Places

<italic>Places</italic> captures the mutual inflection between crops and places—the one making and remaking the other. It argues for a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of place-making—seen as a cathartic process with the interplay of diverse elements—human and non- human: from stock markets to pig ceremonies and grain elevators to tea garden trenches. Also characteristic of place making is the changing meaning of different constituents in different contexts and times which do not allow for reification of a crop or its place—but in each instance, reproduces the crop as a contingent cultural artefact. The mixed focus on global commodities (tulips, wheat, and tea) as well as local subsistence foods (tubers) brings out the contrasting sociocultural and economic processes that coalesce to move a crop or even to keep it in its place. <italic>Places</italic> highlights the significance of micro-history and the way the historian’s choice of frame shapes the histories they tell of a place and of its connections.