Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in two metropolitan cities: Istanbul and Gdańsk, this paper explores the possibilities of more-than-human flourishing as materialized in strategies and practices of governance of green areas and plants.

Paper long abstract:

With its empirical focus on Gdańsk and Istanbul, this paper explores possibilities—for more-than-human flourishing, rethinking hierarchies between different living beings, and creating sustainable futures—as a material reality and as a cultural fact (Appadurai, et al 2013) that manifest themselves in politics and practices of governance: in narratives on the future present in strategic plans and legal documents, in everyday politics on the ground, and in the material qualities of green areas and plants. The focus is on those whose future(s) seem most at stake: plants of metropolitan cities, especially (but not limited to) plants regarded as "weeds." In alternative to (nihilistic) Anthropocene visions of the future, plants become frontline climate survivors, the main subjects in the Plantocene. Meanwhile, the agencies of plants—less communicative or less charismatic—remain excluded from legislation, urban plans, or even more-than-human studies. This paper scrutinizes the manifold ways in which plants are/can be present and active in politics, both as material realities and as represented by human proxies. It analyzes selected green areas of Istanbul and Gdańsk as materializations of politics and as embodiments of the future(s). Thereafter, by drawing on case studies, it addresses the question of political representation of plants: who, under what conditions, and by whom is represented in politics, and who remains silenced, when, and why.