Agribiopolitics

The health of plants and humans in the age of monocrops

Bibliographic Data

ID4476569
AuthorsK Hetherington (0000-0002-8464-1088, Concordia University, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume38
Issue4
Pages682-698
Publication date2020-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0263775820912757
OpenAlexW3014519490
LanguageEN
Citations received20
References cited58

The well-known story of biopolitics tells us that as Europe urbanized, security was increasingly linked to human well-being. What the story tends to leave out is the way that biopolitics also depended on the expansion of monocrop agriculture: the thriving of human populations was enabled by the thriving of non-human food crops, especially grains. As a result, new human diseases were also shadowed by new plant diseases, and a whole other, parallel governmental apparatus built to manage the crop health in rural Europe. During the great postwar development initiative known as the Green Revolution, plant health techniques would be expanded to the Global South in a massive realignment of biopolitical relations. Though the core tradition of biopolitical thought rarely made it explicit, biopolitics was always, in other words, agribiopolitics, a political technique that made certain populations of humans thrive alongside companion crops. Using Paraguay as a site of genealogical engagement, this paper explores agribiopolitical relations through three phases of the Green Revolution, culminating in the current age of monocrops

Agriculture · Archaeology · Biopower · Environmental ethics · Geography · Green Revolution · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Thriving · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · CRISPR and Genetic Engineering · Law

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