A Review of Sophie Chao, In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022, 336 pp.

Abstract

The book examines the spread of African oil palm plantations in West Papua. The process of expansion of a commodity monoculture grown for the global market is situated in the context of the ontology of the Papuan Marind people. The author argues that plantation cultivation of an invasive species leads not only to dispossession and environmental degradation, but also transforms the ontological order of indigenous people. The oil palm penetrates not only into the ecology and economy of the region, but also occupies a significant place in the spatial and temporal imagination of the Marind. Following the figurative language of the indigenous people, the author creates her own narrative through contrasting the authentic ways of Marind existence with the exploitative logic of agribusiness. At the beginning, Chao claims to be conducting multi-species and ontological ethnography, but her work is nevertheless close to the structuralist approach in anthropology.