PALM OIL launch, discount and reviews (updated)
Join us May 8 in Berlin, and get 50% off the book worldwide until May 12
My new book, Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire, is now out from Pluto Press.
Until May 12, it is (along with the rest of their excellent catalogue) 50% off as part of their Radical May sale!
I’d like to make a special call out to teachers. I wrote this book largely as a pedagogical exercise when I was teaching material culture at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. It has a few features that make it useful in the classroom:
It’s short: only 120-pages without references, so it can be assigned to a single week/module in upper-year and graduate courses.
It’s interdisciplinary, speaking to themes in critical theory, cultural studies, geography, history, sociology, anthropology, political science and more.
It’s written in a clear, approachable and provocative style, suitable for undergraduates, but with enough complexity and depth for graduate seminars as well
It offers a multitude of jumping-off points for discussions of the intersections of ecology, imperialism and colonialism, capitalism, race and racism, consumerism, the limits of mainstream environmentalism, and more…
If you’d like to review it to potentially adopt it in your class, you can email James at Pluto: jamesk at plutobooks.com
Berlin Launch
Please join us on May 8 from 15h-18h at 7-9 Moosdorfstr. for a book launch event. In fact, it’s a double-header: we’ll also be launching Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese’s Half Earth Socialism.
I will be joined by Julio Linares and Sina Ribak in conversation about Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire. There will be beer from FemAle and snacks. The event is supported by our friends at the Berliner Gazette as part of their “After Extractivism” series. It’s hosted by the moos.garden residency program, where I am currently a resident. The event will be moderated by Cassie Thornton.
A London event is being planned. Please stay tuned for more details.
Endorsements
Whether you're reading this on a screen or a printed page, you're implicated in the global palm oil trade. In this lovely book, Max Haiven takes us on a whirlwind tour of how that came to be, guiding us through the workings of the global engines that have long been lubricated by the grease of empire.
Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and co-author of Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice and A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things
Powerfully demonstrates how, by following the history of a key commodity, we can reconstruct the logic of imperial capitalism: its destruction of land and bodies, its drive to constantly reduce the means of our reproduction, its relentless production of oppressive regimes. The story it narrates is crucial for our understanding of the terrains of struggle and the material conditions of solidarity between different social justice movements.
Silvia Federici, author of Caliban and the Witch and Revolution at Point Zero
Powerfully demonstrates how, by following the history of a key commodity, we can reconstruct the logic of imperial capitalism: its destruction of land and bodies, its drive to constantly reduce the means of our reproduction, its relentless production of oppressive regimes. The story it narrates is crucial for our understanding of the terrains of struggle and the material conditions of solidarity between different social justice movements.
Andrew Ross, NYU professor and author of Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel and Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing
Reviews
[Haiven's] Palm Oil is a compelling and illuminating call to action by an author at the top of his game.
Sidebar, 1 May 2022
Packed with searing data points, rich case studies, and emotive prose, Haiven’s Palm Oil offers an accessible, almost bite-sized, if mind-bending in scope, introduction to the ways that transnational capital shapes our world. Tentatively, too, it charts a path forward, with our foodways and their workers at its center.
Life & Thyme, 29 April 2022
Haiven’s book is woven through with threads of resistance, tracing the victories of trade unionists, Indigenous protesters, and others who have dared to imagine an alternative to environmental vandalism, suffering, and death... His message is clear: our species built this network of human sacrifice, and we have a responsibility to face its full implications. If, through collective effort, we can bring it about, we also have the power to end it.
Protean Magazine, 28 April 2022
Excepts, articles and interviews
“The Sacrificial Altar of Extractive Capitalism: Notes on Abolition and Transition” article in Mediapart (English) and Berliner Gazette (German)
“Far from Ukraine, Putin’s War Worsens Palm Oil Crisis,” article in Boston Review
“Palm Oil, Empire, And Globalized Capitalism” audio interview on Gateway
“Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire” excerpt on Pluto Press’s blog
Review copies
If you’d like to recieve a review copy of the book, either because you’re interested in writing a review for a publication or because you’d like to consider including it in a class, please email James at Pluto: jamesk at plutobooks.com