Geography
How the nonhuman world influences homeowner yard management in the American residential macrosystem
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Although the yard is a hybrid social and material landscape, much social science research emphasizes the socio-cultural factors and has mostly neglected the potentially important influence of plants, animals, and the nonliving material world on homeowners’ decision-making. Using interviews across six metropolitan areas in the United States, we investigated the ways residential yards’ nonhuman context is perceived to influence homeowners’ relationships with and planning for their yards. We found that nonhuman dynamics establish boundaries of yard-related decision-making, and that homeowners described their relations with the nonhuman context of the yard as cooperative, oppositional, and negotiable. We call for social science in urban spaces to be more explicitly informed by a consideration of nonhuman agency, and offer an ethical reflection of who or what is considered to have a right to cohabitate in homeowners’ yards.
Publication Title
Human Ecology
Publication Date
2020
Volume
48
Issue
3
First Page
347
Last Page
356
ISSN
0300-7839
DOI
10.1007/s10745-020-00164-2
Keywords
actor-network theory United States, interspecies cosmopolitanism, nonhuman agency, residential yards, urban greening
Repository Citation
Engebretson, Jesse M.; Nelson, Kristen C.; Ogden, Laura A.; Larson, Kelli L.; Grove, J. Morgan; Hall, Sharon J.; Locke, Dexter H.; Pataki, Diane E.; Chowdhury, Rinku Roy; Trammell, Tara L.E.; and Groffman, Peter M., "How the nonhuman world influences homeowner yard management in the American residential macrosystem" (2020). Geography. 571.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_geography/571