Un/settling times for border control: A porous political ecology of date plantations in the Jordan Valley

This paper examines a political ecology assemblage surrounding date plantations in the Jordan Valley to shed light on time politics as power struggles constituted by humans and beyond-the-humans in the borderland during our time of climate change and the recurring regional cycles of violence. Moving beyond the temporality of climate change as crisis and emergency, the paper examines the political dynamics of climate change routines, such as the distribution of new species and its containment technologies. Analyzing the borderlands’ date plantations’ timescape as constructed of ecological time, sociotechnical time, political time, and ethical market times, I argue that climate change politics in the borderlands are time politics made and remade by humans and nonhumans alike. Bringing Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian state officials, state scientists, farmers, agri-tech developers, activists and beyond-the-human actors like the Red Palm Weevil and the technologies to contain it, the paper illuminates the temporal nature of power and the temporal power of nature in borderlands. By doing so, I explore the co-constitution of beyond-the-human agencies, border politics, and the temporalities of climate change.