Session Organizer(s): 
Kay Lewis-Jones
Joyce LeCompte-Mastenbrook
*Contact the session organizers if you would like to contribute to this session.*

A changing climate, the 6th great extinction and a growing appreciation of the need for alternative ways of interacting with the environment has inspired anthropology and other social sciences to pay increased attention to the plants and animals that are encountered in fieldwork. Multi-species ethnography explores a desire to decentralize and challenge the privilege of the human.

This session will explore contemporary research that embraces alternative ways to think about plants, considering Ethnobiology's contributions to this contemporary theoretical shift. Session participants will explore how the increasing academic and theoretical attention to nonhuman agency relates to indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge, what the ethical implications may be for rethinking plant agency, and how such understandings might translate into action in the Anthropocene.