Violent Atmospheres: Livelihoods and Landscapes in Crisis in Southeast Asia

In Southeast Asia, atmospheric violence emerges from the haze plumes of burning of palm oil plantations, the invisible but powerful spread of viral flows, and the subordination of upland farmers who have long depended on fire to clear land for new crops. Yet only recently have political ecologists drawn attention to such events' volumetric social and environmental character. Violent Atmospheres brings the political ecology of crisis to bear on atmospheric violence in Southeast Asia. The theoretically innovative and ethnographically grounded chapters address the internal contradictions of capital accumulation and how resource conflict triggers atmospheric crises. Violent atmospheres are volatile mixes of political-economic and biophysical ruptures encompassing surficial and gaseous matter across scales. Over the past several decades, violent atmospheres have increased in frequency and intensity throughout the region.

While political ecologists have long examined violent environments emerging from conflicts over resources in intensifying capitalist political economies, they have given less attention to the implications of the volumetric character of livelihoods and landscapes in crisis. This collection expands theoretical and empirical framings to account for the volumetric drivers and consequences of atmospheric violence. The essay contributors explore the scaled dimensions of atmospheric-induced violence and how the material and discursive production of crisis intersects with rural and urban socio-politics, economies, and environments. Collectively, the volume offers a framework for the political ecology of violent atmospheres through original, ethnographically grounded chapters based in Southeast Asia, a region with contrasting histories, peoples, and geographies.