Durian matters

This introduction explains the significance of the quintessentially Southeast Asian ‘king of fruit’, the durian. In the last nine years or so, durian production has been scaling up from small 4-acre orchards to plantations of 10,000 acres in Malaysia. This has to do with the opening up of the China market for Malaysian whole durians (both nitrogen-frozen and fresh chilled durians) which differ from Thai durians. The rush to open up new plantations through clear-cutting forests has multiple socio-environmental consequences. Yet studies on the ecological and social impact of durian plantations or critiques of the durian Plantationocene and Capitalocene are scarce. This brief essay lays out the context and justifies why there is a need to study the durian and its multiple stakeholders, both human and nonhuman, along the supply chain. Identifying a humanities and social science gap in the research on the durian, the special focus provides new theories to think about the fruit in relation to media, anthropology, Indigenous studies, food, identity and cultural studies.