Abstract
Based on ethnographic fieldwork on the Island of Hawai’i, this thesis explores human- landscape relations through engagement with coffee farming practices. By exploring relations between the past, present, human and nonhuman, the main argument is that landscapes are affective. This builds on the affective turn in social sciences and humanities. I start by taking an analytical approach to “landscape” as a way of exploring ways of relating and caring for the nonhuman, which speak for alternative perspectives on cultivating land. As an analytical framework, landscape opens up the possibility for a multispecies exploration in farming practices, such as coffee farming practices, which also considers nonhuman agents in the “making” of landscapes. Here, I engage with coffee farming practices as about regulating, shaping and controlling landscapes. I also engage with the farmers’ practices as ways of knowing landscapes. Ultimately, I argue that the landscape is affective, capable of affecting human-landscape relations through farming practices and ways of knowing the landscape, which in turn evokes a form of care for the nonhuman.