Table Of ContentYale Agrarian Studies Series
James C. Scott, Series Editor
The Agrarian Studies Series at Yale University Press seeks to publish outstanding
and original interdisciplinary work on agriculture and rural society—for any pe-
riod, in any location. Works of daring that question existing paradigms and fi ll ab-
stract categories with the lived experience of rural people are especially encouraged.
James C. Scott, Series Editor
James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Shafqat Hussain, Remoteness and Moder-
Certain Schemes to Improve the Human nity: Transformation and Continuity in
Condition Have Failed Northern Pakistan
Steve Striffl er, Chicken: The Dangerous Edward Dallam Melillo, Strangers on
Transformation of America’s Favorite Food Familiar Soil: Rediscovering the
James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Chile-California Connection
Governed: An Anarchist History of Devra I. Jarvis, Toby Hodgkin, Anthony
Upland Southeast Asia H. D. Brown, John Tuxill, Isabel López
Michael R. Dove, The Banana Tree at the Noriega, Melinda Smale, and Bhuwon
Gate: A History of Marginal Peoples and Sthapit, Crop Genetic Diversity in the
Global Markets in Borneo Field and on the Farm: Principles and
Applications in Research Practices
Edwin C. Hagenstein, Sara M. Gregg, and
Brian Donahue, eds., American Georgics: Nancy J. Jacobs, Birders of Africa: History
Writings on Farming, Culture, and the of a Network
Land Catherine A. Corson, Corridors of Power:
Timothy Pachirat, Every Twelve Seconds: The Politics of U.S. Environmental Aid to
Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics Madagascar
of Sight Kathryn M. de Luna, Collecting Food,
Brian Gareau, From Precaution to Profi t: Cultivating People: Subsistence and
Contemporary Challenges to Environmen- Society in Central Africa Through the
tal Protection in the Montreal Protocol Seventeenth Century
Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Gopa Samanta, Carl Death, The Green State in Africa
Dancing with the River: People and Life James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep
on the Chars of South Asia History of the First Civilizations
Alon Tal, All the Trees of the Forest: Israel’s Loka Ashwood, For-Profi t Democracy:
Woodlands from the Bible to the Present Why the Government Is Losing the Trust
Felix Wemheuer, Famine Politics in Maoist of Rural America
China and the Soviet Union Jonah Steinberg, A Garland of Bones:
Jenny Leigh Smith, Works in Progress: Plans Child Runaways in India
and Realities on Soviet Farms, 1930–1963 Hannah Holleman, Dust Bowls of Empire:
Graeme Auld, Constructing Private Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and
Governance: The Rise and Evolution of the Injustice of “Green” Capitalism
Forest, Coffee, and Fisheries Certifi cation Johnhenry Gonzalez, Maroon Nation: A
Jess Gilbert, Planning Democracy: History of Revolutionary Haiti
Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended Christian C. Lentz, Contested Territory:
New Deal Ðiên Biên Phú and the Making of
Jessica Barnes and Michael R. Dove, eds., Northwest Vietnam
Climate Cultures: Anthropological Dan Allosso, Peppermint Kings: A Rural
Perspectives on Climate Change American History
For a complete list of titles in the Yale Agrarian Studies Series,
visit yalebooks.com/agrarian.
Bitter Shade
The Ecological Challenge of
Human Consciousness
Michael R. Dove
new haven and london
Published with assistance from the Council on Southeast Asia Studies at Yale University.
Copyright © 2021 by Michael R. Dove.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Epigraph: W. S. Merwin, “The Last One,” from The Essential W. S. Merwin, edited by
Michael Wiegers, copyright © 1967 by W. S. Merwin, reprinted with the permission of
The Permissions Company LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyon-
press.org; and from The Second Four Books of Poems, by W. S. Merwin, copyright © 1960,
1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1993 by W.
S. Merwin, used by permission of The Wylie Agency LLC.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or
promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. offi ce) or
[email protected] (U.K. offi ce).
Set in Ehrhardt MT type by IDS Infotech Ltd.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978-0-300-25174-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020938736
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to the memory
of Jonathan S. Dove and
Timothy L. Dove
Well in the morning they cut the last one.
Like the others the last one fell into its shadow.
It fell into its shadow on the water.
They took it away its shadow stayed on the water.
W. S. Merwin, “The Last One”
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
introduction. Nonhumans and the Paradox of the Human 1
chapter 1. Pig-Humans and Human-Pigs: Perspectivism in Dayak
Myth and Ritual 32
chapter 2. Environmental Uncertainty and Augural
Contingency 50
chapter 3. A Non-Western Panopticon: The Yogyakarta Sultanate
and Merapi Volcano 73
chapter 4. “Bitter Shade”: Signs and Things in Pakistani
Agro-Forestry 92
chapter 5. Culture, Agriculture, and Politics of Rice in Java 110
chapter 6. Historic Parting of the Wild from the Civilized in
Pakistan 131
chapter 7. Ritual, Myth, and the Rise of “Greedy Rice” 146
chapter 8. Weedy Signs of Intent and Error 166
epilogue. Seeing “Life Itself” 193
viii contents
Appendix: Principles of Augural Interpretation 203
Notes 207
References 237
Credits 279
Index 281
Preface
For as long as humans have been human, the encounter with the
nonhuman has been a source of ontological anxiety—contra-
dicting and challenging notions of what it means to be human, at the same
time offering potential insight into how to live in a world of both human and
nonhuman actors. This book argues that such encounters offer a way to
distance ourselves from parochial and distinctly human concerns, thereby
widening our ecological perspective. To escape the human is, in part, to
escape conscious self-awareness, which for millennia has been seen as a
uniquely human strength, and also a weakness. Building on the work of
Gregory Bateson, this book argues that the consciousness that makes
humans distinctive also hinders our ability to understand and live well
within the broader ecological webs that sustain us. Such ecological insight
depends upon distancing ourselves from narrow, goal-directed, conscious,
purposive thinking. The aim of the book is to demonstrate various tradi-
tions of thought that escape the conscious purpose of human actors and
thereby achieve some measure of ecological insight.
Gregory Bateson was one of the most infl uential modern commenta-
tors on the wide incapacity of modern society to cope intelligently and sus-
tainably with the environment. He called this disability a “curious twist” in
human cognition that blinds us to the reality of our own environment,
as described in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972:434): “On the one hand,
we have the systemic nature of the individual human being, the systemic
nature of the culture in which he lives, and the systemic nature of the
