Join us for our fourth lunch seminar this fall semester with Dr Vishala Parmasad
Abstract:
Plantation economy theorists argue that the sugar plantations violently reconstituted societies and environments in the West Indies. What is less clear, however, is how humans and nonhumans adopted and adapted sugar to meet their own needs, values and systems of meaning-making, under the constraints of the plantation system and according to the affordances of land, soil, water and crop. In this paper, we utilise the cropscape method to explore how Trinidadian sugarcane became domesticated by humans and nonhumans in post-emancipation Trinidad. I present oral history research collected from Indian Trinidadians from 2009 to 2016 to provide an alternative framing to global sugar histories presented by Sidney Mintz and others. The paper reveals unique assemblages of people, practices, knowledges, crops and environments that capture Indian Trinidadian experiences of sugar in Trinidad.
There are options to attend in person or via Zoom. Please keep in mind that to access the talk via Zoom, you’ll need to sign in with your @wisc.edu login credentials.