Alun-Alun Terapung: The Politics of the Haze and the Ethics of Production
Atmosphere and Agency
Supervisor - Mr. Tay Kheng Soon
The recent backlash from palm-oil producing countries following the European Union 2030 ban is a familiar struggle against the structural relations of production but on a globalized stage. Like many globalized processes, the palm oil industry and its supply chains continue to be alienated from its socio-environmental determinants, factoring out these cost from its current mode of production, causing symptoms like the haze and degrees of social exploitation of rural productive communities.
In and of itself, the EU ban is nothing more than a hostile reaction but accompanied by the proposal in this thesis, the aim is to restructure the two biggest losers into a reciprocal relationship - local smallholder and global buyers whose survival depends on their access to a healthy palm oil market. We ask how can captains of industries act as a driving force for environmentalism and socialism in the process of legitimizing its continual use of palm oil as opposed to removing it. On a broader note, how can capitalism find a way to legitimize its capital accumulation and avert, at least partially, the crisis of overproduction.
This thesis explores a future when pressured by a trend of palm oil bans and potentially losing a major market, a chocolate corporation decides to move its production to Kalimantan where the majority of chocolate ingredients can be grown while exploiting global socio-environmental conscience to legitimize its continued use of palm oil. It searches for a new spatial manifestation of a more ethical relations of production - exploring a future typology of a chocolate factory re-adjusted to the environment and to accommodate a more indigenous smallholder-dependent supply chain; if not for the greater good, then for its own survival in an increasingly socio-environmentally conscious world.
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