Plantation life
Subtitle: corporate occupation in Indonesia's oil palm zone
By: Tania Murray Li and Pujo Semedi
Contributors: Semedi, Pujo, author
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 2021
Place of publication: Durham
Language: eng
Number of pages: 243
ISBN-13: 9781478013990; 9781478014959; 9781478022237
Copyright date: 2021
Subjects: Palm oil industry; Plantation workers; Social conditions; Small Farms; Government policy; Sustainable development; Rural development; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social; HISTORY / Asia / Southeast Asia; Social aspects
Description: "In Plantation Life Tania Murray Li and Pujo Semedi examine the structure and governance of contemporary palm oil plantations in Indonesia, which supply fifty percent of the world's palm oil. They attend to the exploitative nature of plantation life, wherein villagers' wellbeing 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 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"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Establishing plantations; title: Holding workers; title: Fragile plots; title: Forms of life; title: Corporate presence.