Potted: A Cultural Sociology and Queer Ecology of Houseplants

• In Event: 50620 - Section on Environmental Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: Embodied Environments and Environmental Agency

Abstract

In this paper, I politicize houseplants: unearthing the relations of power that structure the industry, science, culture, and ecology at the root of our leafy friendships. I explore archives, scientific and popular media, visual culture and narratives, and interviews and ethnographic observations with plant hunters, breeders, marketers, retailers, and owners to situate houseplants as global commodities embedded in colonial regimes of extraction, cultural artifacts in this era of ecological dysphoria, social symbols mired in the politics of place-making and identity construction, and political agents breathing life into alternative interspecies relations of care. I bring a feminist, queer, and anticolonial lens to the science of plants to unsettle disciplinary and nature-culture boundaries.

Author

• Rebecca Laurent, University of Wisconsin-Madison