Saturday 31 January, 2pm
201. community room, balam balam place, 15 phoenix street, brunswick vic 3056
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The Politics of Rice explores how rice agriculture has built some of the world's most sophisticated communal societies - from Indonesia's collective Subak irrigation systems to West African women's mangrove rice cooperatives - that provide not only food but also kinship networks, shared rituals, and ecological knowledge that we can learn from to help us tackle food security and sustainability in Narrm. But rice also travels as a tool of colonialism and capitalism: Indonesia's transmigration program brings rice culture to West Papua which threaten Papuan traditional food cultures. Meanwhile, in Africa, the French colonial authorities imported rice from its Asian colonies to West Africa, displacing local crops, shaping taste and building dependency on imports. A dependency that lives on today.
This conversation brings together food writer and journalist Jack Thompson, whose work examines food sovereignty in West Africa, with Indonesian researcher Rassela Malinda, a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne who studies critical agriculture in Papua. Together they'll explore when rice culture generates community and when it becomes an instrument of dispossession - and what those tensions mean for how we think about food, agriculture, and belonging in our own multicultural context.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS:
Rassela (Ela) Malinda
Ela is an Indonesian PhD student at the University of Melbourne, in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Ela’s research examines agrarian transition through the transformation of land and labour relations shaped by the political economy between Indigenous communities and transmigrants in rural Merauke, West Papua. In Indonesia, Ela is actively involved with the Nahdliyin Front for Natural Resource Sovereignty (FNKSDA) and as editorial board of the Islam Bergerak website.
Jack Thompson
Jack is a food and climate journalist based in Dakar, Senegal. His work ranges from investigating global food supply chains to exploring culture and history through food and farming. His work has appeared in the Financial Times, the BBC and the Guardian. You can explore his portfolio here.
The Politics of Rice is a free, public event programmed as part of Grained exhibition, curated by Playte in partnership with Nongkrong and Blak Dot Gallery.
