Towards eco-political becoming: Planning rural livelihoods in a more-than-human world

Abstract

Emerging works within planning invite scholars to engage with a more-than-human approach. However, scholars note that such an approach is yet to gain broader acceptance within planning communities. I argue that the issue of acceptance is rooted in a lack of clear focus on how a more-than-human approach can have concrete effects on accepted domains of planning. Therefore, I introduce the analytic of eco-political becoming, which foregrounds the complex effects of the ecological on the sociopolitical . I present a case of eco-political becoming in planning rural livelihoods, where Indigenous communities engaged in rearing silk, find themselves entangled with crows. As the communities attempt to deter the crows from eating silk moth larvae, the crows in-turn disrupt two key sociopolitical categories and processes in the village—gender and caste. The case highlights sociopolitical outcomes of human-nonhuman entanglement that emerge out of economic planning. I propose that the analytical tool of eco-political becoming enables scholars to focus on the complex effects of nonhuman actors on the socially constructed identities and hierarchies considered important by the larger planning community.