In the garden as well as in the field a multiplicity of actors intervenes to create the landscape we live in. Honoring non-human agency is an easy task for the gardener and an ongoing challenge for the sociologist.
Recognizing agency in other humans is already a challenging task because it highlights power struggles. Recognizing agency in non-humans brings in even more unsettling thoughts about the longstanding exceptionalist paradigm, the idea that humans are outside the ecosystem, and meant to profit from it. In the garden, plants, animals and microorganisms live together and either benefit from or threaten each other’s presence. The flowers in the picture have been sowed by the birds that are eating their seeds.
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