Attending to grape vines

Perceptual practices, planty agencies and multiple temporalities in Australian viticulture

Bibliographic Data

ID3977939
AuthorsJeremy Brice (0000-0002-8117-7128, University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume15
Issue8
Pages942-965
Publication date2014-11-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649365.2014.883637
OpenAlexW1993211197
LanguageEN
Citations received71
References cited50

This article considers the agency of crop plants within sociocultural processes byexamining how grape vines influence seasonal labour patterns in Australian viticulture and wine production. Drawing on ethnographic research within a large Australian wine company, I examine how vineyard managers and winemakers coordinate the timing of the grape harvest with the ripening of grapes. I argue that by making the harvest’s approach perceptible to humans, chemical and sensory tests of grape ripeness precipitate seasonal changes in viticultural work—rendering grape vines active participants in patterning social time. Practices of attention to ripening grapes thus render the social agency of grapevines perceptible. I analyse these time-reckoning practices as a ‘learning to be affected’, in which human viticulturists actively strive through multiple sensory practices to become attuned to plants’ activities. However, attending to the multiple practices used to reckon the ‘right’ time to harvest grapes also emphasises that these ways of enacting the times and agencies of crop plants may interfere or conflict with one another. Highlighting the emotional stresses and tensions between viticultural workers that this may generate, I suggest that agricultural time is both more conflicted and more suffused with power relations than theoretical accounts have typically indicated

Agency (philosophy · Art · Biology · Geography · Social science · Sociology · Vineyard · Viticulture · Wine · French Urban and Social Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Wine Industry and Tourism · Horticulture

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