Flash Lecture: On Palms, Weevils, and Owls: Tracing more-than-human Labour in the Oil Palm Territories of Johor, Malaysia by Hans Hortig, Doctoral Researcher, Future Cities Lab Global (FCL), Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC)

Flash Lecture: On Palms, Weevils, and Owls: Tracing more-than-human Labour in the Oil Palm Territories of Johor, Malaysia by Hans Hortig, Doctoral Researcher, Future Cities Lab Global (FCL), Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC)

Saturday, 18 February 2023 10.40am
Venue: CREATE Tower, 1 Create Way, Theatrette Level 2, Singapore 138602

This lecture discusses plantation agriculture as a technology aimed at extracting natural resources and unpaid labour as well as installing regulatory authority. It is focused on palm oil plantation territories iin the state of Johor in Malaysia, one of the core zones of palm oil production, refining, and export. Through the operationalisation of territory, the presentation brings the discourse on the Plantationocene into dialogue with critical urban studies. Palms, weevils, and owls are uncovered as surprising agents in the production process, highlighting the fact that more-thanhuman assemblages have been utilised to enable the expansion of Malaysian palm oil plantations and the socio-ecological transformation of territory. The entanglements of agro-industrial operationalisation of territory and more-than-human life on the plantations are traced temporally, showing the fragility of plantation ecologies on which the global palm oil commodity chains depend.

2021-02-18

This lecture discusses plantation agriculture as a technology aimed at extracting natural resources and unpaid labour as well as installing regulatory authority.

Professional

Graduate/Post-Graduate

General

Offsite

Yes

No

No