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Rainforest Capitalism

Rainforest Capitalism

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$27.95

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Congolese logging camps are places where mud, rain, fuel smugglers, and village roadblocks slow down multinational timber firms; where workers wage wars against trees while evading company surveillance deep in the forest; where labor compounds trigger disturbing colonial memories; and where blunt racism, logger machismo, and homoerotic desires reproduce violence. In Rainforest Capitalism Thomas Hendriks examines the rowdy world of industrial timber production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to theorize racialized and gendered power dynamics in capitalist extraction. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Congolese workers and European company managers as well as traders, farmers, smugglers, and barkeepers, Hendriks shows how logging is deeply tied to feelings of existential vulnerability in the face of larger forces, structures, and histories. These feelings, Hendriks contends, reveal a precarious side of power in an environment where companies, workers, and local residents frequently find themselves out of control. An ethnography of complicity, ecstasis, and paranoia, Rainforest Capitalism queers assumptions of corporate strength and opens up new ways to understand the complexities and contradictions of capitalist extraction. Thomas Hendriks examines the rowdy environment of industrial timber production in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to theorize the social, racial, and gender power dynamics of capitalist extraction. Thomas Hendriks is FWO Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa at KU Leuven and coeditor of Readings in Sexualities from Africa. Note on Anonymity  ix
Note on Photography  xi
Prologue  xv
Acknowledgments  xxi
Introduction. Thinking with Loggers  1
1. Awkward Beginnings  29
2. Forest Work  48
3. Remembering Labor  75
4. Sharing the Company  98
5. Out of Here  120
6. A Darker Shade of White  143
7. Cannibals and Corned Beef  161
8. Men and Trees  187
9. Women and Chainsaws  207
Conclusion. Capitalism and Ecstasis  230
Epilogue  249
Notes  253
References  263
Index  285

“Offering a rare look at the everyday lives of the people who live in and around Congolese timber labor camps, Thomas Hendriks draws out the continuities and discontinuities of racialized colonial extraction. Artfully written, Rainforest Capitalism will make a major contribution to theories of capitalism, race, and sexuality.”
“In this fresh and captivating book, Thomas Hendriks offers precious insights into the precarity of logging in the Congolese rainforest. His lively ethnography demonstrates that the analysis of neoliberal capitalist extraction should address not only labor and political economy but also memory, affect, sexual desire, and racial fetishism. His sophisticated theoretical framework allows him to capture the fleeting character of logging and brings together forestry, anthropology, and queer studies in visionary ways that will inspire many scholars.”

Additional information

Weight 1 oz
Dimensions 1 × 6 × 9 in