Plants in Place

A Phenomenology of the Vegetal (Critical Life Studies)

By: Edward S. Casey, Michael Marder

Narrated by: Douglas R Pratt

Plants are commonly considered immobile, in contrast to humans and other animals. But vegetal existence involves many place-based forms of change: stems growing upward, roots spreading outward, fronds unfurling in response to sunlight, seeds traveling across wide distances, and other intricate relationships with the surrounding world. How do plants as sessile, growing, decaying, and metamorphosing beings shape the places they inhabit, and how are they shaped by them? How do human places interact with those of plants—in lived experience; in landscape painting; in cultivation and contemplation; in forests, fields, gardens, and cities?

Examining these questions and many more, Plants in Place is a collaborative study of vegetal phenomenology at the intersection of Edward S. Casey’s phenomenology of place and Michael Marder’s plant-thinking. It focuses on both the microlevel of the dynamic constitution of plant edges or a child’s engagement with moss and the macrolevel of habitats that include the sociality of trees. This compelling portrait of plants and their places provides listeners with new ways to appreciate the complexity and vitality of vegetal life.

The book is published by Columbia University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

©2024 Columbia University Press (P)2024 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"Brilliant and astounding. ..Nothing short of a paradigm shift in the way we think about both plants and place." (Kelly Oliver, author of Earth and World)

"This singular work is not only timely but also vitally important in this age of planetary environmental crisis and existential estrangement from the Earth itself." (Brian Schroeder, Rochester Institute of Technology)

"Extraordinary book...invites us to new paths of thought regarding the mystery of places." (Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Södertörn University, Sweden)