The distinctive capacities of plants: re‐thinking difference via invasive species

Abstract

The lower status of plants relative to animals, one of the defining characteristics of Western thought, is under challenge from diverse research in botany, philosophy and the more-than-human social sciences including geography. Although the agency of plants is increasingly demonstrated, scholars have yet to fully respond, for plants, to Lulka's call to attend more carefully to the details of nonhuman difference (Lulka D 2009 The residual humanism of hybridity: retaining a sense of the earth Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 34 378-93). This paper advances the concept of the shared capacities of plants, in order to take them seriously in their own terms, and to consider what that means for human-plant relations more generally. We identify four capacities illustrated through plant lives: distinctive materialities; moving independent of humans; sensing and communicating; and taking shape as flexible bodies. Together these provide a sense of plant worlds in which distinct but highly variable plant forms have their own lives, interacting with humans and others in contingent ways. As empirical illustration we explore the adversarial relationship between rubber vine (Cryptostegia grandiflora) and invasive plant managers in northern Australia. In this case biosecurity strategies are affected by and affecting of rubber vine, assembling plants (as individuals and collectives), feral and stock animals, fire and helicopters, human skills and legislation. Recognition of plant capacities challenges us to rethink several concepts often framed against a human norm, including agency, subjectivity and the ethics of killing.

Governing invasive plants: Policy and practice in managing the Gamba grass (Andropogon gayanus) – Bushfire nexus in northern Australia

“…In contrast, 'living with' (Aitken et al, 2009;Head et al, 2014), or more flexible approaches, are a well-established theme in biosecurity discussions of various animal diseases (Hinchliffe, 2007;Hinchliffe and Bingham, 2008;Mather and Marshall, 2011;Phillips, 2013;Barker, 2014). Nevertheless, as Mather and Marshall (2011) note, the notion of 'living with' can be vague and ambiguous in terms of offering alternative management strategies.…”

“…As we will show, policy frames itself as governing invasive plants as species, but to be effective this governance has to enrol a host of others: funding, machinery, chemicals and all sorts of human actors. In this paper we also draw attention to the agency of the plants themselves in the practices being undertaken (Head et al, 2014). As Barker argues For invasive plants and plant diseases, the inherent unpredictability of relational life leaves national and international governing bodies and international trade agreements scrambling to keep up, and poses problems for risk assessments based on current observations -as good behaviour in one environment fails to guarantee docility in another -particularly in the context of climatic shifts (Barker, 2014: 3-4).…”

What's ontology got to do with it? On nature and knowledge in a political ecology of the 'green economy'

“…At the other end of the hierarchy plants, for example, are viewed merely as 'vegetables': dispossessed of the capacities of movement, perception, communication, and immanently-directed telos, and thus usefully backgrounded as existing only for the instrumental ends of humans (as substantively critiqued in Hall 2011; Head et al 2015;Marder 2013). In this hierarchical ontology only humans are worthy of moral consideration, since only we are ranked as possessing capacities such as communication, purpose and subjectivity.…”

Creative geographies and living on from breast cancer: The enlivening potential of autobiographical bricolage for an aesthetics of precarity

“…As Head et al. (, p. 411) argue, death and killing are never far from human–plant relations, be it through weeding, eating, biosecuring or harvesting. In this messy space of the livingdying garden, botanical transformation is inevitable and humans are not always “in control”, since “plants have a will of their own” (van der Veen, , p. 808), sometimes refusing to growth where wanted, at other times proliferating uncontrolled in unplanned spaces.…”

“…In this messy space of the livingdying garden, botanical transformation is inevitable and humans are not always “in control”, since “plants have a will of their own” (van der Veen, , p. 808), sometimes refusing to growth where wanted, at other times proliferating uncontrolled in unplanned spaces. Here we can imagine the botanical world as a living subject, acting back in many unforeseen ways, often beyond the remit of people (Head et al., , pp. 399, 401, 410).…”