Roundtable: Mountains of nutrients, plains of soy: Global connections between the hotspots and shadow places of the soy web.

Description

Historical changes in the soy web made major shifts in human diets and industrial livestock farming possible. These shifts were accompanied by entangled social and environmental impacts in both the global south and global north, which were invisible to many. Such places invisibly affected by a global web of commodities have been called «shadow places» by the Australian ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood. In three parts, «Mountains of nutrients, plains of soy» aims to bring together recent historical transnational work on soy, and to debate how such histories can make connections between the global north and global south visible. In the first two parts, scholars involved in three different Europe-based research projects on the history of soy present their work: historians working on «Soy Change» (historical ERC project based in Austria), «Soy Stories» (transdisciplinary Dutch Research Council project based in the Netherlands) and «What does your meat eat?» (historical Dutch Research Council project based in the Netherlands). In a Roundtable session the panellists debate the question how to make connections between the global north and the global south central to such Europe-based research. What do the different projects and approaches make visible and invisible about places related to the global soy web? And what does this bring present-day debate about global injustices and environmental destruction related to soy?

Period	25 Aug 2023
Event title	Mountains and Plains: Past, present and future environmental and climatic entanglements. 12th Biennial European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) Conference.
Event type	Other
Location	SwitzerlandShow on map