Efficacious trees and the politics of forestation inUganda

Abstract

This paper explores the role of trees in the politics of forestation in Uganda from the vantage point of recent object-oriented philosophy. Rather than conceiving of trees as passive, a substrate of thought, or serving utilitarian ends in human action, this paper stresses their autonomous ontological efficacy. First, it shows how trees themselves, in this case the monumental Milicia excelsa, matter to (post-)colonial politics in the country through affective materiality. Second, considering the Eucalyptus grandis, it argues that the species has a variety of qualities that unfold under different circumstances and to different effects, and, in this way, complicate the government of forestation. At the same time, however, there is another potentiality of the tree; one that allows the government of forestation across difference. Third, the paper emphasises the adaptability of trees and argues that this trait enables present-day reforestation, in which trees are often disciplined in growing schemes and subsequently denied their treeness. In conclusion, I contend that the empirical case furthers the engagement with politics in object-oriented approaches, and argue that this is no mere academic exercise but also has implications for the practice of forest stewardship.

Apples and oranges: political crops with and against the state in rural China

“…From the stories of state capital, successive interventions and state-backed expertise we have described, it is clear that oranges and apples have been used by the state to develop and enrich these marginal places as part of largerscale regional planning, and at least in the case of Zigui, to head off potential social unrest. Unlike in Weisser (2015) and Yeh and Lama's (2013) studies, apples and oranges are not illegible, nor are they resistant to cultivation. They have more in common with the temperate fruits described in Hung and Hsiao's (2018: 351) study of highland Taiwan, which form part of "a political project to convert unruly mountain landscapes into legible and controllable agricultural territory."…”

“…First is to reinforce Weisser's (2015) insight that crops are not just a target of political projects, but can be key to understanding the politics of (in his case) forestation programs in Uganda. What we have demonstrated in this article is that a political ecology of cash crops provides insight into the politics of the successive state projects that are repeatedly rolled out in China's agricultural communities.…”

“…By exploring how resource politics in Kyrgyzstan's mixed walnut-fruit forests are shaped by the distinctive capacity of some plants, Fleming brings political ecology into much closer conversation with more-than-human geographies. Unlike Weisser's (2015) focus on adaptability, it is the "graftability" of certain trees that means they inhabit positions in some political assemblages more easily than others: selectively grafted apple trees in rural Kyrgyz communities support informality and are largely illegible to state actors who wish to more tightly govern the forest. In her work on dwarfing technologies in the US Midwest's apple industry, Legun (2015) considers how rootstock and grafted apple varieties play a role in enabling experimentation and customized landscapes, which are in turn a platform for moving away from larger-scale commodity production.…”

Listening to plants: Conversations between critical plant studies and vegetal geography

“…Within human geography, plant bodies have been typically obscured, made invisible by their categorisation as undifferentiated collectives – as often in the case of crops – or backgrounded as environment or ecosystem (Atchison and Phillips, 2020). Plants have therefore tended to be dealt with as ‘living objects’ (Exner and Schützenberger, 2018) rather than active subjects, reinforcing the nature/culture divide (see Weisser, 2015, however, for an object-oriented approach to vegetal geography). In their 2009 Progress report on emerging human-plant geographies, Head and Atchison drew together material from the early 2000s which started to look more closely at plants, notably in the contexts of food, gardens and biosecurity.…”