Vol. 3 No. 2 (2026): Global More-than-Human Histories of Palms
Palms as World-Makers beyond Commodity Histories

Ephemeral and Territorialised Oil Palm Trees

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  • Rosa Cavalcanti Ribas Vieira
Rosa Cavalcanti Ribas Vieira
Museum of Archeology and Ethnology of University of São Paulo
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3197/whppp.63876246815932

Published 2026-09-16

Keywords

  • oil palm,
  • palm oil,
  • Mayombe,
  • Central Africa,
  • Multispecies

How to Cite

Cavalcanti Ribas Vieira, Rosa. 2026. “Ephemeral and Territorialised Oil Palm Trees”. Plant Perspectives 3 (2):304-27. https://doi.org/10.3197/whppp.63876246815932.

Copyright (c) 2026 Rosa Cavalcanti Ribas Vieira

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The oil palm agroindustry is advancing over many different territories worldwide, especially in Southeast Asia and South America, with impacts on forests and human and non-human communities. Production has expanded to supply refined palm oil and its derivatives, widely used in the manufacture of processed foods, cosmetics and cleaning products, as well as producing biodiesel. Because of this contemporary market demand, oil palm has become an agent of destruction, leading to critiques and denunciations from environmentalist agencies and civil movements. However, these discourses and actions seldom if ever mention the historical relationship of African and Afro-diasporic societies with the oil palm and remain silent on the colonial past responsible for transforming Central and West Africa into key territories for the production of palm oil for export markets. This is a topic already explored in historiography but so far not by anthropology to any significant degree. Based on ethnographic data, the present article analyses the historicity of the relational universe of oil palm in villages in the Mayombe forest region, showing temporalities and rhythms encompassed by a human-plant relationship. Inspired by this case study, I advance the concepts of ephemeral and territorialised plants, which could be extended to think about other ethnographic contexts.

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