Hardback : £88.11
In Plantation Life Tania Murray Li and Pujo Semedi examine the structure and governance of Indonesia's contemporary oil palm plantations in Indonesia, which supply 50 percent of the world's palm oil. They attend to the exploitative nature of plantation life, wherein villagers' well-being is sacrificed in the name of economic development. While plantations are often plagued by ruined ecologies, injury among workers, and a devastating loss of livelihoods for former landholders, small-scale independent farmers produce palm oil more efficiently and with far less damage to life and land. Li and Semedi theorize "corporate occupation" to underscore how massive forms of capitalist production and control over the palm oil industry replicate colonial-style relations that undermine citizenship. In so doing, they question the assumption that corporations are necessary for rural development, contending that the dominance of plantations stems from a political system that privileges corporations.
In Plantation Life Tania Murray Li and Pujo Semedi examine the structure and governance of Indonesia's contemporary oil palm plantations in Indonesia, which supply 50 percent of the world's palm oil. They attend to the exploitative nature of plantation life, wherein villagers' well-being is sacrificed in the name of economic development. While plantations are often plagued by ruined ecologies, injury among workers, and a devastating loss of livelihoods for former landholders, small-scale independent farmers produce palm oil more efficiently and with far less damage to life and land. Li and Semedi theorize "corporate occupation" to underscore how massive forms of capitalist production and control over the palm oil industry replicate colonial-style relations that undermine citizenship. In so doing, they question the assumption that corporations are necessary for rural development, contending that the dominance of plantations stems from a political system that privileges corporations.
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1. Establishing Plantations 29
2. Holding Workers 59
3. Fragile Plots 90
4. Forms of Life 122
5. Corporate Presence 158
Conclusion 185
Appendix. Collaborative Practices 193
Notes 199
Bibliography 219
Index 239
Tania Murray Li is Professor of Anthropology at the University of
Toronto and author of Land's End: Capitalist Relations on an
Indigenous Frontier, also published by Duke University Press.
Pujo Semedi is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Universitas
Gadjah Mada and author of Close to the Stone, Far from the Throne:
The Story of a Javanese Fishing Community, 1820s–1990s.
“Plantation Life is an eye-opening book on many fronts. It offers
up an ethnographically and historically rich account of forms of
life in Indonesia's corporate plantation zone and has much to give
about method, collaboration, and evidence. Tania Murray Li and Pujo
Semedi show how the plantation is a presence both fickle and
contradictory, at once an occupying force and a source of neglect:
occupation and abandonment, order and disorder, theft and
calculability, alignment and fracture all coexist in a
rough-and-tumble assemblage in which political economy and
technologies of power are simultaneously in play. An important
book.”
*Michael Watts, Class of '63 Professor, University of California,
Berkeley*
“Palm oil is one of the most ubiquitous ingredients in consumer
products in industrialized countries and the principal driver of
landscape transformation in the Indo-Malay tropics. This, the first
ethnography of oil palm plantations, convincingly demonstrates that
they neither achieve their purported goal of modernizing the rural
peasantry nor---remarkably---make money for the corporations
involved, a paradox and perversity of modern capitalism. This is a
must-read for everyone interested in tropical peoples and
environments and the impact on them of consumerism in the global
North.”
*Bitter Shade: The Ecological Challenge of Human Consciousness*
"A useful primer on oil palm plantations in Indonesia but even more
useful for illustrating how ethnographic research can be carried
out across borders and languages. Recommended. Undergraduates and
two-year program students. Recommended. Undergraduates and two-year
program students."
*Choice*
“Rather than the typical colonial pattern of the local Indonesian
collecting the data but having little involvement in the analysis
or writing, [Plantation Life] involved the constitution of a real
partnership in all aspects of the work. . . . Plantation Life
represents an important contribution to the literature . . . and
has a lot of potential for class adoption.”
*Antipode*
“Plantation Life is a pathbreaking book. Its approach to corporate
presence as a state-licensed form of occupation represents an
advance in the understanding of the forms of violence that emerge
in plantation zones. . . . Since the authors critically engaged in
joint research and writing, the book also sets the parameters for
future developments in the practice of scholarly
collaboration.”
*Journal of Peasant Studies*
"Plantation Life stands out with its powerful combination of the
depth of intensive ethnographic study and the refreshing
conceptualization of corporate occupation and its 'world-making'
consequences. Furthermore, for a book written with academic rigour,
the flowing storytelling makes it easy to read for everyone."
*Pacific Affairs*
"Plantation Life dissects a complex issue and is exemplary in its
clarity. It demonstrates structural dynamics and injustice through
micro-stories of loss and exclusion, and while we are never in
doubt about the author's sympathies, no individual is excessively
vilified."
*SOJOURN*
"[This] is a well-written, well-researched study undertaken amid
challenging circumstances: the author have documented and presented
before the reader the disorders of 'plantation life'. ... In the
end, this book will be of far more consequence than another anodyne
statistical study of the oil palm plantation."
*SOJOURN*
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