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Paper short abstract

This paper explores how narratives of invasive species construct cultural boundaries of nature. By analyzing contradictions in classifications, it shows how human interventions are normalized while non-human agencies are rendered alien, threatening, and monstrous.

Paper long abstract

Invasive alien species are often narrated as monsters, unnatural intrusions threatening landscapes imagined as “natural.” Yet, in regulations and public opinion, contradictory stories emerge about what belongs and what does not.

In Sweden, established species such as the Beach rose (Rosa rugosa) and the Asian hornet (Vespa velutina) are designated as invasive and alien. By contrast, newly created hybrids of the Beach rose (such as the Örträsk rose, a cross between Rosa rugosa and Rosa majalis), as well as selectively bred species like the “Buckfast bee” (without an established Latin name) or the Italian honeybee (Apis mellifera ligustica), which is alien to Swedish fauna, are neither perceived nor treated as intrusions.

Drawing on media material, informational texts, and interviews, this paper traces how such distinctions rely on narrative work: species shaped by human intervention are told as familiar and acceptable, while those untouched by humans are storied as unruly, dangerous, and alien. Which interventions become naturalized, and which forms of non-human agency are narrated as monstrous?

The analysis suggests that these stories are themselves hybrids, stitched together from conflicting logics that never fully align yet still guide cultural understandings of nature and intrusion. Hybridity thus operates on two levels: roses and bees can be crossbred, and cultural narratives too are cross-assembled from incongruent but coexisting ideas.