Plantation Life: Corporate Occupation in Indonesia’s Oil Palm Zone
2021. Duke University Press.
In Plantation Life Tania Murray Li and Pujo Semedi examine the structure and governance of Indonesia's contemporary oil palm plantations in Indonesia, which supply 50 percent of the world's palm oil. They attend to the exploitative nature of plantation life, wherein villagers' well-being 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 and 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.
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Reviews
Review by Sophie Chao (2022). Inside Indonesia.
Review by Ian G. Baird (2022). Antipode.
Review by Miryam Nacimento (2022). The Journal of Peasant Studies.
Review by Shofwan Al Banna Choiruzzad (2022). Pacific Affairs, The University of British Columbia.
Review by Paul Thung (2023). LSE Southeast Asia blog and LSE Review of Books blog.
Review by Helena Varkkey (2023). Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Cambridge University Press.