Summary
Is the “plant cause” an overlooked aspect of the agroecological and food transition? Are the plant cause and the farmers’ cause two sides of the same coin? This volume argues that this underexplored issue involves recognizing plants as relational beings and adopting practices that are now essential for developing solutions “with” nature. By asserting an ethics of living work, it highlights the chains of interdependence and sociability based on human and non-human cooperation in productive activities.
This volume stems from the PlantCoopLab ((em)Plant Cooperation Laboratory(/em)) project and is the result of collective research conducted over a period of five years. It is based on an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to the humanities and social sciences, developed through engagement with plant workers, farmers and gatherers. The contributions draw on anthropological, ethical, political and social enquiries, enabling us to reconsider the importance of these professions with regard to respecting life in agriculture.
This volume is intended for researchers and academics, civil society actors, professionals and decision-makers working in agriculture, food and the environment.
This Print On Demand book will be sent within 1 to 2 weeks (metropolitan France) and in a separate package if you order another paperback book.
Table of contents
Foreword
Introduction. Feeding off plant-human relationships
Sylvie Pouteau
Plant turns revolving around the plant cause
The plant cause at the heart of the farmers’ cause
PlantCoopLab, the emergence of the plant cause as an originary phenomenon
Six entries in the plant cause
Bibliography
1. A look at the PlantCoopLab experience
Sylvie Pouteau
Taking an approach to agriculture from the perspective of plant humanities
Exploring the margins where ecologized agriculture is being invented
The non-productive part of interdisciplinary practice: prior consultation
Group dynamics through transdisciplinary practice: four experiences
Exerting narrative empiricism rather than theorizing
Perspectives, entering a second phase of PlantCoopLab
Bibliography
2. After gathering: to make territory and profession with the wild side of plants and environments
Florence Pinton
To consider relationships with the living world at the edge of productive activities
Plant workers facing modernity
From plant to territory
An underrated profession that isn’t really one at all
Heading for a different approach to governing rural territories
Bibliography
3. With plants, to rethink the living work
Sébastien Mouret
Growing and gathering at the edge of production
Thanking plants for their generosity
Heading for a political ecology of work
Bibliography
4. The non-productive part of work. In praise of joy
Maria Fernanda de Torres Álvarez
Methodology
Rejection of uselessness
The suspicious part
Living work and possible opening
Working on oneself
In praise of joy
Bibliography
5. Towards virtuous agroecology, cooperating with plant agency
Sylvie Pouteau
An invitation to an ethics of agriculture?
Agroecology through the lens of virtue ethics
Plant agency, a blind spot of agroecological priorities
Plant agency, a course of recognition
Heading for an agroecosophy with plants
Bibliography
6. Welcoming the wild part of plants at work
Aurélie Javelle
Context and methodology
A protean wildness
A wildness that embodies the untamed side of the world
Rejection of the term “wild”
Overcoming dualism through the living work with plants
A living work made possible by respecting what lies beyond control
Bibliography
7. Animal cause/plant cause. The inevitable polarity of veganism
Jocelyne Porcher
Plants are things
Plants are not things
Working with plants
Biotechnology or life
Bibliography
Perspectives. Towards a parliament of plants
Sylvie Pouteau
To be inhabited and to inhabit
Losing and regaining speech
Representing and claiming worlds
Plant watersheds and their embassies
The parliament of plants, a passport for the future?
Bibliography
List of authors
