GEOG 205 Chap.3 More-Than-Human Geographies
More-Than-Human Geographies
More-than-human geography decentres the assumption that only people act while nature remains passive. Agency is treated as the capacity to make a difference within relations among organisms, materials, technologies, institutions and people. The approach requires precision: agency is not the same as human intention, connection is not automatically ethical and relational thinking cannot erase colonial or class power.
The chapter also centres the course's decolonial critique that Indigenous relational worlds long pre-date their naming as a recent Anglo-European theoretical shift. Build an explanation from capacities and changes. Water channels movement, roots stabilise soil, an animal learns a routine, a pipe redirects flow and a rule authorises removal. These verbs show agency without giving every entity human motives.
Then specify the encounter, place and timescale so relationality does not become the empty claim that everything connects. A community garden, for example, can be analysed through irrigation timing, mulch, birds, snails, advice and norms of order. The outcome emerges among those relations, yet participants do not have equal intention, responsibility or power.
The label invader may narrow acceptable action, while property authority decides which relation becomes durable. A careful account therefore keeps material agency and political difference together. It also asks who receives credit for relational thinking. Do not present an Anglo-European academic vocabulary as the origin of ideas enacted within distinct Indigenous worlds.
Name traditions and sources specifically rather than folding them into a universal category. In essay comparison, examine which actors each article recognises, which capacities it traces, which histories remain background and what intervention follows. A response that still targets one isolated actor may not match a relational diagnosis.
Finish with a conditional judgement about how changing habitat, infrastructure or authority would reshape the encounter.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Agency as capacity within a relation
- 02
Relational outcomes rather than isolated causes
- 03
Human and non-human knowledge and power
- 04
Personification as an analytical error
- 05
Colonial authority within more-than-human theory
- 06
Relational interventions in urban environments
Worked example · free
Explain distributed agency in a community garden
- 1Name the relevant people, organisms, materials and norms.
- 1State the material capacity exercised by each important actor.
- 1Show how the outcome emerges through interaction.
- 1Separate agency from human-like intention.
- 1Recommend a relational rather than single-target response.
Key terms
- More-than-human
- An approach that examines relations involving people, organisms, materials and technologies.
- Agency
- The capacity to make a difference within a specific relation.
- Relationality
- The view that capacities and outcomes emerge through connections among participants.
- Personification
- Attributing human motives or intentions where a material capacity is the relevant explanation.
- Entanglement
- An interdependent relation in which participants and outcomes cannot be explained in isolation.
- Decolonial critique
- An analysis of how colonial knowledge hierarchies shape theory, credit and authority.
- Relational boundary
- The stated encounter, place and timescale that keep a network explanation testable while leaving it open to relevant connections and revision.
- Material capacity
- A specific ability to alter a relation, such as retaining moisture, redirecting flow or enabling movement.
More-Than-Human Geographies FAQ
Does more-than-human agency mean objects have intentions?
No. Agency refers to the capacity to change a relation, which can arise through material properties, movement or interaction. Intention belongs to particular subjects and should not be assumed. A pipe can channel water and alter risk without wanting to do so. Explain the capacity and effect rather than using human motives.
Why is connection not automatically positive?
Highly connected systems can still be exploitative, coercive or unequal. Relational analysis must ask which relations are sustained, which are broken and who has authority to stabilise an arrangement. Celebrating interconnection without analysing power can turn displacement, extraction or violence into a misleading story of harmony.
What is the decolonial critique of the theory?
The course warns against presenting relational or more-than-human worlds as recent academic discoveries. Indigenous peoples have long developed relational ethics and knowledge. A responsible answer cites specific traditions, avoids universalising them and examines how universities or institutions decide which knowledge is credited as theory.
Assessment move
Practise with a four-node network: person, organism, material and institution. For every line, write the capacity that travels through the relation and the outcome it changes. Then add one power question so relationality does not flatten human inequalities. Build a two-column error list separating agency from intention and connection from ethical approval.
When reading an article, mark which actors receive attention, which relations are traced and which political histories disappear. For the essay, compare how two articles use more-than-human thinking rather than simply noting that both discuss interconnection. Finish each paragraph with the intervention implied by that specific relational diagnosis.
If the response still targets one isolated actor, your explanation may not yet be relational.