Table of Contents

Series Editors’ Preface vii

Notes on Contributors ix

Introduction: Other Geographies, in the work of Michael Watts 1
Sharad Chari, Susanne Freidberg, Jesse Ribot, Wendy Wolford and Vinay Gidwani

1 Academic Journeys in the Black Atlantic: Gender, Work and Environmental Transformations 29
Judith Carney

2 Getting Back to our Roots: Integrating Critical Physical and Social Science in the Early Work of Michael Watts 43
Rebecca Lave

3 Binary Narratives of Capitalism and Climate Change: Dangers and Possibilities 55
Lucy Jarosz

4 Aggregate Modernities: A Critical Natural History of Contemporary Algorithms 63
Jake Kosek

5 Peanuts for Cashews? Agricultural Diversification and the Limits of Adaptability in Côte d’Ivoire 79
Thomas J. Bassett and Moussa Koné

6 Life Itself Under Contract: A Biopolitics of Partnerships and Chemical Risk in California’s Strawberry Industry 97
Julie Guthman

7 Commoditization, Primitive Accumulation and the Spaces of Biodiversity Conservation 111
Roderick P. Neumann

8 Stopping the Serengeti Road: Social Media and the Discursive Politics of Conservation in Tanzania 127
Benjamin Gardner

9 Privatize Everything, Certify Everywhere: Academic Assessment and Value Transfers 143
Tad Mutersbaugh

10 Oil, Indigeneity and Dispossession 157
Joe Bryan

11 Frontiers: Remembering the Forgotten Lands 169
Teo Ballvé

12 Vibrancy of Refuse, Piety of Refusal: Infrastructures of Discard in Dakar 185
Rosalind Fredericks

13 Reclamation, Displacement and Resiliency in Phnom Penh 199
Erin Collins

Index 215

About the Author

Sharad Chari, PhD is Associate Professor, Department of Geography, University of California at Berkeley, and Visiting Associate Professor, University of the Witwatersrand.

Susanne Freidberg, PhD is Professor of Geography at Dartmouth College.

Vinay Gidwani, PhD is Professor of Geography and Global Studies at the University of Minnesota.

Jesse Ribot, PhD is Professor of Geography, Anthropology and Natural Resources and Environmental Studies at the University of Illinois.

Wendy Wolford, PhD is Robert A. and Ruth E. Polson Professor of Global Development in the Department of Development Sociology at Cornell University.

Reviews

`The essays in this book represent a sampling of Watts' UC Berkeley students' work across the four decades he served as professor, muse, and driving force for colleagues as well as students. The collection provides an entree into this important scholar's broad-ranging and compelling legacy that branches out and extends, like a family tree, to distant continents and global institutions. How has Michael Watts shaped Political Ecology and other subfields of Critical Human Geography? Let us count the ways.' Nancy Lee Peluso, Professor of Society & Environment, University of California, Berkeley, USA `This important volume is a testament to the range of scholarship inspired by Michael Watts as illustrated by the insightful contributions of his former students, who are major scholars in their own right. Together, their contributions form an exciting new contribution to political ecology and critical agrarian studies - each presenting new understandings while tracing their intellectual debt to Watts's work.' Matt Turner, Professor of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA