Rice Cultivation and the Craft of the State

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

19th century oral histories from the highlands of Madagascar traced a history of sovereignty and governance through a narrative of major landscape transformation. The construction of dikes, canals and rice fields around the capital city was figured as part of the work of building the kingdom. This was an expansive and expanding craftwork that in remaking the landscape also remade relationships between its inhabitants, human and nonhuman alike. In this presentation I reflect on how this narrative sits with other formulations that have explored the development of sociopolitical complexity in relation to the construction of large irrigation works. How might attending to the craft of rice agriculture open alternate avenues for thinking through these complex relationships?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25235