From the Anthropocene to the Soyacene

Writing Planetary History through a Commodity Lens

Abstract

This essay addresses a twofold aim: On the one hand, it outlines a research agenda for planetary commodity history, arguing that a commodity lens enables the theoretical claims of planetary history to be put into historiographical practice. In this regard, historians should strive to trace the planetary footprint of a commodity’s more-than-human actor network comprising the deepening and widening of commodity chains and their flexible combinations across multiple times and spaces. Soy serves as a key commodity of agro-food globalization in the long twentieth century. Against this backdrop, the universalist notion of the Anthropocene might be specified by the concepts of the Capitalocene or Soyacene. On the other hand, this essay presents a case study of planetary commodity history with a focus on the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso in the Anthropocene since the sixteenth century in general, and in the Soyacene since the late twentieth century in particular. It outlines the widening of soy’s planetary footprint with regard to deforestation and global warming, as well as its deepening in terms of herbicide contamination and planetary health. Mato Grosso as a soy hotspot not only reveals the socio-natural dynamics of commodity frontiers but also highlights the transregional incorporation of this region into nation-state and global market dynamics via hierarchical commodity chains and other types of asymmetrical connections. Moreover, this case study provides evidence for a regionally grounded periodization of the Anthropocene.