Farming Odd Kin in Patchy Anthropocenes

Abstract

How do we make sense of the uneven landscape in Yilan, Taiwan, where small-scale organic farming and luxurious country houses grow side by side? This essay suggests that we see both the rise of luxurious housing and eco-friendly farming as different patches of human-to-land relationships woven together through a landscape structure undergirded by the rise and fall of nuclear-family farms in post-World War II Taiwan. The uniqueness of the eco-friendly farmers in Yilan lies in their abilities to foster new livelihoods through creative assemblages of more-than-human economies and ecologies. By taking care of the wandering ghosts in the paddies, for example, new farmers join old farmers and villagers to enact a more-than-human world where both the material and the formless matter. By taking care of the paddy creatures, new farmers also join the health- and environmentally conscious urban consumers in enacting a more-than-human world where human well-being depends heavily on the well-being of nonhumans. Recognizing these interweaving practices of both normative and odd kinship making in relation to farmscape making helps us to think of more nonexclusive ways of farming and co-living in patchy Anthropocenes.