Tracing lines of vegetal influence and affect, this monograph describes how plants influence and shape humans, their relations with other animals, and place. Highlighting vegetal matters related to four plant species and the triad of plants-elephants-humans in Sri Lanka, each case study opens up multi-directional influences across situated multispecies social milieus. From jacaranda trees in Australia, to wapato on a river island in the United States, to willow and weavers in Denmark, to sugarcane plantations in Sri Lanka, to dying yet mythic ash trees, features emerge of human-plant social intimacies, power dynamics, and intersubjectivities. A central glue of plant-human relations is poiesis, meaning the creation of something new, yet etymologically related to the poetic. Beyond explorations of poiesis, the vegetal offers an epistemology of recursion that is relevant for understanding place-based relationships. Elizabeth Oriel presents vegetal influence in analytical and descriptive styles, reflecting multispecies ethnography and other analytics brought to vegetal matters.
Elizabeth Oriel co-creates images with direction and guidance from different plant species. Yarrow, elder, dandelion – she works with various species and asks them for guidance in color, shape, and angles. What emerges expresses plant perspectives, aesthetics. The images even contribute to a multispecies politics that considers beauty and qualities as central to needs and interests. The images are meant to share and have healing qualities.
Elizabeth Oriel’s PhD research as a Bloomsbury Scholar at University of London, examined human-elephant relations and conflict in Sri Lanka. Her approach involved exploring how the macro and micro interact and how the last 70 years of land intensification has increased this interspecies issue. She has published numerous book chapters, journal articles and two articles in magazines.
Elizabeth Oriel has special rapport and interest in wetlands, including riparian areas and bogs. Wetlands have historically been spaces of localized political autonomy, made possible through the abundance of life, plant life, fish, and rich alluvial soils as anthropologist James Scott found (in his upcoming book, In Praise of Floods, 2025).
Bogs are where land breaths – they hold carbon and also hold water. Their acidic soils and quaking peat open up relationships for unique orchids, turtles, birds, and even light-bearing will-o-wisps. Bogs are liminal, bordering land and water, physical and invisible entities. These peatland bodies are akin to women’s bodies in that they hold futures, living continuity. They do this through slow decomposition which allows for preservation.
Elizabeth Oriel is a faculty mentor in the PhD program at Southwestern College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The program is Visionary Practice and Regenerative Leadership.
She participates in the Consortium of Environmental Philosophers, and here is a talk she gave with Dr Graham Harvey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBaVX15iSu0&t=96s
Elizabeth Oriel has conducted research on non-human animal wellbeing, and found that states of wellness are related to abilities to strive and to make decisions based on their own needs, interests, and pursuits.
Nulla lacinia finibus faucibus. Nulla in tellus arcu. Ut nisi libero, tincidunt sit amet pellentesque eget, imperdiet ut odio. Quisque sollicitudin diam sodales, dignissim justo vel, pretium nisl. Morbi volutpat mollis feugiat. Curabitur auctor eleifend magna, nec molestie libero pretium ac. Aliquam eleifend ornare metus, sagittis iaculis odio pulvinar at.
Morbi porttitor et massa vitae pharetra. Morbi sed ex in quam fermentum vehicula at eu nibh. Quisque in felis condimentum, ornare justo vitae, placerat sem. Duis sit amet neque odio. Cras tincidunt sapien nec fermentum vulputate. Vestibulum non rhoncus elit, id finibus sem. Integer sit amet velit nibh. Nunc fringilla nibh sit amet augue mattis, commodo ultrices massa gravida. Proin vestibulum condimentum sodales. Sed non vehicula risus.
Polyphonic style is an approach to presenting of many on-the-ground voices to understand how top down policies affect local people. The journalist Svetlana Alexievitch sued this style in her amazing books on Chernobyl and the Soviet Union’s policies. Elizabeth Oriel uses this style in one chapter of her monograph on will basketry in Denmark and in this piece for Noema Magazine about human-elephant conflict. The power of people’s stories and voices told one after the other, is affecting and brings an emotional tone and information to news stories and environmental news.
