The work of plants
Though plants are indispensable for human survival, their contributions to human existence and history are often underappreciated. To underline some of the contributions of plants to wider environmen…
Tag: growth
Metabolism and capacity: history and labour in post-apartheid South Africa
I start with the question, why was it necessary, from 2008, for Mondi South Africa to spend R50 million (USD 8 million) a year on a nutrition intervention…
Miscommunicating metabolism: hunger, method and the practice of public health
Over the past five years I have been conducting research on everyday eating and the emergence of Non-Communicable Diseases in the West African city of Dakar, Senegal. Working…
‘How pesticides enter the body’: Porosity and growth in Western Kenya
Skin, nose, mouth In a remote church building in the Southwest of Kenya, Arthur Ouko was training farmers on ‘responsible use of pesticides.’ He was instilling the importance…
“When the city eats the forest”
Kinshasa, its traffic and street vendors, receded as we drove past the international airport on the national road following the Congo River. “It’s been recently re-asphalted”, said the…
Introduction: Metabolic thinking and the predicaments of growth in Africa
Metabolic thinking deals in bounded organisms, regulated systems, and the calculated (self)-optimisation of responsible, profitable, and healthful nutritive and energetic transactions. But critical s…
The toxic imperial metabolism of Senegalese peanuts
The identification of aflatoxin in the 1960s troubled plans for Senegalese peanuts. Blamed for the acute poisoning of English poultry fed with Brazilian peanut meal, this fungal metabolite…
Book forum: Julie Livington’s Self-Devouring Growth by Todd Meyers
This book forum brings together seven scholars to discuss Julie Livingston’s Self-Devouring Growth: A Planetary Parable as Told from Southern Africa (Duke 2019), a story of what grows alongside “…