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The Jamaican philosopher Sylvia Wynter's 1971 essay "Novel and History, Plot and Plantation" presented a synthesis of the Caribbean at large as "the classic plantation area" because it was "'planted' with people", who would themselves exist as "adjunct" to the single crop commodity they produced within the market system. This meta-system of the plantation, in which humans were planted to plant plants, for which role they had been purchased as products like the plants they produced for the market, served, in Eric William's terms, as "'both cause and effect of the emergence of the market economy.'" The Haitian sociologist Jean Casimir, in the 2020 book The Haitians: A Decolonial History, presents a divergent, yet dialogic, account of Caribbean modernity, in which "The Haitian peasantry—and those of the entire Caribbean—constituted themselves in opposition to the processes of integration and assimilation to the commodity-producing plantation." Although it may be, in Mark Fisher's terms, "easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism," Casimir schools the reader to imagine what has been called the "plantationocene" era through an ethos of the reproduction of counter-plantation institutions rather than labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the risks and benefits of monoculture plantations, using the example of banana plantations. While monocultures are more efficient and profitable, they increase the risk of disease and harm to the environment. The article also explores the connection between climate change and fungal infections, highlighting the individual gains that contribute to climate change. The author suggests that targeted taxation and education are necessary to address these issues. The second part of the article reviews the book "A City on Mars," which presents a skeptical view of human settlement in space, discussing scientific, legal, economic, and governmental challenges. The book is informative and humorous, making it suitable for high school biology and environmental science educators. [Extracted from the article]

The text includes three book reviews. The first review discusses "Journeys with Emperors: Tracking the World's Most Extreme Penguin" by Gerald L. Kooyman and Jim Mastro. The reviewer praises the book for providing a new appreciation for the challenges faced by wildlife biologists studying emperor penguins in Antarctica. The second review is for "Blight: Fungi and the Coming Pandemic" by Emily Monosson. The reviewer highlights the book's exploration of the risks posed by deadly fungal epidemics and the need for systemic change to combat these risks. The third review is for "A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?" by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. The reviewer describes the book as a well-researched and humorous discussion of the prospects for human settlement of space. [Extracted from the article]

The article critiques the poem "Guide to the Lakes," by William Wordsworth. It examines the contexts and intents of the poem, Wordsworth's personal hostility towards the introduction of larch to the Central Lakes in England and the larch plantations arising throughout the region, the timing of Wordsworth's conservative turn, and the politics of forestry and land management during the Romantic era,

The CULTURE PAGESTo DoBOOKS9. Read Ours Otherworldly past.Viking, February 20.Three decades before Emancipation, a godlike woman named Saint sweeps across Arkansas destroying plantations. With a cohort of formerly enslaved people, she founds a mysteriously protected community called Ours. Poet Phillip B. Williams's first novel is an otherworldly story of a brief American utopia.By EMMA ALPERN [Extracted from the article]

This is a review article of four new books on plantation histories of Asia which offer a sophisticated analysis of the configurations of liberal imperialism, colonial capitalism, and the construction of post-colonial nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The works discussed here are Rana Behal's A hundred years of servitude (2014); Jayeeta Sharma's Empire's garden (2011); Ulbe Bosma's The sugar plantation in India and Indonesia (2013); and Kumari Jayawardena and Rachel Kurian's Class, patriarchy and ethnicity on Sri Lankan plantations (2015). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "Plantation and Village in the Cameroons: Some Economic and Social Studies," by Edwin Ardener, Shirley Ardener and W. A. Warmington.

Overseers' role in the transition to capitalism debate is one such theme Sandy sheds light upon. The overseers of early american slavery: supervisors, enslaved labourers and the plantation enterprise: New York and london: Routledge, 2020. But there was a crucial class - overseers, generally white men, but sometimes enslaved men, and increasingly white women, as Laura Sandy shows in this terrific book - who were essential to making the plantation run effectively. [Extracted from the article]