Wild wheat to productive drylands: Global scientific practice and the agroecological remaking of Palestine

•Scientific research on wheat remade Palestine as a region sought for colonization.•Sought to remake it from an arid region to a promising dryland agricultural region.•Examines three modes of appropriation: taxonomic, agro-climatic, and genetic.•Constitution of wildness, native-ness, and agro-climat...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geoforum 2017-01, Vol.78, p.43-51
Main Author: Tesdell, Omar
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural research
Agriculture
Agro-climatology
Agro-ecology
Agronomy
Arid regions
Arid zones
Classification
Climate
Colonization
Cooperation
Drylands
Ecology
Geography
Leaves
Palestine
Plant breeding
Plants
Political ecology
Scientific method
Suitability
Taxonomy
United States
Wheat
Work capacity
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:•Scientific research on wheat remade Palestine as a region sought for colonization.•Sought to remake it from an arid region to a promising dryland agricultural region.•Examines three modes of appropriation: taxonomic, agro-climatic, and genetic.•Constitution of wildness, native-ness, and agro-climatic suitability in colonialism.•Reconsiders place-making relationship of science and colonialism in geography and political ecology. This paper traces how scientific research on wheat (Triticum) worked to establish Palestine as a region sought for colonization. Recent work in geography has refined our understanding of agricultural expansion as an outcome of colonization, however, this work leaves the place-making capacity of agricultural research largely unexplored. My claim is that rather than a byproduct of colonization, wheat research served to remake Palestine as a biophysical region in need of improvement and colonization. I show how a shift in the plant sciences from research in taxonomy to plant breeding corresponded to an agro-climatic shift on Palestine from an undesirable, arid region to a promising dryland agricultural region. In this way, wheat research drew Palestine and the United States into a wider effort to transform arid areas into agricultural drylands. Drawing on a previously unexplored episode of technical cooperation between researchers in the United States and Palestine, I argue that we must examine how wildness, native-ness, and agro-climatic suitability are scientifically constituted within and not apart from colonial conquest. In doing so, the paper calls for reconsideration within geography and political ecology of the place-making relationship between colonization and scientific practice.
ISSN:0016-7185
1872-9398
DOI:10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.11.009