Qualitative ethnographic study reveals complex human-plant entanglements in a coastal community, highlighting multispecies cohabitation as a framework for ontological security.
Key Points
Investigate how human coexistence with invasive Himalayan blackberries informs concepts of ontological security and socio-political entanglements rooted in settler-colonial legacies.
Conducted ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews in Powell River on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, Canada.
Analyzed three contrasting human–blackberry entanglements linked to industrial, extractive, and municipal infrastructures.
Showed that Himalayan blackberries disrupt binary classifications by simultaneously threatening local biodiversity, sustaining wildlife and humans as a food source, and serving as a celebrated civic emblem.
Demonstrated that multispecies cohabitation functions as an analytical lens for addressing societal vulnerability, historical legacies of settler colonialism, and identity debates in the Anthropocene.