Paper short abstract

This paper explores the ways in which plants behaviours and treatment in Abulës-Speakers gardens indicates them as crucial space of transformation and reproduction of social life.

Paper long abstract

Classical analyses of gardens often privilege a perspective based on these spaces as being "horizontally" related to other spaces, such as villages, forests, cultivated or uncultivated areas in a "horizontal" way. However, what happens when we also investigate them in terms of "vertical" relations? This paper is an exploration of Abulës-Speakers ("Abelam") long (Dioscorea alata) and short (D. esculenta) yams gardens through the behaviours of plants and the ways gardeners engage with them. Within an Abulës cosmology, as delineated in architecture, visual representational systems, kinship system, and some recurring terms in everyday discourses, gardens appear as a crucial interface for the reproduction of social life of both humans and non-humans.