The Zombie as a Mirror of Modern Mass Culture

Zombies were and still are one of the most important symbols of modern mass culture. The zombie discourse originated among African slaves brought to the sugar plantations in the Caribbean. In many ways, the narratives of the “living dead” were a reaction to the crisis phenomena of plantation life. This is evidenced by the rich comparative material presented on many peoples of the world. Such notions of invulnerability after formal death proved to be an important tool of resistance to new conditions caused by external threats. Termed “revitalization,” they were an important element of the Millennialist movements. While initially the sorcerers who could bring themselves back to life were central to these beliefs, in the following period the focus shifted to the victims of various manipulations, transformed into soulless beings. Leaving the environment of their original “habitat,” zombies took on a new life, occupying a firm place in modern mass culture. Having become a symbol of ruthless exploitation of man, relegated to the level of a machine appendage, zombies proved to be one of the most “productive” symbols. They reflected the main trends in the development of society and even began to function as instruments of philosophical reflection. All this allows us to consider zombies as an indicator of altered society, producing new “walking dead”. The metaphors associated with zombies allows us to conclude that the comprehension of zombies makes modern man begin to perceive them constructively, creating a new image, demonstrating the movement towards humanization.

Plantation Life

In Plantation Life Tania Murray Li and Pujo Semedi examine the structure and governance of Indonesia's contemporary oil palm plantations in Indonesia, which supply 50 percent of the world's palm oil. They attend to the exploitative nature of plantation life, wherein villagers' well-being is sacrificed in the name of economic development. While plantations are often plagued by ruined ecologies, injury among workers, and a devastating loss of livelihoods for former landholders, small-scale independent farmers produce palm oil more efficiently and with far less damage to life and land. Li and Semedi theorize “corporate occupation” to underscore how massive forms of capitalist production and control over the palm oil industry replicate colonial-style relations that undermine citizenship. In so doing, they question the assumption that corporations are necessary for rural development, contending that the dominance of plantations stems from a political system that privileges corporations.

“Its Bite and Its Feeling”

This chapter positions the quadroon balls of nineteenth-century New Orleans as a critical generative source of, and productive metaphor for, the complex of miscegenation fantasies that mark jazz as both seductive enough to excite our collective sense of subversion and quintessentially American enough to serve as the nation’s “classical music.” Building upon Emily Clark’s work on quadroon balls’ imbrication within a feedback loop between romanticized narrative and lived experience, which she terms the “plaçage complex,” the chapter demonstrates that the romanticization of New Orleans as jazz’s ostensible birthplace is rooted in discursive moves that long predate jazz itself. As such, this chapter draws a through-line from the early nineteenth-century genesis of quadroon balls through their mid-century boom and the fantastical white-authored travel narratives that made them tourist destinations and the ways they subsequently informed both New Orleans’ Storyville district and representations of antebellum plantation life in New York City stage revues. Through this analysis, the chapter draws uncomfortable yet necessary connections between jazz historical discourse, and especially its romanticization of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century New Orleans, and the discursive engines that maintained white supremacist structures during the nineteenth century and that remain active, if obfuscated, in the present.

MALĒCIYĀVIṈ MU.AṈPUCCELVAṈ ILAṄKAIYIṈ TI.NYĀṈACĒKARAṈ ĀKIYŌRIṈ CIṞUKATAIKAḶ ŌR OPPĀYVU [COMPARISON OF THE SHORT STORIES OF M.ANBUCHELVAN (MALAYSIA) AND T.NYANASEKARAN (SRI LANKA)]

The objective of this study is to identify and compare the education issues of the plantation communities in selected Tamil short stories of Mu.Anbuchelvan (Malaysia) and T.Nyanasegaran (Sri Lanka) as well as to analyse the parallel elements in these issues. These short stories are selected based on the similarity of intrinsic elements that reflect plantation life and socioeconomic status. The analysis and discussions are based on comparative literary theory. The findings of this research shows that education issues are very similar among plantation communities in Malaysia and Sri Lanka. The implications of this study are important to understand the importance of Tamil short stories as historical sources of plantation communities in Malaysia and Sri Lanka.

Refined past, current and future greenhouse gas footprints of palm oil production

<p>Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) is the most important oil crop in the world, with more than 85% of the global production coming from Indonesia and Malaysia. However, knowledge of country-wide past, current and likely future greenhouse gas (GHG) footprints from palm oil production remains largely incomplete. Over the past year, first studies reporting measurements of net ecosystem carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) fluxes in oil palm plantations of different ages and on different soil types became available. Combining the recent CO<sub>2 </sub>flux estimates with existing measurements on methane and nitrous oxide fluxes allows for a refined quantification of the GHG footprint of palm oil production over the whole plantation life cycle.</p><p>To derive country-wide GHG emissions from palm oil production for both Indonesia and Malaysia, we applied the refined GHG footprint estimates to oil palm area extents. Therein, we differentiated between mineral and peat soils, second- and first-generation plantations and within the latter category also among previous land-use systems from which conversion to oil palm likely occurred. For deriving the current (2020) proportions for each category, we combined FAO data with existing remotely sensed maps on oil palm extent and tree density as well as peatland and intact forest layers. These area proportions were then applied to available historic (1970 – 2010) and future (2030 – 2050) oil palm extent estimates as a business-as-usual scenario (BAU), complemented by alternative scenarios. GHG footprint estimates comprise all GHG emissions from palm oil production, i.e. from land-use change, cultivation, milling and use.</p><p>Our refined approach estimates the 2020 GHG emissions from palm oil production at 1011 Tg CO<sub>2</sub>-eq. yr<sup>-1</sup> for Indonesia and at 261 Tg CO<sub>2</sub>-eq. yr<sup>-1</sup> for Malaysia. Our results show that while plantations on peatland only represented 17% and 15% of the total plantation area in 2020 for Indonesia and Malaysia, they accounted for 73% and 72% of the total GHG emissions from palm oil production. Emissions in 1980 and 2000 were estimated to be only 1% and 14% of the 2020 palm oil emissions for Indonesia, but already 24% and 96% for Malaysia due to the earlier oil palm expansion. Projected emissions for 2050, assuming further oil palm expansion on suitable land and constant yields from 2020 on, represent 64% of the 2020 value for Indonesia and 97% for Malaysia under a BAU expansion scenario. These lower or constant GHG emissions for future scenarios despite assumed increases in cultivated area are the consequence of lower GHG emissions in second and subsequent rotation cycles. For both countries, the 2050 BAU emissions could be reduced by more than 50% by halting all conversion of peatlands and forests to oil palm from 2020 on, and by more than 75% when additionally restoring all peatlands currently under oil palm to forest until 2050. Closing yield gaps could potentially lead to further emissions savings.   </p>

“[M]anaged at First as if They Were Beasts”

How did British-American planters forcibly integrate newly purchased Africans into existing slave communities? This article answers that question by examining the “seasoning” of twenty-five enslaved people on Egypt, a mature sugar plantation in Jamaica’s Westmoreland parish, in the mid-eighteenth century. Drawing on the diaries of overseer Thomas Thistlewood, it reveals that Jamaican whites seasoned Africans through a violent program that sought to brutally “tame” Africans to plantation life. Enslaved people fiercely resisted this process, but colonists developed effective strategies to overcome opposition. This article concludes that seasoning strategies were a key component of plantation management because they successfully transformed captive Africans into American slaves.

Plantation Life in the British West Indies, 1650–1850

Over two million enslaved people labored on cash crop plantations in the British West Indies in the almost two hundred years between the development of sugar plantations on Barbados in the 1650s and the age of emancipation in the 1830s. Although both the sizes of plantations and the crops produced varied across the Caribbean, generally the system of enslavement and therefore the plantation life generated within that system, did not. The contours of enslaved lives were shaped by myriad forces—the violence of the institution of slavery, the strictures of gender, reproduction, and patriarchy, the racial animosity engendered by whites, the hierarchies of the enslaved community, and the demographic reality of the colonies. The labor enslaved women, men, and children performed, the violence they endured, the familial and kinship ties they forged, the cultural practices they engaged in, and the strategies they employed to challenge their bonded status, were the constituent elements of their enslavement and their daily lives. But once slavery ended, the demands of the plantation did not fade. Neither did the racist attitudes of whites about people of African descent, or elite assumptions about what constituted a good subject in Britain’s burgeoning empire. As they forged new lives in the 1840s, 1850s, and 1860s, former slaves grappled with how to set limits on their labor, build families, and live lives free from white scrutiny and oppression.