Project description

This project investigates on-the-ground social and ecological changes that emerge from a preferential trade agreement that brings large quantities of beef from Botswana to Norway. Building on previous research, it tracks the movement of knowledge, value, tastes, and species as they participate in the emergence of a non-contiguous zone of beef production that connects across the Global North and South. It does so through a multi-sited, multispecies ethnography, of 1) the expansion of landscapes of industrial beef production in Botswana; and 2) the transformation of beef producing landscapes in Norway. Through these connections, it shows how European trade agreements affect landscapes, more-than-human ecologies, and their social-environmental arrangements both within and beyond Europe. Critically, it examines how the European green transitions, through their connections to these agreements, may be implicated in forms of “green colonialism” that produce “shadow ecologies” in the Global South.

Short Bio

Pierre du Plessis is an environmental anthropologist and multispecies ethnographer whose research has focused on practices of tracking and gathering as methods and analytics for understanding landscape change. His current research tracks how industrial beef production transforms landscapes in southern Africa and Europe. He has previously held research positions at the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities, University of Oslo, and as a DFF International Postdoc at Aarhus University and the University of Cape Town.