Engineering Living Infrastructures: The Biopolitical Economy of Poplar Architectures in the Anthropocene

Abstract

The article investigates the growing role played by «living infrastructures» in the Anthropocene. In particular, it investigates the complex biopolitical economy underlying the infrastructuralisation of the poplar tree – a botanical genus, whose metabolism is increasingly mobilised in public and private initiatives aimed at fighting desertification, environmental toxicity and climate change. Focusing on the ongoing expansion of poplar plantations, it discusses the integration of living infrastructures into financial markets and carbon credit schemes and interrogates the new frontiers of capital accumulation opened by the molecular engineering of living infrastructures.