Find Christian's project notes Notion page for various research sources that went into their project.
More about what happened in Rad Café can be found on this Rad Café Notion summary page.
Read an overview, here, about the political economic history of rubber tree plantations in Vietnam published on the Saigoneer.
Recorded October 28th 2021. Explicit language was permitted for each Rad Café conversation.
You are listening to Tri's conversation with Rad Café participant, Christian Phomsouvanh (they/them pronouns). Christian is currently enrolled as a student studying Botany and Plant Ecology at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. Christian shared that they are residing on Shoshone and Goshute lands in their land acknowledgement.
You can reach Christian online via IG: @csphomsouvanh and Email: [email protected]
In this conversation, Christian painted for us their upbringing in Laos and Utah, where their relationship with the natural world bloomed and branched out to include ways of cross-pollinating intellectual disciplines of natural and political sciences rooted in Christian's personal political journey.
During the time of their project research, Christian found themselves focusing on hevea brasiliensis, known more commonly as the rubber tree and for its both natural and commodified production of latex, or "white blood". Christian drafted these questions for the group to think about in relation to the profit-driven, anthropocentric world where the wealthiest class of humankind, and living species overall, redirect the flow of natural resources towards themselves.
Christian and I invite you to consider these questions and thought exercises as examples for how you can start thinking about your own personal and big-picture level relationship to the natural world as human politics and economic markets have transformed into a pervasive and dominant force on our planet:
Do you know of any countries, whether it be Southeast Asian or otherwise, that are able to protect their own national or ethnic resources against the seizure and exploitation of external, often colonial forces, from co-opting into their own colonial economies?
Name examples of when colonialism is driven by specific crops.
If a crop like the rubber tree ended up not being viable in Vietnam, would French colonialism play as big of a role in shaping contemporary Vietnamese and adjacent nation state geography? (Governance of both the people and colonial crop(s).)
Describe or think for yourself of how you have seen (colonial) crops used to reinforce ideas of social and economic hierarchy? i.e. Cotton in the U.S., Rubber trees in French colonial Vietnam, Bananas in Guatemala, Potatoes in Ireland, Taro in Hawaii, etc.ຂອບໃຈ, Christian, for your principled and rigorous curiosity and zeal for the natural sciences, fueled by a genuine desire to use your cross-disciplinary expertise and interests to fold more people into challenging and taking action on their and our relationship as people to our world within and beyond humankind.
Please send any inquiries regarding Rad Café to Tri (he/all pronouns) at [email protected]. Send inquiries regarding The SEAD Project to [email protected].