In What Form Does Global Capital Flow Leave Behind Memories? The Story of the Apple Snail Caught Between the Green Revolution and the Organic Food Movement

Abstract

Using Taiwan’s United News Daily archive (dated between 1970 to 2010) as well as Taiwan’s shifting discourses of the Green Revolution and the organic food movement as study material, this project analyzes the narrative frameworks produced in regard to the apple snail (Pomacea canaliculata) in Taiwan. I demonstrate the importance of understanding these discourses as part of two interconnected meta-narratives. I argue that these narrative frameworks have decisively molded people’s experiences with and actions toward the apple snail, the land, and themselves. In analyzing and extending beyond the narratives of irreparable ecological destructions, we may recognize sites of memories left behind by global capital flow.