Duke University Press Steeped in Heritage: The Racial Politics of South African Rooibos Tea (New Ecologies for the Twenty-First Century)

South African rooibos tea is a commodity of contrasts. Renowned for its healing properties, the rooibos plant grows in a region defined by the violence of poverty, dispossession, and racism. And while rooibos is hailed as an ecologically indigenous commodity, it is farmed by people who struggle to express “authentic” belonging to the land: Afrikaners, who espouse a “white” African indigeneity, and “coloureds,” who are characterized either as the mixed-race progeny of “extinct” Bushmen or as possessing a false identity, indigenous to nowhere. In Steeped in Heritage Sarah Ives explores how these groups advance alternate claims of indigeneity based on the cultural ownership of an indigenous plant. This heritage-based struggle over rooibos shows how communities negotiate landscapes marked by racial dispossession within an ecosystem imperiled by climate change and precarious social relations in the postapartheid era. Review " Steeped in Heritage provides a fresh perspective on the post-apartheid situation of race relations and identity in South Africa while offering insight into the precarious rooibos economy of the Western Cape region. This book is multidisciplinary and will especially benefit those interested in South African studies, food economies, and cultural and regional identities that derive from commodity production."--Gina Covert Benavidez "Journal of Global South Studies" (12/12/2020 12:00:00 AM) "Compelling and prescient . . . Steeped in Heritage is a fascinating exploration of the dynamics surrounding identity and its ties to things and places in a racist, capitalist context."--Aran Mackinnon "African Quarterly" (9/1/2018 12:00:00 AM) " Steeped in Heritage is thorough and well-thought-out . . . Excellent and highly recommendable."--Annika Teppo "Anthropological Forum" (8/2/2018 12:00:00 AM) " Steeped in Heritage is a fascinating and well-written account that refreshingly avoids the dominant paradigms associated with climate change. . . . Instead, it gives us a much-needed analysis of ecological change as a thoroughly social process, inseparable from local politics, which are dominated by structures of race and class. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the contemporary politics of southern Africa or the future of food in a time of ecological crisis."--Elizabeth Hull "American Anthropologist" (12/5/2018 12:00:00 AM) " Steeped in Heritage is an excellent and highly recommendable account. Offers wonderful scope for comparison."--Annika Teppo "Anthropological Forum" (8/2/2018 12:00:00 AM) " Steeped in Heritage is likely to be of interest to any scholar interested in anthro-ecological interactions, racial politics, questions of self-hood and belonging, or simply interested in finding meaning in the tealeaves left at the bottom of their cup."--Sarah Bradley "Journal of Ecological Anthropology" (7/1/2018 12:00:00 AM) "A nuanced and theoretically engaged analysis. Steeped in Heritage offers a novel contribution to a long tradition of deeply ethnographic political ecology scholarship. This book will interest scholars working on a vast range of issues including indigeneity, environmental change, climate change, agricultural labor, identity politics, multispecies relationships, place-based products, and African studies."--Emma McDonell "Journal of Political Ecology" (1/1/2018 12:00:00 AM) "A nuanced, elegantly written study of what it means to own and profit off a crop and the land that sustains it. Ives writes in a lyrical fashion, using the metaphors of cultivation, steeping and sipping to create an interpretive framework. . . . In this vital study of plants and people, commodities and labourers, Ives centres her discussion on the supply side to show where the tea we drink is made."--Abena Dove Osseo-Asare "Journal of Modern African Studies" (3/5/2019 12:00:00 AM) "Ives provides an accessible and interesting perspective on the complex, ongoing issue of race relations within Sou