Phytocommunicability and Cross-Species Sociality

ABSTRACT

What vegetal modalities and botanic intertwinings situate cross-species communications and collectivities, and for whom? In much anthropological writing of previous eras, plants have served as a medium for analysing human sociality. Their ubiquitous presence and seemingly sessile silence, invisibility, anosmia and backgrounding have been one of the key posts of twentieth-century social and economic theory, despite the voices arguing for otherwise socialities. Recent work has moved plants to the fore to rethink our understandings of many core anthropological themes. This special issue adds to that work by foregrounding phytocommunicability, the ideologies about cross-species interaction shaping the kinds of work we do, observe, and make visible ethnographically.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I thank all the participants, even those whose work does not appear in this volume, for informing and expanding my ideas about phytocommunicability. Although I intended to include an article of my own work in this volume, a series of events prevented me from doing so. Thanks to Dean Richard Schroeder of the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences for funding the conference, and the anthropology department students (especially Marian Thorpe) and faculty for their vigorous support.

2 See also Winter (2019:30–31) for a discussion of the cybernetic (referentialist) information model's limitations when mapped onto plant communication.

 

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Rutgers Dean's Office: [Grant Number Rutgers Junior Scholar Faculty Workshop].