93. Plants, Seeds and Vegetal Beings in STS : Potential Conversations
Mylène Tanferri, Université de Lausanne
Posted: February 28, 2022 Accepted Languages: English/Inglés/Inglês, Spanish/Español/Espanhol, Portuguese/Portugués
This panel offers a space to convey propositions discussing knowledges practices about plants, seeds and vegetal beings. Several social and human sciences are now invested in this topic and important works have paved the way (Myers, 2015; Archambault, 2016; Gibson and Ellis, 2018; Hartigan Jr, 2019; Kazic, 2019; Lawrence, 2021). We propose to further these inquiries by focusing on specific means to observe and study manipulations, interactions and conversations with plants, seeds, and vegetal beings. Methodological discussions about what can be recovered with different (collection and analysis) methods is our main goal for this session. What can be observed from these interactions? Are there ways to describe them to do justice to vegetal beings’ (non-)participations?
Material experiences and situated interactions are at the core of both formal knowledges and practical skills. At the basis of these knowledges (conceptual and/or practical/experiential) they allow us to understand how these are produced by observing the mundane, everyday work that participate to their constitutions (Garfinkel, 1967; Latour, 1988). For this session, we would like to receive papers working on these processes. Academic knowledge from different fields such as biology, botany, phytosociology; or more controversial fields such as biomimicry and vegetal neurobiology; but also agricultural practices, industrial or small scale; forestry, environmental and biodiversity initiatives; private and collective gardening; all (and more) could be described as both carrying and furthering specific knowledges about plants and relationships with plants not only in discourses, but also through the ways plants are concretely handled, manipulated, and more generally interacted with through embodied practices.
Archambault, J.S. (2016) ‘Taking Love Seriously in Human-Plant Relations in Mozambique: Toward an Anthropology of Affective Encounters’, Cultural Anthropology, 31(2), pp. 244–271.
Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Reprint. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Gibson, D. and Ellis, W. (2018) ‘Human and plant interfaces: relationality, knowledge and practices’, Anthropology Southern Africa, 41(2), pp. 75–79.
Hartigan Jr, J. (2019) ‘Plants as ethnographic subjects’, Anthropology Today, 35(2), pp. 1–2.
Kazic, D. (2019) Plantes animées. De la production aux relations avec les plantes. These de doctorat. Université Paris-Saclay (ComUE).
Latour, B. (1988) Science in Action – How to Follow Scientists & Engineers Through Society. Reprint édition. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Lawrence, A.M. (2021) ‘Listening to plants: Conversations between critical plant studies and vegetal geography’, Progress in Human Geography. 0(0), pp. 1-23.
Myers, N. (2015) ‘Conversations on Plant Sensing’, NatureCulture, 03, pp. 35-66.
