Anthropology 390M - Making Plants Work

Food, drink, fuel, pharmaceuticals, clothing, cosmetics, construction material, furniture? Plants and their byproducts are everywhere we look. How have plants become so ubiquitous to human life? How have plants been used, adapted, processed, and sold over the course of history? How can studying plants and their interactions with humans provide a different perspective on the past, and insight into the future? This course explores how humans have made plants ?work,? and how these working plants have, in turn, shaped the world in which we live. While often perceived as passive in comparison to human and animal counterparts, plants have played a critical role in shaping global social, economic, ecological, and political dynamics. As desired products, plants have entangled far-flung individuals and societies into complex relationships that reverberate across time and space. This course will survey the history of human-plant interactions through three units: domestication, colonialism, and modern technologies. We will examine a wide range of case studies, in an effort to gain comparative and multivocal understanding of human-plant relationships. In doing so, course materials touch on topics of general anthropological interest: political ecology, agency, social inequality, labor, global processes, the impacts of colonialism, the production of knowledge, and human/non-human relationships.