Taking measure of an escape crop: Cassava relationality in a contemporary quilombo-remnant community

• Published in: Geoforum Vol. 130; pp. 136 - 145
• Main Authors: Roman, Gabriel Graton, Westengen, Ola T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01-03-2022; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Ambivalence; Autonomy; Cassava; Community; Crops; Cultivation; Escape; Escape crops; Flour; Harvest; Material semiotics; Measurements; Performativity; Quilombo; Resistance; Semiotics; Social life & customs; Subjectivity; Translation; Material semiotics; Quilombo; Escape crops; Measurements; Cassava
• ISSN: 0016-7185; 1872-9398
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.10.008

•In the quilombola community Espírito Santo do Itá, cassava is central to the organization of social and working life.•The specific relationality between the roots and the people fosters a sense of collectivity and subjectivity.•The cassava is performed through traditional and non-standardized practices.•Through specific measuring operations, the cassava becomes partially standardized.•Such measurements are ambivalent and contribute to a resistance against the cooption of these practices by the market.
Cassava (Manihot esculenta) is among the most important crops in Brazil, not only due to its widespread cultivation and consumption, but also its history in the country. This root has been important both to the colonial project and the resistance to it, particularly in the quilombo-communities. Such sites of resistance have served as paradigmatic examples of ‘escape agriculture’ in the work of James Scott (2009), who highlights the role roots play in avoiding appropriation by the state. In this article, we experiment with the concept of ‘escape crops’ as we follow cassava from harvest to market in a contemporary quilombo-remnant community, Espírito Santo do Itá (Pará). We combine Scott’s attention to the politics of crops with material semiotic sensibilities, thus exploring relationality and performativity. We argue that the cassava is central to the social life in the community, which is organized around the casas de farinha (flour mills). The processing practices also seem to foster a strong sense of collectivity and subjectivity, shaped by the materiality of the crop. Furthermore, the cassava which is performed in these spaces does not seem to allow for standardizations and abstractions, requiring processes of translation in order to be sold in the market, which is done through measuring operations. Through these operations, the cassava becomes an ambivalent and partial market entity, allowing for the cassava to travel in and out of the community, while at the same time precluding a co-option of this space by a capitalist logic. It seems, then, that by extending Scott’s concept, this root continues to be relevant for the community’s autonomy and freedom - not due to the crop’s biological traits alone, but due to the traits it gains and sheds relationally.