Plants and Power: Bringing Together New Work on Plants with Political Economies in Agriculture
Plants and Power: Bringing Together New Work on Plants with Political Economies in Agriculture
Thursday, 10 July 2025: 19:00-20:30
Location: ASJE025 (Annex of the Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences)
RC40 Sociology of Agriculture and Food (host committee) Language: English
Jason Moore’s Capitalism in the Web of Life, James C. Scott’s Against the Grain, and Maan Barua’s work on the plantationocene, are just a few of the recent works that engage with the ways that political economies are exercised through production relations with particular natures and vegetal agencies. At the same time, we see a growing body of work on more-than-human relations with plants, and the groundwork for new theoretical approaches in plant philosophy. In this session, we invite papers that engage across more-than-human and political economy perspectives within the field of agriculture and food. We aim to explore topics such as:
- Labour relations and the work of plants within theories of capitalism
- The role of vegetal agencies in the particularities of late capitalism
- How plant characteristics are mobilized for power within global agriculture
- Plant vitality and anti-capitalist praxis in agriculture and food; justice and plants
- Methodological practices and challenges related to empirical research on plants and political economy
- Plants and limitations to/conflicts within capitalist relations
Through this session we advance an agenda within the domain of agriculture and food to incorporate new thinking on the agencies of plants into our theoretical understanding of capitalist relations.
Session Organizers:
Chair:
Oral Presentations