Suchergebnisse

This paper explores the generation of presences and absences of objects in plant biosecurity practices. We use praxiography to trace how multiple versions of disease were generated on a quarantined banana plantation during an emergency response to a suspected outbreak of feared Panama disease. Attending to the practices, techniques and materials that established different versions of disease presence and absence, we ask if the momentarily certain absence of disease on a particular farm necessarily indicated a favourable biosecurity outcome, thus informing enhanced policy strategies for plant health. There were, in fact, multiple objects. Not only diseases, but multiple presences of health, stress, disease and disorder were involved in confirming the absence of Panama.

Abstract
In a widely shared video, the government of the island state of Tuvalu posed an imaginary of Tuvalu as a digital nation in a situation of unabated climate change. In this article, we take the example of Digital Tuvalu as a paradigmatic case to advance the debates on international relations in the Anthropocene, demonstrating how the processes of climate catastrophe and digital state formation juxtapose. In linking climate loss and state extinction to notions of virtual sovereignty and cyber statehood, we are attentive to the infrastructural power of large information and communications technology companies, while at the same time acknowledging the agency of the Tuvaluan state in navigating the challenges of the Anthropocene. We discuss how a virtual deterritorial state mobilizes the Tuvaluan indigenous philosophy of fenua, to link land, sea, people and culture in a relational understanding of territory and sovereignty. Digital Tuvalu in this way envisions emerging digital technologies to rebuild Tuvaluan fenua in virtual space, thereby regaining agency in the face of existential climate threats. This, we argue, signals a new and highly relational model of digital state preservation, having profound implications for international relations in the Anthropocene.