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REVIEWS AND ENDORSEMENTS:
“Steeped in Heritage is a vivid and insightful account of the complex cultural politics that link people to places via the intermediary of the botanical world (in this case, a scrubby little ‘red bush’). By taking rooibos tea as a window onto our times, it provides an original and enormously illuminating perspective on race and racialization, cultural identity and indigeneity, the globalization of niche commodity markets, and much more. A remarkable book.” — James Ferguson, author of Give a Man a Fish: Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution
“This beautifully written ethnography is a major contribution to the literature on commodities. Steeped in Heritage brilliantly brings together the political ecology of a commodity with an astute analysis of the intersection of land-based politics and questions about race, labor, and spatial and economic belonging.” — Paige West, author of From Modern Production to Imagined Primitive: The Social World of Coffee from Papua New Guinea
“How are human–environment relations transforming in the wake of climate change? This is surely a central question of our time and one that Sarah Ives poses with urgency and insight...Steeped in Heritage is a fascinating and well-written account that refreshingly avoids the dominant paradigms associated with climate change—those of “adaptation,” “vulnerability,” and “resistance.” 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
“Steeped in Heritage is an excellent and highly recommendable account. Offers wonderful scope for comparison.” — Annika Teppo, Anthropological Forum
“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
“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
“Steeped in Heritage is a welcome addition to a burgeoning literature on the intersections of ecology and belonging, race and nature. It elegantly illustrates how inequality and racialization are felt and worked as much as they are imposed and imagined. Extending and challenging conversations in multispecies ethnography, political ecology, and food studies, the book would be an excellent addition to courses on agriculture, land rights, and the messy operations of late capitalism.” — Sarah Besky, Environment and Society: Advances in Research
“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 tea leaves left at the bottom of their cup.” — Sarah Bradley, Journal of Ecological Anthropology
Steeped in Heritage is “a nuanced, elegantly written study of what it means to own and profit off a crop and the land that sustains it.” — Abena Dove Osseo-Asare, Journal of Modern African Studies
“Steeped in Heritage is a resounding, engaging and successful ethnography of difference in the time of steepened climate change and uncertain racial futures across Africa.” — Graham R.L. Fox, Anthropologica
“The vivid descriptions of fieldwork encounters and their contextualization in current debates in commodity studies and multispecies ethnography make this book a fascinating and enjoyable read…The book is an important contribution to studies of South African history and anthropology, as well as to the fields of commodity studies and multispecies ethnography.” — Melanie Boehi, Native American and Indigenous Studies
“Steeped in heritage advances important insights through an innovative and original approach, and will be of interest to scholars studying the politics of identity and race as well as commodities and multi‐species ethnography. The ethnography is rich and the book beautifully written.” — Hannah Elliott, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Sarah Ives “presents a fascinating blend of historical, anthropological, economic, and geographical knowledge about rooibos, the ‘commodity of contrasts’ from South Africa’s Western Cape region.” — Gina Covert Benavidez, Journal of Global South Studies
“Ives provides an accessible and interesting perspective on the complex, ongoing issue of race relations within South Africa. Recommended.” — C. W. Herrick, Choice
“Why does job uncertainty affect some races more than others? How does climate change contribute to work-related anxiety? These are some of the pertinent questions of our times that Steeped in Heritage helps us to think through.” — Saumya Pandey, Anthropology of Work Review
“Sarah Ives’ ‘Steeped in Heritage’ is a well-crafted multispecies ethnography of the lived realities, and contrasting “versions” of these realities, in the world of rooibos tea production in South Africa.” — Femke Brandt, Anthropos