The Plantationocene is a proposed theoretical framework describing the ways in which the plantation system established in the Americas during early settler-colonialism continues to shape the world and the environment today. It was coined in conversation with several interdisciplinary scholars as a response to critiques of the existing proposed epochal names, specifically the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene. In contrast to the Anthropocene, it was not proposed as a scientific geological epoch but rather as a name for a transitional phase between epochs. The Plantationocene aims to explain human impact on the environment and global climate change as a result of social, political, and economic systems based on the plantation. Scholars point to monocrop agriculture, violent control and exploitation of labour, colonial land dispossession and transformation, transplanting of various species, racism, and prioritization of profit over human and non-human well-being as examples of logic inherent to the plantation which still shapes the modern world.
The Plantationocene has been adopted by some scholars, but remains somewhat controversial. Various academics have rejected it for differing reasons: some claim that any alternative to the Anthropocene is unnecessary, while others claim that the Plantationocene inadequately considers Black and Indigenous realities and scholarship on the lasting impacts of plantations, and some reject the -cene framings of modernity as a well-defined geological epoch entirely.
Origin of the term Plantationocene Plantationocene was coined in October 2014, during a recorded conversation between anthropologist Anna L. Tsing, feminist science and consciousness scholar Donna Haraway, cultural and landscape geographer Kenneth Olwig, anthropologist Noburu Ishikawa, and interdisciplinary biologist in epigenetics Scott Gilbert. The conversation was organized and facilitated by editor Nils Bubandt. The conversation discussed the idea of the Anthropocene, a proposed geological epoch which highlights the way human activity has impacted the global environment, as well as the alternative Capitalocene which centers capitalism as the core driver of climate change. The Plantationocene was proposed as a potential addition. The term posits that the plantation system and its long-term impacts on politics, the economy, and society is the transition which resulted in the current level of global climate change, citing the fact that the plantation predates capitalism. However, Haraway et al. did not adopt the term as an outright replacement for other concepts—namely the Anthropocene, Capitalocene, or Chthulucene (also coined by Donna Haraway)—rather as a supplementary "story" with which to theorize about the current and past world.
Plantationocene and other proposed -cene concepts The Plantationocene was proposed not as an epoch in itself, but as a transitional period from the Holocene to the current era and what will come after it. Haraway et al. consider the Anthropocene and Capitalocene to equivalently represent transitions between epochs, and not geological epochs in themselves, though other scholars do not always share this opinion. No specific start date to the transition referred to by the Plantationocene has been proposed, unlike the Anthropocene. The Plantationocene exists in conversation with these and other proposed epochs or transitional stages which have taken on the -cene suffix. The Anthropocene was the first proposed and has garnered the most public attention. The Anthropocene is also notable for being proposed by a natural scientist, whereas alternative epoch monikers have generally been suggested by social scientists, as well as for being the only -cene concept to be proposed as a legitimate addition to geological time scales. Many critics have taken issue with the term Anthropocene, claiming that it overly generalizes all humans as being equally responsible for/equally impacted by climate change. These critics claim that specific processes led by specific people, such as colonialism, capitalism, and/or industrialization, have caused the bulk of environmental change and that descriptors of the current time period should reflect this. Most other proposals for related concepts using the -cene suffix were born from these criticisms. One such proposal is the Capitalocene, coined by Andreas Malm and used by a number of Marxist climate scholars. This proposal aims to address criticisms that the Anthropocene places all of humanity at fault for climate change, instead centering the actions of capitalists and capitalist logic of infinite economic growth as the root cause for environmental damage. The Plantationocene in turn emerges from the Capitalocene idea, in an attempt to account for the fact that settler-colonialism, plantation agriculture, and chattel slavery all predate capitalism by most economic timelines. Since the coining of the Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and Plantationocene, a number of other terms have been proposed, generally not as geological epochs but as theoretical frameworks adopting the -cene suffix. In addition to Plantationocene, Ferdinand uses the term Negrocene to describe the legacy of slavery and the importance of subjugated African labourers in creating the modern world. Donna Haraway developed the idea of the Chthulucene, which she states describes complex dynamics of kin and other relations between, within, and outside of species, naming a possibility of "flourishing for rich multispecies assemblages". Others have coined terms such as Anglocene or Oliganthropocene.
Detailed overview The Plantationocene encompasses the ways in which plantations, produced through colonialism and chattel slavery, continue to dominate the global social-political-environmental landscape, leading to widespread environmental degradation and global warming from greenhouse gas emissions. Malcolm Ferdinand proposes five fundamental aspects.
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