Kearns, Gerard (2020) Vegetative States: Potatoes, Affordances, and Survival Ecologies. Antipode, 52 (5). pp. 1373-1392. ISSN 0066-4812

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Abstract

The potato has been critical to plant–human assemblages both in South America and in Europe. A study of the capacities, or affordances of this plant within diverse political economies highlights its mutability in some circumstances and vulnerability in others. The contrasts are stark. In South America, peasant agriculture took the potato across a large and diverse ecumene allowing its elaboration into many varieties and sustaining extensive state systems that taxed its production. Spanish colonialism repurposed the plant as the calorific basis for concentrations of coerced labour at silver mines. Back in Europe it was initially the resistance of the potato to state violence that encouraged peasants to turn over their fields to a tuberous plant that “concealed” its food underground. But its calorific productivity per acre again saw it repurposed as peasants were converted to proletarians, allowed to subsist on only the smallest plots while working for landlords on larger estates.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	affordances; colonialism; famine; Ireland; political ecology; potatoes;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Geography
Item ID:	13237
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12652
Depositing User:	Gerry Kearns
Date Deposited:	17 Sep 2020 10:32
Journal or Publication Title:	Antipode
Publisher:	Wiley
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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