoresA Rudge (0000-0001-7023-5428, University College London, autor correspondente)
Ano2022
Volume64
Fascículo4
Páginas878-909
Data de publicação2022-10-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417522000354
OpenAlexW4289841280
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7
Referências citadas63

This paper draws on archival research to trace the techniques used by scientists and government officials involved with palm oil at the turn of the twentieth century. For them, mundane practices of 'carefulness' were paramount as they worked on collecting, identifying, marketing, and improving the oil palm. But they also applied this so-called care to people: care of the oil palm was thought to presuppose care of the 'native,' providing a correction for what were seen as 'careless' local manners of cultivation. Colonial techniques of care thus sought to encompass both plants and peoples within contemporary liberal rhetorics of efficiency and moral improvement. This embodies how scientific and political care can interlink through their undersides of control, exploitation, and domination, which remain obscured by narratives of care themselves. Examining these links between commodity histories and scientific techniques is therefore essential for understanding environmental and social concerns regarding oil palm plantations today. An awareness of the afterlives of colonial discourses might encourage a more critical 'care' in response to these issues today, challenging taken-for-granted notions of the benefits of corporate care

Agroforestry · Art · Biology · Business · Colonialism · Commodity · Environmental ethics · Government (linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Palm oil · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Law