Overview

Tracing lines of vegetal influence and affect, Shaped by Vegetal Matters: Phyto-Influence on Humans, Other Animals, and Place describes how plants influence and shape humans, their relations with other animals, and place. Highlighting vegetal matters related to four plant species and the triad of plants-elephants-humans in Sri Lanka, each case study opens up multi-directional influences across situated multispecies social milieus. From jacaranda trees in Australia, to wapato on a river island in the United States, to willow and weavers in Denmark, to sugarcane plantations in Sri Lanka, to dying yet mythic ash trees, features emerge of human-plant social intimacies, power dynamics, and intersubjectivities. A central glue of plant-human relations is poiesis, meaning the creation of something new, yet etymologically related to the poetic. Beyond explorations of poiesis, the vegetal offers an epistemology of recursion that is relevant for understanding place-based relationships. Elizabeth Oriel presents vegetal influence in analytical and descriptive styles, reflecting multispecies ethnography and other analytics brought to vegetal matters.

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9781666940527

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Reviews

""This exceptional book reveals the exquisite interplay and interdependence between the animal (human and otherwise) and the vegetal worlds. Through stories of diverse lifeforms, ecosystems, and cultures, the crudeness of separation and hierarchy imposed by colonial capitalism are laid bare for us to re-examine and re-imagine. We see that we don't shape plants and the vegetal world as much as they shape our inner and outer lives ... and our very existence. As a wildlife scientist, this work has convinced me that we cannot truly protect elephants or other wildlife without giving greater priority to the biocultural needs of the vegetal world as it intersects with humans. Accordingly, we can improve the interests of humans who live and work closely within these systems but have been separated from their own traditional and indigenous ways of life."" --Toni Frohoff Ph.D, Wildlife Behavioral Biologist

Author Information

Elizabeth Oriel received her PhD in global studies from the University of London. She is currently based at Aarhus University, Denmark.

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