I acknowledge the custodians of the lands I work and live on,
the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and the Darramuragal people of the Darug nation.
I offer my respects to their elders past, present, and emergent, and to their kin - human, vegetal, animal, and elemental.
The lands of Gadigal and Darramuragal were taken without consent, treaty, or compensation.
They are lands whose stories have historically been stolen, silenced, and sanitized.
They are lands of ongoing Indigenous survivance, continuance, and resurgence.
environmental anthropologist & environmental humanities scholar
sophie chao
I am a Eurasian (French and Chinese) environmental anthropologist and environmental humanities scholar interested in the intersections of capitalism, ecology, Indigeneity, health, and justice in the Pacific. I am currently DECRA Fellow and Lecturer the University of Sydney, working and living on unceded Gadigal land. Prior to my academic career, I worked for the Indigenous rights organization Forest Peoples Programme in the United Kingdom and Indonesia. I am keen to forge meaningful collaborations and conversations with Indigenous and decolonial academics, artists, and activists towards a better understanding of and relation to, morethanhuman worlds. For more, check out the morethanhuman matters interview series, or subscribe to the mailing list.
We live in an epoch of species extinction, ecological destruction, and precarious futures for humans and for the myriad other-than-human lifeforms that our existence and wellbeing depend upon. Addressing the anthropogenic crisis demands that we recognize and protect the morethanhuman worlds that we inherit, inhabit, and pass on. Morethanhuman worlds encompass plants, animals, elements, climates, and humans who unequally bear the burden of ecological ruin and repair. These worlds invite us to rethink the diverse entanglements of humans with otherthanhuman life, matter, and meaning. Making and remaking such morethanhuman worlds requires care, courage, creativity, and collaboration, as we work towards more livable shared futures.
Duke University Press, 2022
Recipient of the Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award
“The stories Sophie Chao tells in this amazing book are mesmerizing, and her interpretation of them is clear and powerful. She makes a major contribution to the intersection of multispecies and posthumanist scholarship and critical BIPOC studies in ways that could shape imaginations both in and beyond the academy. Brilliant, insightful, and meticulous, In the Shadow of the Palms will be an influential and important book.” — Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, coeditor of Feral Atlas: The More-than-Human Anthropocene
June 2022 | ISBN: 978-1-4780-1824-7
Use coupon code E22CHAO to save 30% when ordering from dukeupress.edu
watch the trailer read the introduction listen to the podcast
“Raising fundamental questions about ethnographic practice, theory, and activism, Sophie Chao offers a truly new examination of human-plant relations that pushes us forward in how we imagine, understand, and narrate these forms of relation. This excellent and beautifully written book, which is at points both heart-wrenching and joy producing, makes a field-changing contribution to anthropology, human-animal studies, political ecology, environmental humanities, and postcolonial studies.”—Paige West, author of Dispossession and the Environment: Rhetoric and Inequality in Papua New Guinea
"In the Shadow of the Palms is a brave, compelling piece of ethnographic work, cleverly structured and delightful in its elegant yet accessible prose, offering a new, powerful take on the longstanding issue of agribusiness expansion in Indonesia."—Silvia Pergetti, ANUAC - Rivista della Società Italiana di Antropologia Culturale
"The architecture of ‘empire’ and ‘colony’ were planted in self, soil, and the ecology of plantation, by foreign interests in foreign soil. We – I speak as a Pacific islander - are in those days and the maps of those defining years are written all over us, still making us – unless we take note of the kinds of issues Chao raises and become cartographers of truly new ways of doing and being."—Robert Wolfgramm, The Pacific Circle Newsletter
"Chao's deeply thought-provoking and riveting tome is both theoretical and real, development economics and the anthropology of slow violence. It is a homage to an Indigenous community with their own means of resistance. This is the work of a true ethnographer, deftly decolonizing anthropology by ensuring that she writes the tales her people want her to share. This is a story that needed to be told. "—Serina Rahman, Journal of Southeast Asian Economies
"This is a brilliant book – beautifully written – based on rigorous and sensitive ethnography and sharp theoretical analysis that seamlessly blends ethnography with theory. Chao’s respect and admiration for her interlocutors shines through the text and brings to life Marind skinship with sago and more-than-human becomings -and how this is under threat by the oil palm as an actor of multispecies violence."—Camelia Dewan, Anthropology Book Forum
"The evidence Chao provides in the form of thick ethnographic description and songs, stories, and dream accounts convincingly complicates the tendency to generalize plant-beings as either benevolent helpers, enigmatic tricksters, or passive, neutral fixtures. In the Shadow of the Palms is sure to bend one’s gaze upon a situated vision of robust humanness persisting amid profound changes, and of particular relational, ontological, and material entanglements that seem to tug on the broader planetary fabric in these calamitous times."—Carter Beale, Forest & Society
"In the Shadow of the Palms affords us a searing and lucid account of agro-politics, asymmetrical development, racism, violent dispossession, and environmental destruction across Southeast Asia. This book is beautifully written, deeply researched, and deserves to be read widely. Not only by students and scholars of Indonesia, but for all those interested in Southeast Asia and environmental politics. In the Shadow of the Palms may well become a classic in both anthropological studies and studies of Southeast Asia."—Tomas Cole, Asian Studies Review
"Chao's commitment to doing ‘political engaged anthropology’ is present throughout the book and is a welcome position on a complex topic. It is not only the stories that she tells of Marind negotiation of capitalist-driven palm oil expansion, but the theoretical debates she furthers, such as multi-species entanglements, that are critically rich and politically radical."—Sebastien Antoine, Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford
Duke University Press, 2022
Contributor(s): Margaret Leanne (M. L.) Clark, Radhika Govindrajan, Zsuzsanna Ihar, Noriko Ishiyama, Elizabeth Lara, Jia Hui Lee, Kristina M. Lyons, Michael Marder, Alyssa Paredes, Craig Santos Perez, Kim Tallbear
“Questions of the ecological and biopolitical raise questions of justice—environmental, racial, restorative, reparative, transformative, recognition-based, transitional, generative, abolitionist, participatory. The essays and interventions in this decisively frame-shifting collection engage with the entangled bank of justice relations with commitment and care, asking who benefits, who is harmed, and who counts in projects in which matters of multifariously embodied life are at stake.” — Stefan Helmreich, author of Sounding the Limits of Life: Essays in the Anthropology of Biology and Beyond
October 2022 | ISBN: 978-1-4780-1889-6
Use coupon code E22PRMSE to save 30% at dukeupress.edu
visit the website read the introduction
Forest Peoples Programme, Sawit Watch, and TUK Indonesia, 2013
Growing demand for palm oil is fueling the large-scale expansion of oil palm plantations across Southeast Asia and Africa. Concerns about the environmental and social impacts of monocrops led in 2004 to the establishment of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), which encourages oil palm expansion in ways that do not destroy high conservation values or cause social conflict. In line with international law, member companies must respect the collective right of Indigenous peoples and other local communities to give or withhold their consent prior to the development of oil palm on the lands they own, inhabit and use. This edited volume draws on sixteen independent case studies from seven countries in Asia and Africa to assess whether companies are keeping their promises.
November 2013 | ISBN: 978-0-9544252-7-2 | read online
Forest Peoples Programme and SawitWatch, 2011
Palm oil is a basic ingredient of much of the processed food we eat and the most widely used oil in cosmetics and household cleaners. At the same time, the careless development of oil palm is destroying forests, wiping out endangered species, polluting air and waterways, driving climate change, dispossessing Indigenous peoples, and immiserating the rural poor. This edited volume documents in detail, and for the first time, how oil palm plantations are expanding in different ways across South East Asia. It complements experiences in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea with new investigative case studies of the processes of oil palm expansion in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. This volume is the sixth in a series of reports published by the Forest Peoples Programme and SawitWatch, and other partners, about the social implications of oil palm expansion.
November 2011 | 978-979-15188-6-4 | read online
Forest Peoples Programme and Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP), 2011
The forests of Southeast Asia are home to tens of millions of people whose rights to lands are only weakly secured in national constitutions and laws. International human rights treaties now affirm the rights of Indigenous peoples and clearly recognize their rights to own and control the lands, territories, and natural resources that they have traditionally owned, occupied, or otherwise used. This volume reveals how the majority of Southeast Asian countries already have plural legal systems in place and that the basis for securing Indigenous peoples' rights through a revalidation of customary law exists. Through detailed case studies, the volume foregrounds legal pluralism as a central element within Indigenous peoples' struggle for the recognition of their rights.
November 2011 | ISBN: 978-616-90611-7-5 | read online
book talk - In the Shadow of the Palms
a video-conversation on In the Shadow of the Palms, hosted by The Greenhouse Center for the Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger. With Dolly Jorgensen and Finn Arne Jørgensen. 28 September 2022.
conversation with Dr Sophie Chao
a video-conversation on more-than-human worlds and multispecies justice with artist and activist Ravi Agarwal, hosted by Samtal Jameer Samtal Jameen/Equal Terrains, Equal Selves. 27 September 2022.
international day of the world's Indigenous Peoples
a blog piece on Indigenous Peoples and biocultural diversity, published by Duke University Press on International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples. 9 August 2022.