TALES OF THE POST-PLANTATION: UNLIKELY PROTAGONISTS OF MODERN PHILIPPINE BANANA HISTORY BY ROBIN THIERS

A groundbreaking exploration of the Philippine banana industry that goes beyond corporate narratives. Since the late 1960s, Davao's hinterland has been Asia's banana heartland—but Robin Thiers tells this story differently. Rather than focusing on plantation owners and their vision of modernity, he centers the voices that actually shaped the industry: small-scale farmers, the diseases that challenged crops, and the banana plant itself. Through rigorous fieldwork and contemporary theory, Thiers reveals plantations as complex living systems where humans, nature, and economics are deeply entangled. He challenges the very foundations of how we think about industrial agriculture and control. This book is an invitation to imagine something different: what comes after the plantation?