Care of the Species

“Amazing; revelatory: at last, a book that guides scholars and students who have only known humans into care for other beings. Care of the Species walks readers through the steps that allowed John Hartigan Jr. to open his attention to plants. He starts with a meditation on race: what happens to this category when it refers to cultivated plants? Rather than assume readers who already care, Hartigan Jr. shows us how to care. Rather than stereotype science as a way of thought, Care of the Species shows how ethnographers might listen closely to botanists to appreciate what their caring might be about. Reading this book made me realize I had waited for it a long time; it shows humanists why the more-than-human matters. I can’t wait to teach it.”-Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, coeditor of Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet “Care of the Species examines the infrastructures, labs, and gardens that contain the dynamism of botanical life forms. Corn plants-with unruly ‘jumping genes’ and racialized strains-are the stars of John Hartigan Jr.’s multispecies story. Making metaphoric leaps across divisions separating bodies and species, this book is an erudite engagement with model organisms, mutant forms, and molecular techniques. Revealing tips on ‘How to Interview a Plant’ will be useful to multispecies ethnographers who seek to reflexively localize, describe, theorize, and contextualize their subjects of study.”-Eben Kirksey, author of Emergent Ecologies

John Hartigan Jr. is professor of anthropology and director of the Americo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. He is author of Aesop’s Anthropology: A Multispecies Approach (Minnesota, 2015).