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Resonant herbs: botanical socialities, personal boundary work, and the politics of self‐care in Southern California
Author(s) -
Vine Michael
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of the royal anthropological institute
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.62
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1467-9655
pISSN - 1359-0987
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9655.13026
Subject(s) - negotiation , politics , constitution , harm , gender studies , perspective (graphical) , sociology , identity (music) , interpersonal communication , environmental ethics , political science , aesthetics , social psychology , psychology , social science , law , art , philosophy , visual arts
In the Southern California desert, a group of primarily young women seek to enlist the assistance of wild plants as simultaneously material, social, and spiritual beings in negotiating what they perceive to be the signature challenge of the present moment: how to fortify the boundaries of the self against harm while staying open to the prospect of positive interpersonal connection. An analysis of concrete practices through which these spiritual herbalists relate to plants, their selves, and each other will contribute to efforts made by anthropologists to rethink the constitution of the interior landscape of self from the perspective of lived experience, while also demonstrating how the constitution of the human self is in practice actively scaffolded by an exterior landscape of nonhuman others.