eprintid: 10200956 rev_number: 7 eprint_status: archive userid: 699 dir: disk0/10/20/09/56 datestamp: 2024-12-03 10:16:16 lastmod: 2024-12-03 10:16:16 status_changed: 2024-12-03 10:16:16 type: article metadata_visibility: show sword_depositor: 699 creators_name: Whitaker, James Andrew creators_name: Tamboli, Vikram creators_name: Daly, Lewis creators_name: Lewy, Matthias title: Plant Agency in the Guianas: Attraction, Assault, and Animacy ispublished: inpress divisions: UCL divisions: B03 divisions: C03 divisions: F22 note: This version is the author-accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. abstract: This article uses ethnographic and ethnobotanical methods to examine relationships between animate and agentive plants and human beings among the Makushi, Pemon, Karinya, and other Indigenous and mixed-Indigenous peoples in the Guianas. It considers representations of these plants and related ontologies in the archival record and contrasts these accounts with more recent ethnographic descriptions based on the authors’ fieldwork across Guyana and Venezuela. It thinks about these plants as agentive beings (with regard to animist ontologies and sometimes physical properties) within a variety of contexts. Today, the territories of these Indigenous peoples tessellate with extractive frontiers, which center around gold, diamond, and bauxite mining, as well as oil prospecting, forestry, and plantation agriculture. In this context, these plants emerge as active and animate agents. They also emerge as such agents in contexts of subsistence, shamanism, and assault sorcery, as well as sexual and romantic attraction, which can act with or without human impetus. The question arises as to the nature of the relationships between such plants and their users, for example, shamans (piaimen), assault sorcerers (kanaima), hunters, gardeners, and miners, within a variety of contexts. Based on the authors’ long-term fieldwork, the article examines animate plants and argues that they evince special botanical agencies among the Indigenous communities with whom the authors have worked in the Guianas. How are animate plants positioned within these practices and contexts? And how do they exert agency therein as plant persons? date: 2024-09-22 date_type: published publisher: Center for Western Studies official_url: https://doi.org/10.1177/02780771241277618 oa_status: green full_text_type: other language: eng primo: open primo_central: open_green verified: verified_manual elements_id: 2138036 doi: 10.1177/02780771241277618 lyricists_name: Daly, Lewis lyricists_id: LJDAL62 actors_name: Daly, Lewis actors_id: LJDAL62 actors_role: owner full_text_status: public publication: Journal of Ethnobiology issn: 0278-0771 citation: Whitaker, James Andrew; Tamboli, Vikram; Daly, Lewis; Lewy, Matthias; (2024) Plant Agency in the Guianas: Attraction, Assault, and Animacy. Journal of Ethnobiology 10.1177/02780771241277618 <https://doi.org/10.1177/02780771241277618>. (In press). Green open access document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10200956/1/Whitaker%2C%20J.%20et%20al.%20%282024%29%20Plant%20Agency%20in%20the%20Guianas%20%5BJournal%20of%20Ethnobiology%5D.pdf