The Anthropology of Plants

Plants are having a moment in the anthropological sun. Since the arrival of the Anthropocene concept, efforts to reconceive the human as a multispecies production have prompted anthropologists to reimagine the purview of their field, incorporating non-human animals, fungi, bacteria, and plants. They owe much to recent work by geographers, philosophers, historians of science, botanists, and others, but they also draw upon longstanding traditions within anthropology to examine how people use plants to navigate their world, including through horticulture, medicine, agriculture, and more. Anthropologists interested in plants historically framed their work within sub-fields such as agrarian studies, ethnobotany, and cultural ecology, whereas today a new anthropology of plants is emerging. This review outlines this historical movement, highlighting its dominant themes from the literature: the critique of mainstream botanical science; studies of plants in urban and other heavily disturbed spaces; and horticulture as a site of intimate human-plant encounter. Through such work, environmental anthropologists strive to develop a “botany otherwise,” and this review concludes by pointing toward the value of natural history to this anthropological botany.