Anna Zadrożna, "Possibilities for Multispecies Worlds: Rethinking Urban Futures With/Through Plants" Voices from the Field: 2025 Spring Anthropology Talks

Voices from the Field: 2025 Spring Anthropology Talks #5

Anna Zadrożna
Assist.Prof., Anthropology, University of Gdańsk

"Possibilities for Multispecies Worlds: Rethinking Urban Futures With/Through Plants"

Rethinking our collective futures from a multi-species, more-than-human perspective is essential if life is to continue to flourish on a 'damaged planet' (Tsing, 2017). But what would it mean to re-imagine our futures, cities, and ourselves with and through plants? Drawing on ethnographic research in Gdańsk and Istanbul, this talk explores the possibilities for more-than-human flourishing of contemporary cities, and reflects on how ethnographies of/with plants can illuminate and challenge human-centered paradigms. The talk unfolds in three parts. First, I interrogate the concept of the ‘green city’ (Zielone Miasto; Yeşil İstanbul), focusing on how urban green spaces and futures are shaped through human-plant relations, legal frameworks, and diverse governance practices including everyday practices of care, removal, and planting. Through a critical examination of who is represented, silenced, or excluded in ‘green city’ plans - and under what conditions - I reveal the multiple ways in which plants are (re)present(ed) and active in urban politics. Second, inspired by the concept of the Plantocene - which positions plants as frontline climate survivors and offers an alternative to Anthropocene nihilism - I examine cases where plants emerge as agentive participants in urban life, capable of communication and forms of political agency. I critically engage with debates on the political representation of non-humans and explore alternative forms of vegetal presence in urban politics. Finally, I draw on anthropological literature on hope and the future (Calkins, 2020; Miyazaki, 2004; Ringel, 2021) to argue that possibilities are relational, tangible, and sensible - emerging at the intersection of different temporalities, politics, and more-than-human agencies and desires. By centering plants in anthropological analysis, I aim to open up new pathways for imagining and enacting urban futures as multispecies worlds.