Commodity frontiers and the transformation of the global countryside: a research agenda

Beckert, Sven; Bosma, Ulbe; Schneider, Mindi; Vanhaute, Eric

doi:10.1017/s1740022820000455

Cited by 45 publications

(23 citation statements)

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“…Capitalism produces surplus value by seeking to extract inputs cheaply (Beckert et al 2021; Moore 2015), while Jens Beckert (2016) has theorized that capitalist economies are motivated by fictional expectations. Theorized by many previously and since, we find that Anna Tsing's (2005) definition of “frontier” captures the construction of a tundra whose reimagination demands use.…”

Section: Climate Opportunism In a Weirding Arcticmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate opportunism and values of change on the Arctic agricultural frontier

Bradley

Stein

2022

Economic Anthropology

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An Arctic agricultural frontier is opening as climate change threatens growing conditions in established zones of crop commodity production. Projections of northward shifts of viable agricultural land unleash fantastical interest in the improbable reality of "farming the tundra." Expansion of Arctic agriculture has long figured in Alaska's history, including drawing settlers to the "Last Frontier," where farmers face challenges of extreme conditions, weak infrastructure, and fragile markets. This article, based on joint 2019 fieldwork and ongoing ethnography of landscape change and comparative commodity frontiers by the authors, tracks this imaginative frontier to examine how and why diverse Alaskan agriculturalists seize upon emerging conditions of climate change. We propose "climate opportunism" to frame an understanding of how agriculturalists may gain from changing growing conditions, drawing attention to the values in and beyond monetary gain generated in the social space of frontier imagination and grounded projects of livability in the Arctic. Across differently situated cultivators (a multigenerational immigrant family farm, an Inupiaq Arctic agriculture project, an urban hydroponics enterprise), we find that the changing landscape intensifies investment in embedded local values, while opportunism practiced at various scales both underscores and potentially obscures inequalities in resource distribution and alternatives to apocalyptic narratives of change.

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Section: Climate Opportunism In a Weirding Arcticmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate opportunism and values of change on the Arctic agricultural frontier

Bradley

Stein

2022

Economic Anthropology

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“…So, yet another core element of early globalization, ecological in nature, is deeply implicated with the history of empires. 86 As part of this, the Americas not only experienced the destructive effects of ecological imperialism, they were radically changed by their ecological reconstruction of them. In turn, they contributed to the transformation of ecosystems on a planetary scale.…”

Section: Iberian Imperial History and The History Of Globalizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early modern Iberian empires, global history and the history of early globalization

Casalilla

2022

Journal of Global History

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This essay discusses the main lines of current research on the social and economic history of the early modern Iberian worlds. It then goes on, in light of recent debates, to make the case for the value of a purposeful dialogue between global history and imperial history. The issues of primary concern here are the extent to which lateral, inter-regional relations in the Iberian worlds dominated vertical relations connecting particular areas to Madrid or Lisbon; how power and agency on local scales may be integrated into accounts of flows and interactions on larger scales; the ways in which the history of the Iberian empires through a global prism breaks with pre-existing nationalistic narratives; and whether or not the decentralized component of these empires was unique to them. Finally, examples are detailed of how Iberian imperial history can provide a fruitful basis for a polycentric history of globalization. The examples given take heart from critical engagement with the Great Divergence paradigm, the new analytical potentialities of global ecological history, the constructive and destructive impact of globalization upon empires, and the importance of studying the history of empires comparatively.

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“…This is the reason why silver runs from all provinces and kingdoms to China and is always increasing its value … and everything goes to China while any Spanish real (Spanish currency) goes to other places." 26 For the notion of commodity frontier, see Beckert, Sven, et al (2021). See also Jason W. Moore (2009Moore ( , 2010Moore ( , and 2015…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Paradise to the Extractive Zone: Anthropogenic Environmental Change and Historical Agency in Antonio de León Pinelo’s El paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo

Aristondo¹

2022

Transmodernity

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This essay provides an interpretation of Antonio León Pinelo's ideas on natural history and anthropogenic environmental change. It is centered on Pinelo's El Paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo, a midseventeenth-century work that combines narratives regarding the geographical location of the Garden of Eden with theories on the natural history of the Indies. Building on studies that examine narratives on environmental change in the context of European expansion, this article intervenes in a growing academic literature that explores how societies have debated the political imbalances of climate change since the early modern period. In doing so, it highlights the importance of recognizing how discourses on climate and environmental change are forged through evolving conceptions of historical agency. Thus, the article examines Pinelo's work as part of a broader corpus of narratives identifying humaninitiated socio-ecological change linked to European colonial expansion. It reveals how writing about anthropogenic environmental-making processes implies generating the historical agent that has the authority to discipline and transform the environment. Here, it shows how Pinelo's work minimizes Indigenous capacities to master the environment by subordinating their historical agency to the history of Nature. Ultimately, the article argues that writing about anthropogenic environmental-making processes reflects specific dynamics of domination that historians grappled with as they negotiated the political terms of Western ecological imperialism.

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Commodity frontiers and the transformation of the global countryside: a research agenda

Cited by 45 publications

References 1 publication

Climate opportunism and values of change on the Arctic agricultural frontier

Climate opportunism and values of change on the Arctic agricultural frontier

Early modern Iberian empires, global history and the history of early globalization

From Paradise to the Extractive Zone: Anthropogenic Environmental Change and Historical Agency in Antonio de León Pinelo’s El paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo

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