Tuberous Heroes, Partial Examples, and the Making of Ethical Companions in Agricultural Collectives
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3914306 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Olivia Angé (0000-0002-3299-8536, Université Libre de Bruxelles, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 725-745 |
| Publication date | 2024-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2201-1919 • E-ISSN: 2201-1919 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/22011919-11327332 |
| OpenAlex | W4404679103 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 30 |
The history of capitalism features a number of glorified characters, such as Frederick the Great and Antoine Parmentier, lauded for contributing to national prosperity by purportedly introducing the prolific potato to the masses. This article redirects our attention toward vaunted varieties in the tuber population itself, which here are called tuberous heroes. While popularly dismissed as a humble crop, the potato has also been acknowledged as having changed world history for both the better and the worse. An analysis of these antagonistic evaluations reveals how struggles for the advent of tuberous heroism were also political campaigns for worlds to come. The concept of a partial example is introduced to account for the fragmented and situated tuber appreciation found at the center of potato domestication in Peru and is held in contrast to the agro-industrial search for supercrops. This exploration of shifting vegetal virtuosity highlights the ecological attunement of partial exemplarity when compared with the expected ubiquity of heroic and villainous crops. The contrast between heroic and partial exemplarity highlights how a plant becomes an ethical companion offering propositions for entangled flourishing
Aesthetics · Art · Attunement · Biology · Capitalism · Domestication · Flourishing · Political science · Politics · Population · Prosperity · Situated · Sociology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Demography · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law · Psychology · Ecology
Moon, Sun, and Witches
Changing Fortunes
Care of the Species
Farmers' Bounty
An Unintended Race
Human Encumbrances
The Ethnography of Moralities
Against the Grain
Reassembling the Social
Earth Beings
Seeing nature as a ‘universal store of genes’
The Order of Potatoes
Banking Seed
Regarding biocultural heritage
Vegetative States
Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet
Ethics
Hybrid Seeds in History and Historiography
Nothing Comes Without Its World
Toward An Anthropological Theory of Value
Situated Knowledges
Gathered fields
Cultural Memory and Biodiversity
Bloody Marvels
Introduction
Ritual, value, and example
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |