What happens when a forest becomes a plantation?

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Sophie Chao, whose extraordinary ethnography In the Shadow of the Palms: More-than-Human Becomings in West Papua traces the worlds of the Marind people—for whom plants and animals are not resources, but ancestors, siblings, and kin.

As oil palm plantations spread across their lands, Dr. Chao’s work illuminates how colonial and capitalist logics uproot not just forests, but entire cosmologies of care. We speak about multispecies justice, hunger, and the haunting question of what it means to live ethically in a world where growth often means loss.

References:
🪴 More Than Human Matters → https://www.morethanhumanworlds.com/mthm-archive

📚 The Promise of Multispecies Justice → https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-promise-of-multispecies-justice

🌿 In the Shadow of the Palms → https://www.dukeupress.edu/in-the-shadow-of-the-palms

🍃 Land of Famished Beings → https://www.dukeupress.edu/land-of-famished-beings

📖 “Introduction: Multispecies Justice” → https://read.dukeupress.edu/cultural-politics/article/19/1/1/352091

⚖️ What does it mean to be a legal being beyond the spectrum of property to personhood?

In this conversation, Professor Maneesha Deckha, author of Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders, speaks to me about the urgent need to move beyond the property–personhood binary that has long structured law’s relationship with animals.

Drawing on postcolonial, feminist, and critical legal thought, she invites us to imagine legal beingness—a framework that refuses hierarchy and embraces kinship, care, and coexistence.

Professor Deckha concludes with a haunting image of farmed animals, and speaks briefly about the politics of milk, about the multispecies economies of dairy in India, and about what it would take for law to recognise animals not as commodities.

🐄✨ Listen to this conversation on Courts of the Living, wherever you get your podcasts.

🎙️Season 1 Episode 7: 'Beingness'

References:

About Professor Maneesha Deckha: https://www.uvic.ca/law/faculty-and-research/our-faculty/profiles/deckha-maneesha.php

Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders: https://utppublishing.com/doi/book/10.3138/9781487525873

Animals, Colonialism, and the Rule of Law: https://openurl.ebsco.com/EPDB%3Agcd%3A13%3A23401885/detailv2?sid=ebsco%3Aplink%3Ascholar&id=ebsco%3Agcd%3A187877960&crl=c&link_origin=scholar.google.ca

A Deeper Kindness: Animal Law & Youth Activism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg6QcF9rWk0; https://www.uvic.ca/law/asri/index.php

Towards a Feminist Postcolonial Milk Studies by Greta Gaard : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265807927_Toward_a_Feminist_Postcolonial_Milk_Studies

Mother Cow Mother India: A Multispecies Politics of Dairy in India by Yamini Narayanan: https://www.amazon.in/Mother-Cow-India-Multispecies-Politics-ebook/dp/B0BS47ZVNP

"Women (respondents) in many of the villages would even voice their opinions around dog motherhood for example, and would say things like dogs also have the right to experience motherhood at least once in their lifetime."

At a time when our legal system views dogs as 'menace' on the one hand, and animal welfare organisations think about welfare as sterilisation and neutering of dogs on the other, Rashmi Singh Rana, PhD candidate at University of Technology Sydney & Nature Conservation Foundation India spoke to me about the vibrant personalities of the dogs she met for her research work. As dogs are sterilised as a form of protection, Rashmi asks crucial questions - who is really being protected, and under what circumstances.

References:

Donna Haraway's book titled 'The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness' (2003): https://www.amazon.in/Companion-Species-Manifesto-Significant-Otherness/dp/0971757585#:~:text=%22The%20Companion%20Species%20Manifesto%22%20is,here%20just%20to%20think%20with.

Krithika Srinivasan's article/paper titled 'The biopolitics of animal being and welfare: dog control and care in the UK and India' (2013): https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/74826410/27674774._Srinivasan.pdf

Natasha Fijn's article/book chapter titled ' DOG EARS AND TAILS: Different Relational Ways of Being with Canines in Aboriginal Australia and Mongolia', in the book titled Domestication Gone Wild: Politics and Practices of Multispecies Relations (2018): https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/2500/chapter-abstract/1216210/Dog-Ears-and-TailsDifferent-Relational-Ways-of?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Robert B Ekvall's article titled 'Role of the Dog in Tibetan Nomadic Society', published in 1963 in the Central Asiatic Journal: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41926578

Don Messerschmidt's book titled 'Big dogs of Tibet and the Himalayas' (2010): https://www.amazon.in/Big-Dogs-Tibet-Himalayas-Messerschmidt/dp/974524130X

Himalayan Guardian Dogs: Unsung Sentinels of the Shepherds of the Himalayas: https://roundglasssustain.com/wild-vault/himalayan-guardian-dogs

Supreme Court Order in WP (Civil) No. 5 of 2025: https://api.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2025/41706/41706_2025_9_802_62686_Order_28-Jul-2025.pdf

Animal Birth Control Rules, 2023: https://awbi.gov.in/uploads/regulations/167956418266ABC%20Rule%202023.pdf

Wanted: Menacing Dogs for TV Thumbnails: Wanted: Menacing dogs for TV thumbnails https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/08/13/wanted-menacing-dogs-for-tv-thumbnails