What Is “Planetary” Politics?

Is “planetary” a useful concept for political thought? What is the historical trajectory of this idea? The essay reflects on recent literature on planetary and global thinking to consider the challenges that this idea raises for theorizing political relations beyond the state up to the world scale. By drawing on grassroots histories of mobility and the role of food as a bridge between human and nonhuman environments, the essay offers a reflection on the possible uses of the “planetary” within the context of human “messiness” and political multiplicity.