Events

Jointly organized by Department of Southeast Asian Studies, Asia Research Institute, and Department of Malay Studies, National University of Singapore.

CHAIRPERSON

Assoc Prof Vatthana Pholsena, Department of Southeast Asian Studies, National University of Singapore

PROGRAM

ABSTRACT

Singapore residents experience oil palm plantations mostly as the source of irritating haze, but what does oil palm mean for the millions of Indonesians whose everyday existence is dominated by the presence of corporate plantations? Drawing on their ethnographic research in West Kalimantan, Li and Semedi offer a close-up account of the lives of workers and villagers, and the role of corporations in reshaping law and citizenship. They ask why plantations have been permitted to occupy 40% of Indonesia’s farmland and why – despite decades of critique highlighting the human and environmental costs – they continue to expand.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Tania Murray Li is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her publications include Plantation Life: Corporate Occupation in Indonesia’s Oil Palm Zone (with Pujo Semedi, Duke University Press 2021), Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier (Duke University Press, 2014; Winner of George T McKahin Prize, Association for Asian Studies, and Senior Book Prize, American Ethnological Association), Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia (with Derek Hall and Philip Hirsch, NUS Press, 2011), The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics (Duke University Press, 2007) and many articles on land, labour, class, capitalism, development, resources and indigeneity with a particular focus on Indonesia. For more information, see: https://www.taniali.org/

Miles Kenney-Lazar is Assistant Professor of Political Ecology in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore. His work examines the politics of agro-industrial plantation expansion and land conflicts in Southeast Asia, especially in Laos and Myanmar. His work has been published in outlets such as The Journal of Peasant Studies, Antipode, The Annals of the American Association of Geographers, and Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. His current project examines attempts to produce rubber as a “sustainable” commodity in Southeast Asia.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed. Please write to aritm@nus.edu.sg if you would like to attend the seminar.