Plastic Dreams: Knowing and Imagining More-than-Human Futures of Olive Landscapes in the Turkish Aegean

Climate change forces farmers and agriculturists to reconsider and reform their relations with rural landscapes and their more-than-hu-man dwellers. This article considers to what extent visions of futures seriously engage with agencies of non-humans to produce more sustainable agricultural sites and practices. It shows how reforms that begin with such engagements can end up reproducing pre-existing harms and injustices. By engaging with Tsing’s hopeful term “the arts of noticing,” we analyze the plans put forward by agricultural engineers, farmers, industrialists, and the Turkish government to reform olive agriculture in the face of climate change in the Aegean region of Turkey. We argue that while the arts of noticing fore-ground certain sensibilities, they are not sufficient on their own as a means to radically challenge existing rural relations.