Order and Disorder in the Urban Forest: A Foucauldian/Latourian Perspective
L. Anders Sandberg, Adrina Bardekjian, and Sadia Butt (eds.), Urban Forests, Trees, and Green Space: A Political Ecology Perspective (Routledge/Earthscan), pp. 132-146, 2014
22 Pages Posted: 30 Aug 2015 Last revised: 26 May 2016
Date Written: 2014
Abstract
We pass by street trees everyday. Their existence as well as their particular location in the city seems obvious, innocuous, natural. But, as is the case with most taken-for-granted "things" (Brown, 2011), some excavation is bound to reveal a more complicated and even ideological story. This study focuses on such a story: the story of the clandestine governance of nature and of humans by way of nature - all through the construction and regulation of city street trees. This story problematizes the mundane display of urban space in general, and of urban street trees in particular, as technical and apolitical, and instead promotes an understanding of nonhumans and humans as constantly negotiating spatial order and disorder through law.
Keywords: trees, city, order and disorder, urban forest, Foucault, Latour, grid, grate, Dig-Safe procedure
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