Grafting Change: Exploring the Intimacies of Plant-Human Relations at the Senegalese Urban Frontier

This fieldwork explores plant-human relations through an embodied ethnographic methodology which couples physical and photographic practises in varied field/forest settings. The research loosely follows the work of l’Association G.A.R.A.B (Groupe d’Action pour la Reforestation des Arbres et de la Biodiversité), a diverse group of roughly one hundred professional and non-professional vegetal experts; the Wolof garab meaning both tree and healing. Following this group has taken me on a multi-site, or multi-patch, ethnography, moving between different vegetal spaces in the Dakar-Thies-Mbour region, with a particularly concentrated focus on the urban frontier town of Sébikhotane. As a researcher, co-gardener, co-farmer, and amateur photographer, my interactions, and relations with people have facilitated a closer relationship with research participants, both human and non-human. Through social proximity, I explore how it is that research participants’ relationships with their landscape...Show moreThis fieldwork explores plant-human relations through an embodied ethnographic methodology which couples physical and photographic practises in varied field/forest settings. The research loosely follows the work of l’Association G.A.R.A.B (Groupe d’Action pour la Reforestation des Arbres et de la Biodiversité), a diverse group of roughly one hundred professional and non-professional vegetal experts; the Wolof garab meaning both tree and healing. Following this group has taken me on a multi-site, or multi-patch, ethnography, moving between different vegetal spaces in the Dakar-Thies-Mbour region, with a particularly concentrated focus on the urban frontier town of Sébikhotane. As a researcher, co-gardener, co-farmer, and amateur photographer, my interactions, and relations with people have facilitated a closer relationship with research participants, both human and non-human. Through social proximity, I explore how it is that research participants’ relationships with their landscape have changed, through the plants they tend to, the plants they eat, farm, work and breathe with. The experimental ethnographic approach has allowed for an intimate research experience, where local embodied knowledge is prioritised and seen as fundamental to understanding changing Senegalese natures.Show less

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Grafting Change: Exploring the Intimacies of Plant-Human Relations at the Senegalese Urban Frontier