Tuberous Worlds

Olivia Angé is professor of anthropology at the Free University of Brussels. David Nally is professor of historical geography and fellow of Jesus College at the University of Cambridge.

“Cunningly counter-positioning twelve intriguing and distinctive investigations of how humans and tuber crops relate, Ange and Nally offer illuminating perspectives on plant-human entanglements and suggest new approaches to materiality.”—Francesca Bray, coauthor of Moving Crops and the Scales of History“An exemplary case of taking the everyday and the quotidian—pounded yam, cassava, or sweet potato mounds—and showing how they contain multitudes.”—Michael Watts, Class of ’63 Professor of Geography Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley“Sweeping across cultures, continents, and centuries, this impressive multidisciplinary collection rightly insists that we have much learn from the rich histories and lifeworlds of humans’ tuberous kin.”—Helen Anne Curry, Melvin Kranzberg Professor in the History of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology“A stunning set of essays that intellectually graft humans and tubers. More than that, they show the extent to which we are already grafted, physiologically, economically, ecologically, and historically. Across richly diverse sites, the authors interrogate domestication, cultivation, and colonization, but also reveal tuberous worlds that are so much more than human. This is gripping, exciting scholarship.”—Alison Bashford, author of The Huxleys: An Intimate History of Evolution