eTropic Pub Date : 2022-10-07 DOI: 10.25120/etropic.21.2.2022.3907

Ysabel Muñoz Martínez

{"title":"Gardening in Polluted Tropics: The Materiality of Waste and Toxicity in Olive Senior’s Caribbean Poetry","authors":"Ysabel Muñoz Martínez","doi":"10.25120/etropic.21.2.2022.3907","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.2.2022.3907","url":null,"abstract":"While toxic substances continue increasingly, and unevenly, infiltrating the world, the new materialist turn invites us to examine the relationalities emerging between pollution and literature. This essay examines how Olive Senior’s poetry collection Gardening in the Tropics portrays the imposition of waste and toxicity on Caribbean islands and the counter-narratives to toxic politics that emerge from non-hegemonic perspectives. The paper utilizes methodological contributions from the fields of waste studies, postcolonial and material ecocriticism, and addresses the need for more scholarship centering toxicity in cultural studies, especially through the lens of tropical materialisms. Moreover, the research engages with theorizations surrounding the concept of the Wasteocene as a novel interpretative framework. The main findings reveal that the poems “My Father’s Blue Plantation”, “The Immovable Tenant” and “Advice and Devices” identify how extensive pollution is enabled and perpetuated by colonial systems. The poems illustrate the environmental and socio-political tensions prompted by toxicity, its deleterious effects in organisms and landscapes, and embody how guerrilla narratives can confront widespread toxicity.","PeriodicalId":37374,"journal":{"name":"eTropic","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49604546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 2

Tropical Materialisms: Toward Decolonial Poetics, Practices and Possibilities 热带唯物主义:走向非殖民化的诗学、实践和可能性

eTropic Pub Date : 2022-10-07 DOI: 10.25120/etropic.21.2.2022.3929

C. Benitez, A. Lundberg

{"title":"Tropical Materialisms: Toward Decolonial Poetics, Practices and Possibilities","authors":"C. Benitez, A. Lundberg","doi":"10.25120/etropic.21.2.2022.3929","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.2.2022.3929","url":null,"abstract":"Tropical Materialisms concur on at least three things: humans are always entangled with non-human/material agents; such entanglement is necessary for any creative act to take place; and these same entanglements allow us to interrogate and re-evaluate preconceived notions about the world. This Special Issue aligns itself with the fields of new materialism and posthumanism. What is particularly exciting is the opportunity to rearticulate these fields in tropical terms, that is, with scholarly and creative practices from and about the tropical world. This focus is crucial given that current scholarship in new materialism and posthumanism predominantly comes from European temperate contexts and is informed by Western philosophies. In order to decolonize the ontological turn, this Special Issue recognises not only that colonial knowledge systems impacted the tropics, but also that matter’s liveliness was and is well understood in Indigenous cosmologies, ancient philosophies and ‘animist materialism’. The papers collected together in this special issue offers materialisms informed by decolonizing intuitions. They variously demonstrate how the tropics, as geographic zone and as pertaining to poetics (via \"tropes\"), can theoretically inform and historically problematise new materialism and posthumanism. They offer new vocabularies through which discourses on \"tropical materialism\" may be initiated; and a cartography of practices across disciplinary fields which demonstrate what this \"tropical materialism\" may be. The Special Issue collection it itself a form of poiesis: a creative engagement with the world.","PeriodicalId":37374,"journal":{"name":"eTropic","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48612941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 5

Dai in the “Land of Tropical Miasma”: Encounters of Early Chinese Anthropology in Yunnan “热带瘴气之地”的傣族人:早期中国人类学在云南的遭遇

eTropic Pub Date : 2022-03-30 DOI: 10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3834

Qieyi Liu

{"title":"Dai in the “Land of Tropical Miasma”: Encounters of Early Chinese Anthropology in Yunnan","authors":"Qieyi Liu","doi":"10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3834","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3834","url":null,"abstract":"In early- to mid-twentieth century China, the tropical landscapes and indigenous peoples of southern Yunnan entered public consciousness in two different modes of representation: as a desolate and unfamiliar frontier fraught with the peril of diseases and in desperate need of environmental and social engineering; or, as a haven of fertile land with an ideal of harmonious society. In the process of making new senses of this tropical border region, anthropology played a major role as Chinese anthropologists working in this newly institutionalized discipline turned the Dai, traditionally regarded by Han people as a marginal group living within a dangerous land of zhangqi (tropical miasma), into an ethnographic subject. From Ling Chunsheng’s vision of environmental modification and medical advancement as a twofold project to engineer a new landscape and a new people, to Tian Rukang’s cultural critique that imagined the way of life of Dai people as an antidote for modernity, this article examines early Chinese anthropological discourses on the Dai people and their lived environment. I investigate how technological and epistemological changes fundamentally reshaped the meaning of tropical landscapes in China, a multi-ethnic country of a vast and diverse territory struggling to rejuvenate within a new global order, and I ponder the symbolic and material consequences of this recent history.","PeriodicalId":37374,"journal":{"name":"eTropic","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46530514","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Women’s Grievances and Land Dispossession: Reading Landscapes through Papuan Independent Films 妇女的怨愤与土地处置——从巴布亚独立电影看风景

eTropic Pub Date : 2022-03-30 DOI: 10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3843

H. Kadir

引用次数: 0

Hrishikesh: A Poem on Corrupted Landscape 希斯凯什:一首关于堕落风景的诗

eTropic Pub Date : 2022-03-30 DOI: 10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3845

Srinjay Chakravarti

{"title":"Hrishikesh: A Poem on Corrupted Landscape","authors":"Srinjay Chakravarti","doi":"10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3845","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3845","url":null,"abstract":" This poem on the pilgrimage center of Hrishikesh set in a humid subtropical niche of the scenic Uttarakhand state, aims to capture the corruption of its cultural, religious and natural landscapes. Here, modernity — with its concomitant technologism — jostles for space with Hindu leitmotifs and traditions, causing pollution, ecological damage and environmental degradation. These are outcomes not just of distorted economic policies and skewed technological and developmental paradigms, but also the residuum of religious rituals, pollutants and garbage dumped into the holy Ganges.\u0000Named after a form of the Hindu deity Vishnu, Hrishikesh, in Sanskrit, means “Lord of the Senses”. Nowadays, the town is more popularly known as Rishikesh (which means “the hair of a sage or ascetic”). This name, though etymologically erroneous, is not grammatically incorrect; it is, however, yet another pointer to the degeneration of the region’s pristinity. Here, not only is the natural environment under threat, but the rich traditions of Hinduism, too, are under assault from popular culture and mass consumerism. Such corruption is partly caused by the global yoga movement and the draw of international tourists who smoke cannabis on sacred riverbanks.","PeriodicalId":37374,"journal":{"name":"eTropic","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48266280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Of Nutmeg and Forts: Indonesian Pride in the Banda Islands’ Unique Natural and Cultural Landscape 肉豆蔻和堡垒:班达群岛独特的自然和文化景观中的印度尼西亚骄傲

eTropic Pub Date : 2022-03-30 DOI: 10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3864

F. Dhont

{"title":"Of Nutmeg and Forts: Indonesian Pride in the Banda Islands’ Unique Natural and Cultural Landscape","authors":"F. Dhont","doi":"10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3864","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3864","url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses the natural and cultural uniqueness of the Banda Islands in Indonesia, with a particular focus on the tiny islands' historical role as the sole source of nutmeg. Taking as its point of departure the Indonesian government's 2015 proposal to recognize the Banda Islands as a UNESCO World Heritage site, this article investigates the islands' features and their historical meanings, and explains the entanglement of the islands' tropical geography and Bandanese cultural heritage. Particular focus is given to the way in which the Bandanese people, and later the Dutch colonials, used and exploited the Banda Islands' natural resource of nutmeg, and how the Bandanese culture was shaped and reshaped through this process. The paper maps the transformation of this nature-culture landscape involving natural resources and their cultivation over the centuries; it additionally explores the various Dutch forts that were erected to defend the colonial spice trade and how these structures later became heritage treasures of the Banda Islands in the 21st century. The paper argues that the process through which Banda’s natural uniqueness created Bandanese culture also nearly caused its downfall, and the resurrection of indigenous Bandanese civilization necessitated an inclusive identity that incorporated Dutch colonial fortresses as reminders of the dark era of colonialism. The natural and cultural entanglement of the Bandanese landscape has created a sense of cultural pride.","PeriodicalId":37374,"journal":{"name":"eTropic","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46223494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Staging Eden; Staging Power: Landscaping the Royal Garden of the Kingdom of Haiti 分段伊甸园;舞台力量:美化海地王国的皇家花园

eTropic Pub Date : 2022-03-30 DOI: 10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3855

LeGrace Benson

引用次数: 0

Ivhu rinotsamwa: Landscape Memory and Cultural Landscapes in Zimbabwe and Tropical Africa Ivhu rinotsamwa：津巴布韦和热带非洲的景观记忆与文化景观

eTropic Pub Date : 2022-03-30 DOI: 10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3836

Ashton Sinamai

{"title":"Ivhu rinotsamwa: Landscape Memory and Cultural Landscapes in Zimbabwe and Tropical Africa","authors":"Ashton Sinamai","doi":"10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3836","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3836","url":null,"abstract":"Perceptions of the various cultural landscapes of tropical Africa continue to be overdetermined by western philosophies. This is, of course, a legacy of colonialism and the neo-colonial global politics that dictate types of knowledge, and direct flows of knowledge. Knowledges of the communities of former colonised countries are seen as ancillary at best, and at worst, irrational. However, such ‘indigenous knowledge’ systems contain information that could transform how we think about cultural landscapes, cultural heritage, and the conception of 'intangible heritage’. In many non-western societies, the landscape shapes culture; rather than human culture shaping the landscape – which is the notion that continues to inform heritage. Such a human-centric experience of landscape and heritage displaces the ability to experience the sensorial landscape. This paper outlines how landscapes are perceived in tropical Africa, with an example from Zimbabwe, and how this perception can be used to enrich mainstream archaeology, anthropology, and cultural heritage studies. Landscapes have a memory of their own, which plays a part in creating the ‘ruins’ we research or visit. Such landscape memory determines the preservation of heritage as well as human memory. The paper thus advocates for the inclusion of ‘indigenous knowledge’ systems in the widening of the theoretical base of archaeology, anthropology, and heritage studies.","PeriodicalId":37374,"journal":{"name":"eTropic","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45919306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 2

Toraja Cultural Landscape: Tongkonan Vernacular Architecture and Toraja Coffee Culture 托拉贾文化景观：通科南乡土建筑与托拉贾咖啡文化

eTropic Pub Date : 2022-03-30 DOI: 10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3822

O. S. C. Rombe, H. Goh, Z. Ali

{"title":"Toraja Cultural Landscape: Tongkonan Vernacular Architecture and Toraja Coffee Culture","authors":"O. S. C. Rombe, H. Goh, Z. Ali","doi":"10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3822","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3822","url":null,"abstract":"Tongkonan is a style of vernacular architecture famous in Toraja, a mountainous region in Sulawesi, Indonesia. The Tongkonan traditional house is a symbol of the Toraja people, representing the ancestors and the entire cosmos of life – from birth to death. The houses and their arrangement within a settlement form a social and cultural space that gathers the extended family of the Tongkonan. This article explores the landscape of Tongkonan architecture and coffee cultivation, showing how Tongkonan is essential to Toraja's cultural landscape and a foundation of Toraja coffee culture. The study draws together literature reviews, interviews, photographic and video observation, as well as photo-elicitation interviews. The research reveals that although the existence of Tongkonan architecture precedes the introduction of coffee cultivation, the Tongkonan's geographical closeness to the coffee farms, the historic economic importance of coffee, and the social and cultural relevance of Tongkonan creates a cultural landscape entangling Tongkonan settlements and forests, coffee farms and coffee culture activities. Tongkonan and coffee form Toraja's unique cultural landscape. The space of the Tongkonan, which includes coffee community activities, serves as a basis of Toraja coffee culture.","PeriodicalId":37374,"journal":{"name":"eTropic","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45530750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

(Un)Worlding the Plantationocene: Extraction, Extinction, Emergence (Un)世界种植园新世:提取，灭绝，出现

eTropic Pub Date : 2022-03-30 DOI: 10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3838

Sophie Chao

{"title":"(Un)Worlding the Plantationocene: Extraction, Extinction, Emergence","authors":"Sophie Chao","doi":"10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3838","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3838","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores how tropical plantation lifeworlds are made and unmade through more-than-human forms of extraction, extinction, and emergence. Taking the palm oil sector as my primary focus of inquiry, I trace the extractions of substance, land, and labour undergirding the historical transformation of oil palm from West African subsistence plant to pan-tropical cash crop and controversial global commodity. I then examine how the presents, futures, and relations of multispecies communities are pushed to the edge of extinction under the plantation logic of ecological simplification, reorganization, and instrumentalization. Finally, I explore oil palm landscapes as zones of ecological emergence, where diverse plants, animals, and fungi are learning to co-exist with oil palm in new forms of symbiosis. Thinking-with processes of more-than-human extraction, extinction, and emergence foregrounds the sequential and synchronous ways in which plantations are worlded, unworlded, and reworlded across time, space, and species. Such an approach points to the importance of reconciling theoretical conceptualizations of plantations as ideology with ethnographically grounded examinations of plantations as patches. It also invites difficult but important ethical, political, and methodological questions on how to story the lively facets of plantation lifeworlds without doing (further) violence to the human and other-than-human beings who experience plantations as lethal undoings and endings.","PeriodicalId":37374,"journal":{"name":"eTropic","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48073477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 10

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