planthropology

plural planthropologies

1. The study of plants in order to understand their relationships to humans and human culture.

   Using human-plant relationships to help understand human culture is known as 'planthropology' (Myers 2017).

   2021, Laura Pountney, Tomislav Marić, Introducing Anthropology: What Makes Us Human?, Polity Press

   2 more examples

   We must get to know plants intimately and on their terms. And so we need a planthropology (Myers 2015a) to document the affective ecologies taking shape between plants and people, to learn to listen to their demands for unpaved land and for a time outside of the rhythms of capitalist extraction.

   2016, Natasha Myers, “Photosynthesis”, in Society for Cultural Anthropology

   As anthropology questions the boundaries between human and plant lives with the plant turn and a planthropology (Myers 2017), so too is plant science questioning long-held assumptions about plant behavior and communication.

   2019, Theresa L. Miller, Plant Kin: A Multispecies Ethnography in Indigenous Brazil, University of Texas Press, page 6