10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17444
While policy makers seek to realign socio-technical infrastructures and institutions based on the urgency of climate crisis and environmental degradation, civil society groups and community-based organizations enable ecologically informed practices every day. Focusing on the ways in which people interact with the local physical built and unbuilt environment, this theoretical paper explores the lingering social, spatial, and psychic implications of an anthropocentric logic of constraint that has dominated the design of institutions and spaces in the United States. Attention to the interactional dynamics of constraint reveals that even as institutions paveover or displace vibrant social and ecological life there is an unevenness filled with cracks or openings that creates the conditions for sociotechnical transition. Particular attention is given to the emerging peopleplant interaction rituals, related to biophilic design or therapeutic gardens, that are enacted in-between conventional top-down and bottom-up processes. The potential of ritual interactions and collective consciousness in the design of plant environments is emphasized as a pathway to reconfiguring social-ecological relationships at multiple scales.
application/pdf
2038-3460
17444
2
en
Matthew DelSesto
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
biophilic design
Forming and Opening the Socio-spatial Logic of Constraint
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
10
Essays
2020-01-30
2023-06-26
2020-01-30
2023-10-09
99-119
TS
Matthew DelSesto
2019
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17444
99
Boston College
2038-3460
2
biophilic design
en
119
Forming and Opening the Socio-spatial Logic of Constraint
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17444/16294
10
                                                                               Essay
Forming and Opening the Socio-spatial
Logic of Constraint
Matthew DelSesto
Boston College, USA



     Abstract: While policy makers seek to realign socio-technical infrastruc-
     tures and institutions based on the urgency of climate crisis and environ-
     mental degradation, civil society groups and community-based organizations
     enable ecologically informed practices every day. Focusing on the ways in
     which people interact with the local physical built and unbuilt environment,
     this theoretical paper explores the lingering social, spatial, and psychic im-
     plications of an anthropocentric logic of constraint that has dominated the
     design of institutions and spaces in the United States. Attention to the in-
     teractional dynamics of constraint reveals that even as institutions pave-
     over or displace vibrant social and ecological life there is an unevenness
     filled with cracks or openings that creates the conditions for socio-
     technical transition. Particular attention is given to the emerging people-
     plant interaction rituals, related to biophilic design or therapeutic gardens,
     that are enacted in-between conventional top-down and bottom-up pro-
     cesses. The potential of ritual interactions and collective consciousness in
     the design of plant environments is emphasized as a pathway to reconfigur-
     ing social-ecological relationships at multiple scales.

     Keywords: social and environmental psychology; symbolic interaction; so-
     cio-technical transitions and practices; therapeutic horticulture and green
     care; biophilic design.

     Submitted: April 22, 2018 – Accepted: May 19, 2019

     Corresponding author: Matthew Del Sesto, Sociology Department, Bos-
     ton College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts
     02467 USA. Email: delsesma@bc.edu




1. Introduction

    This paper explores the notion of constraint as it relates to socio-
technical transitions and the practice-level dynamics of people-plant in-
teractions. It overall seeks to understand how an underlying anthropocen-
TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
10 (2) pp. 99-119 - ISSN 2038-3460
www.tecnoscienza.net                              2019
100                                                         Tecnoscienza – 10 (2)

tric logic of constraint comes to permeate socio-spatial relationships – and
how this logic is potentially, or partially, opened up in people-plant inter-
actions.
    In one sense, it may seem that constraints are imposed by economic
calculations or operational management, and that constraints prevent
transition from happening. For example, in the literature on a multi-level
approach to socio-technical transitions, radical innovations are conven-
tionally said to develop in “niche” level. Niches are “embedded” within
the larger dominant socio-technical regime, and at the same time they are
insulated from typical market forces in the current regime. In this por-
trayal of socio-technical systems, the logic of the dominant socio-technical
regime constrains the ability for innovations to “break out of the niche
level” (Geels 2002). Such language is especially relevant in “sustainability
transitions,” where the presumed necessity of economic growth has his-
torically been at odds with environmental protection and green innova-
tion (Smith, Voß and Grin 2010).
    While there has been much focus on technical management possibili-
ties and constraints for achieving sustainability goals, others (e.g., Shove
and Walker 2007) suggest that there is need to focus on the “everyday
politics” of transition management. With consideration of the everyday or
practice-level, sustainability is no longer a purely technical achievement; it
becomes about understanding the “shaping of subjectivities” (Avelino et
al. 2016) or generating a “culture of care” (Gottschlich and Bellina 2017).
Such conceptions of sustainability move beyond potentially simplistic no-
tions of green cities, institutions or economies to understand the potential
emotional, interpersonal, and affective openings for more environmentally
sustainable societies – especially in terms of how humans experience and
make meaning as part of vibrant ecological webs of life (e.g., Bennett
2010). More generally, notions of sustainability transitions also encourage
consideration of how constraints in a socio-technical system can become
disconnected from the wider constraints of living ecologies on Earth –
through recognition of the accelerating extinctions and ecosystem col-
lapses that threaten the very foundations of life.
    The importance of different forms of constraint became especially evi-
dent as I began to study and practice therapeutic horticulture. I found
that practitioners and researchers in emerging fields of therapeutic horti-
culture (cf., Straus and Simson 1998) and biophilic design (cf., Kellert et
al. 2013) often focus on stories of transformation – at the personal, institu-
tional, or community level. This focus on the transformative role of peo-
ple-plant interactions is evident in stories of young children whose diag-
nosed mental limitations are overcome with people-plant interactions
(Louv 2009), prisoners and correctional officers who find stress relief and
new meaning in prison gardens (Jiler 2006), hospital patients whose heal-
ing is accelerated when exposed to plant environments and activities
(Cooper-Marcus and Sachs 2014), urban community gardens that are
used as sites of healing or urban activism (White 2011; Mares and Peña
DelSesto                                                                 101
2010), in addition to many other stories and settings of transformation
(e.g., Sternberg 2010; Gallis 2013). Yet, much less is clear about how the-
se emerging realizations, related to the transformative potential of people-
plant interactions, might be connected to wider socio-technical transi-
tions—that is, how interactional dynamics within sustainability niches
could open up possibilities for transition to different forms of social or-
ganization.
    In order to investigate the contributions that people-plant interactions
might make to the emergence of sustainability niches for social-technical
transition in highly urbanized and stratified societies, the paper proceeds
in the following way.
    First, it explores some of the implications of the dominant anthropo-
centric logic of constraint in the United States – where 20th century archi-
tectures constrained community and ecological interactions, and people
were “sorted out” as they became secluded from each other and cut off
from wider living ecologies (i.e., Fullilove 2013). It traces the ways that
dominant socio-technical regimes form a socio-spatial logic that con-
strains bodies and lives. From an interactional and practice lens, con-
straint is conceptualized as an effect of economic or political calculation,
which individual people or organizations may co-create, internalize, or
push against. Attention is given to how constraint is related to the social-
emotional qualities of spaces or institutions – for example, in the underes-
timation of human possibility, lurking melancholy, profound doubt, fear-
ful withdrawal, or heightened suspicion.
    Secondly, the paper explores how people-plant interactions can open
up dominant human-centered logics of constraint. It theorizes about the
ongoing design of people-plant interactions as a practice that can work
from the inside-out to unfold new political capacities (i.e., Domínguez
Rubio and Fogué 2017). This is not to argue that human connection to
living plant ecologies creates a constraint-free environment, but rather
that it potentially attunes social life to different ways of being together –
perhaps more in alignment with inclusive, dynamic, reciprocal, or ecolog-
ical constraints.
    Finally, concluding insights are offered on how the intentional design
and facilitation of people-plant interactions may be a key practice for so-
cio-technical transitions. Although the focus in this paper is primarily on
social and spatial processes in the United States, the emergence of people-
plant interactions as transformative and therapeutic practice in Canada,
Western Europe, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia or Korea (Haller, Kenne-
dy and Capra 2019) indicates potential relevance for other contexts. Be-
cause nonhuman life uses forms of signification that are different from
human signification, or even “more-than-human” (e.g., Kohn 2013), en-
gagement with these practices requires attention to the ways people relate
to society and space that are potentially behind, before, or beyond the
dominant frames of social interaction.
102                                                         Tecnoscienza – 10 (2)

2. Forming the Socio-spatial Logic of Constraint

     Michel Callon (1998, 249) explains that “framing” and “overflowing”
are inherent to economic and socio-technical systems. If framing is the
process of establishing, “a boundary within which interactions – the sig-
nificance and content of which are self-evident to the protagonists – take
place more or less independently of their surrounding context,” then
overflowing includes the externalities that are not accounted for in the
frame. Overall, Callon pays particular attention to externalities or over-
flows – in terms of how they are identified and measured in different dis-
ciplines or perspectives. From the more traditionally economic line of
analysis, it may seem like “framing is the norm,” and that “overflows are
exceptions which must be contained and channeled with the help of ap-
propriate investments” (Callon 1998, 250). Alternatively, the more con-
structivist approach sees framing as expensive, incomplete, and imperfect,
which points to a need to identify where overflows are happening – or to
understand the implications of certain frames, and how different frames
might be developed.
     In either case, elements of a socio-technical system such as a market or
group of organizations does not exist as a finished product. As Callon
(1998, 266) notes, the market “never ceases to emerge and reemerge in
long and stormy negotiations”. Yet when applied to a wider conception of
socio-technical systems and transitions, it is also be important to consider
the dispersed and uneven distribution of power, and the historical, spa-
tial, or political context that shapes ongoing negotiations and production
of socio-technical systems (Avelino et al. 2016).
     One clear lingering consequence of an anthropocentric logic of con-
straint is the objectification and exploitation of both humans and nonhu-
mans (Hodson 2003). In this, it is especially important to consider the
emerging phenomenological or ontological turns in STS (e.g., Rod and
Kera 2010; Jensen et al. 2017), which explore how socio-technical systems
are related to the creation of new life-worlds and ways of being. Particu-
larly in the United States, the calculative anthropocentric logic of con-
straint – that imagines places and entire groups of people as disposable, or
in need of control and coercion – has had lingering implications for the
worlds that people inhabit and create.
     For example, Michel Foucault (1995) is known for his work on docu-
menting the transition of punishment that occurred with the rise of mo-
dernity, from the punishment of body, to the coercive “disciplinary tech-
nologies,” which use detailed classifications to govern human institutions
and constrain behavior. In addition to the detailed record systems of
modern institutions, Foucault also notes the spatial techniques for man-
agement or control that permeate society. While his analysis of Bentham’s
panopticon receives much attention, he also comments more generally on
the cultural significance of emerging architectural and spatial forms that
prison construction represented following the era of the Enlightenment:
DelSesto                                                                         103
        The whole problematic then develops: that of an architecture that is
    no longer built simply to be seen (as with the ostentation of palaces), or
    to observe the external space (cf. the geometry of fortresses), but to
    permit an internal, articulated and detailed control . . . in more general
    terms, an architecture that would operate to transform individuals: to act
    on those it shelters, to provide a hold on their conduct, to carry the ef-
    fects of power right to them, to make it possible to know them, to alter
    them. (Foucault 1995, 172)

    It is in this sense that the social and spatial organization of prisons is a
lens that makes it possible to analyze industrialized and urbanized society
more generally – especially the United States, which embarked on a mas-
sive prison building project at the end of the 20th century to incarcerate
at the highest rate of any country in the world (Mauer 2006).
    Sociologist Norman Johnston more specifically explores how this as-
pect of Foucault’s theory is revealed in practice (Johnson 2000). Johnston
traces what he calls the “administrative practice” of prisons – actual plans
and built forms, goals of these forms, methods, policies, successes and
failures. His central intent is to explore how the forms achieved the ex-
plicit and implicit logics that designers, architects, leaders, and the wider
culture were constructing. For example, in the middle ages a duel system
of courts, ecclesiastical and secular, led to different forms of constraint.
Most notably, the ecclesiastical prisons held people for long periods of
penitence that were meant to emotionally and physically coerce and con-
trol human bodies with orderly concrete and steel forms.




    Figure 1: This 19th century historical drawing of Eastern State Penitentiary
    shows the early developing socio-spatial logic of constraint, where architec-
    ture is designed to change prisoner behavior through deliberate isolation,
    constraint, and seclusion. (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)
104                                                           Tecnoscienza – 10 (2)

     In addition to being located at religious sites, and offering consistent
views of an alter for those confined, these prisons set an architectural
precedent of isolated cells where prisoners were constrained so that they
would seek forgiveness for their behavior through penitence (Johnson
2000, 17-28). Here, architectural forms are quite literally considered as a
strategy for managing or constraining human behavior. Overall, for John-
ston the practice-level is especially important because it reveals the con-
tradictions of purely top-down transition management. While social re-
formers of the 19th and 20th century imagined the prison as a technical
solution to the “problem” of social disorder – a transition to a new kind
of society with less violence and crime – they did not consider the poten-
tial long-term impacts that their form of socio-spatial constraint might
have on daily interactional dynamics. Above all, this model of prison fo-
cused on isolating or removing individuals the living dynamics of social
and ecological life, which has social and psychological effects that reso-
nate within and beyond prison walls.
Loïc Wacquant builds on this in his analysis of the more contemporary
implications of spatial and social forms of constraint in the twenty-first
century beyond actual prison buildings – as he explores the ways that spa-
tial confinement is a “technique for managing problem categories and ter-
ritories” more broadly. Following the argument in his two books Urban
Outcasts and Punishing the Poor, Wacquant develops matrix or continu-
um of socio-spatial seclusion that includes reservations, labor camps,
prisons, ghettos, ethnic clusters, elite enclaves, and gated communities.
These are forms of social closure and socio-spatial seclusion “whereby
particular social categories and activities are corralled, hemmed in, and
isolated in a reserved and restricted quadrant of physical and social
space” (Wacquant 2009, 165). In this sense, socio-spatial forms of con-
straint are reflective of sociopolitical context and penal philosophy, and as
Johnson, Foucault, and Wacquant suggest, the constructed forms take on
a life of their own – as they constrain possibilities for social life. Moreover,
the seclusion of poor and marginalized neighborhoods has also been con-
nected to disproportionately high rates arrests and imprisonment in the
United States, such that seclusion can be spatially mapped and observed
(see Figure 2).
     In the United States or institutions influenced by Western culture, this
socio-spatial logic that focused on human-centered calculation and con-
straint permeated the 20th century more generally: hospitals where design
and technology creates additional stresses for patients (Ulrich 2008); ur-
ban housing where “concrete machines for living” alienate residents
(Blake 1977); schools where rows of students, isolated from the dynamic
movement of the world, become passive containers to be filled with
DelSesto                                                                    105
knowledge (Freire 1968); offices that segment space in efficient linear or-
der but reduce productivity (Oommen, Knowles and Zaho 2008); or pris-
ons where extreme punishment and isolation can cause social and psycho-
logical harm (Söderlund and Newman 2017).




    Figure 2: “Million Dollar Block” spatial analysis (Cadora et al. 2006) pre-
    sents visual evidence of socio-spatial seclusion, showing each block in New
    York City where the State of New York spends more than one million dol-
    lars to imprison residents. Each human figure on the map represents where
    real person who is imprisoned used to live, and the dollar value represents
    how much the state is spending to imprison that person. (Image Source: Spa-
    tial Information Design Lab)



    In this sense, an anthropocentric socio-spatial logic of constraint per-
meates the aesthetic and cultural foundations across many modern institu-
tions, where people, things, and spaces are turned into objects. What can
be constrained in human-centered forms of calculation and constraint is
not simply the bodies of people or architectural forms; the creative capa-
bilities of human activity are extinguished as living energetic matter is
boxed-in or channeled towards fragmented systems of classification and
instrumental rationality.
106                                                             Tecnoscienza – 10 (2)




Figures 3-6: The architecture that dominated 20th century institutions (clock-
wise from bottom left: workplace, prison, hospital, school) prioritized efficient
management of its subjects – where technological advancements often over-
shadow human life and the surrounding local environment. (Image source:
Wikimedia Commons)


    Overall, an implication of the dominant socio-spatial logic of con-
straint is that people are transformed into problems to be managed – the
sick, the student, the prisoner, the mentally compromised, or the poor –
through architectures, policies, and practices that have deep psychic im-
plications. For example, W.E.B Du Bois (1903) became well-known for
his writings about how racism is not merely about the misguided technical
management of resources or intentional legal marginalization; but rather,
for him, such forms of seclusion have profound psychic and interpersonal
effects. He powerfully explores the question he was forced to grapple
with wherever he went in the United States: how does it feel to be a prob-
lem?
    Du Bois goes on to explain how the social scientists who were studying
marginalized communities in the late 19th century approached people as
problems to be documented in the name of social progress. Rather than
seeking to understand people’s everyday life and experience, according to
Du Bois, these technical methods could contribute to a further social dis-
tance as they objectify people in order to fit them analytically into the
dominant socio-spatial logic of constraint. An overall potential impact of
this particular logic of constraint, which is still ongoing marginalized
DelSesto                                                                  107
communities today, is spatial anguish (i.e., Contreras 2017) whereby peo-
ple may internalize a deep sense of shame, fear, or doubt about the possi-
bilities for their personal and community life.


3. Openings for More Ecologically-Attuned Constraints

    In the midst of human-centered calculative logics of constraint, it is al-
so clear that people continue to creatively innovate in some contexts, as
they inhabit what are could be considered “uninhabitable” conditions of
social and ecological instability (Simone 2016). Accordingly, the dominant
socio-technical regime may not create or allow niches of innovation; but
rather innovations may be, “gradually and experimentally created out of
discontent with, and in relation to, existing practices” (Hoffman and
Lorber 2016, 692). This approach recognizes that the community or
grassroots level is an important site of innovative activity in advancing sus-
tainable development outcomes (e.g., Seyfang and Smith 2007). For ex-
ample, research has shown that grassroots social innovations such as food
localization can increase community capacity to address larger sustainabil-
ity issues (Kirwan et al. 2013), or that people’s “aesthetic experiences” in
community gardens can create meanings that can lead to further engage-
ments (Hale et al. 2011). This approach directs scholarly attention to the
dynamics and interactions that might shape sustainability niches, with at-
tention to power dynamics.
    In particular, Gottschlich and Bellina (2017) explore how people’s in-
teractions with their local environment may be mediated by uneven dis-
tribution of environmental burdens and benefits. In order to open up ex-
isting systems and forms that perpetuate injustice, they suggest more at-
tention to environmental justice and care work. While the environmental
justice approach points to the need to look for practices and innovations
in spaces or communities that have experienced marginalization or seclu-
sion, care work brings attention to a need for transition studies to consid-
er people and communities that directly care for the earth. Moreover, in
environments that are mediated by powerful histories of seclusion and
constraint, other scholars have pointed to the key importance of “per-
formative connections.” For example, Scotti and Minervini (2017) argue
that sustainability transitions require multilevel and heterogeneous net-
works to connect on-the-ground practices with a larger effort for envi-
ronmental governance.
    Accordingly, spaces that reconnect people to each other, and to the lo-
cal environment, may be important for social transition – especially in in-
stitutional or community spaces that have been neglected or abandoned
under current or previous logics of constraint. It is in this sense that de-
sign can offer opportunities for opening an existing socio-spatial logic of
constraint, and “unfolding” new social and political possibilities, as prac-
108                                                          Tecnoscienza – 10 (2)

titioners on-the-ground rework previously designed socio-spatial relation-
ships to include opportunities for different kinds of interactions and prac-
tices.
     Domínguez Rubio and Fogué (2017) explain that although design is
typically considered to be a process that “enfolds” the political, it can also
have an “unfolding” capacity. Enfolding points to design’s “ability to in-
scribe political programs into materials, spaces, or bodies” (Rubio and
Fogué 2017, 97) – for example, as is evident in the aspirations of prison
spaces that use architecture to manage and influence behavior under a po-
litical agenda of punishment and discipline. Conversely, unfolding oper-
ates as a “propositional mechanism” that points to alternative solutions,
questions, and ways of being together. For example, collective communi-
ty-based efforts to maintain a garden in an institutional space – or design
opportunities for ongoing people-plant interactions – can bring people
into relationship with each other, and wider plant ecologies, in new ways
that may go beyond the prescribed or scripted uses of a space.
     Although scripts are typically considered in terms of technological ar-
tifacts (i.e., Akrich 1992; Latour 1992), it is important to consider how
plants may prescribe a different quality of interactions. In order to suc-
cessfully grow plants, people need to relate to their environment in new
ways. People-plant interactions require unique sensory and tactile en-
gagements that are different from how people engage with more mechani-
cally designed artifacts. The aliveness of plants invites different forms of
reciprocity, care and reflection (Abram 1997).
     This becomes especially important in spaces such as prisons and jails,
where movements are carefully controlled and spaces are highly-scripted
with strict demarcation of social roles (Goffman 1961). Accordingly, such
institutions are perhaps places that best illustrate how people-plant inter-
actions can begin to rework institutionally established frames, scripts or
uses of space. I most powerfully noticed this in my own therapeutic horti-
culture practice.
     For example, the first time that people arrive to a garden in a city jail
in the United States, the most immediate reaction is often surprise. It’s
almost as if the aliveness of the garden allows visitors to see the constraint
of taken-for-granted jail spaces surrounding the garden more clearly.
There is a surprise from prisoners, officers, and visitors who are at the
garden for the first time that “this kind of place” exists in a city jail. When
they say “this kind of place,” it seems that visitors refer to a certain kind
of energy that exists – of uncertainty, openness, and possibility. What cre-
ates this kind of energy is a new socio-spatial logic and frame that ac-
counts for plant ecologies. For example, different paths and sections of
the garden that are being produced offer some sense of cognitive atten-
tion restoration (Kaplan, Kaplan and Ryan 1998) or relief from the highly
regimented and ordered concrete and steel that typically constitutes pris-
on environments. Moreover, these spatial forms are produced in the con-
text of certain kinds of social relationships of learning, growth, struggle,
DelSesto                                                                  109
and transformation.
     Similarly, community-based organizations or other activist and advo-
cacy groups are co-creating plant-based environments to repurpose urban
vacant land, which was previously scripted as “vacant” or in need of some
kind of intensive capital investment (DelSesto 2015). These “insurgent
spaces” can begin as activist projects and, over time, infuse spaces with
memory or identity that leads to long-term community-led development
or healing (Mares and Peña 2010; White 2011). Overall, such gardens can
operate in contested spaces, and as sustainability niches, they are main-
tained or expanded through daily practices and interactions.
     Repeated, daily and ritualized actions of civil society groups and vol-
untary organizations can produce social and spatial forms that are an-
chored in people-plant interactions – often from within spaces or institu-
tions that are overwhelmed with layers of anthropocentric constraint (e.g.,
Straus and Simson 1998; Krasny and Tidball 2015). Although, ritual often
has religious connotations, here it refers to repeated human interactions
in the context of plants that has some sort of social meaning or intention.
     The social space of gardens is based on shared directed attention to-
wards different kinds of plants that may include: classroom lessons about
horticultural topics, collective field observation where program partici-
pants can interact with the plant through sensory engagement (seeing,
hearing, touching, smelling, or tasting), and activities that aim to produce
plant-based products. Garden participants may learn to locate the laven-
der plant among the hundreds of plants on an expansive landscape, which
will be soon be harvested and dried in the small greenhouse, for a lesson
and activity about aroma therapy and the making of sachets.
     When the lavender plant is flowering it might attract dozens of bees,
buzzing with spectacular activity that fascinates many people, immersing
them in the activity and sound. The oils generated by the plant linger on
the flowers, and they create a powerful scent that can overpower other
smells and is associated with relaxation. The ritual of harvesting the flow-
ers requires a certain technique, so as to encourage the growth of future
flowers and maintain the shape of the plant. It is in this way that plant en-
vironments invite focused psychic attention and bodily co-presence to fa-
cilitate the beginning of what Randall Collins (2004) refers to as a ritual
interaction chain.
     For Collins, social interactions are heuristics for larger structures and
systems – in that observations of how people interact and exchange repre-
sent or point towards the ritual organization of society (Allen 2011, 101-
135). Overall, Collins explains that society is made up of overlapping or
multi-dimensional aggregations of interactions, where the situation rather
than the individual is the starting point for understanding social life. In
formulating his theory of the ritual interaction chain, Collins builds on a
tradition of sociology with roots in Durkheim, Mauss, and Bataille that
focuses on unconscious, psychic and symbolic aspects of social life (Pfohl
1998). Accordingly, the notion that symbols, unconscious patterns, every-
110                                                          Tecnoscienza – 10 (2)

day practices, and emotional energy can have material consequences is
central for understanding how ritual arranges and rearranges dominant
modes of power – or provides the openings necessary for reconfiguring
power relations.
    The ritual interaction chain is especially relevant here as a theory of
social-technical openings and transitions. For Collins, a top-down under-
standing of how change comes about is not the only explanation for how
social change happens, and in some instances, it may fail to explain the
processes through which society reconfigures. Instead, he argues that cul-
tural forces such as symbolic objects and gestures, mutual focus of atten-
tion, and emotional energy may better explain social change, as they are
where “the energy of movement and change, the glue of solidarity, and
the conservatism of stasis” reside (Collins 2004, 3). It is important to note
here that Collins places importance on energy – how it is harnessed,
bound up, or transformed through human organization and ritual.
    When horticultural practitioners write about the design of therapeutic
or healing spaces, they similarly refer to the importance of the energy and
rhythm of plant ecologies, especially as it can be experienced in the pas-
sage of days or seasons. For example, Rice (2006) explains the role of cer-
emony and ritual in horticultural therapy spaces and programs – explain-
ing how activities can be purposefully designed to elicit and unfold collec-
tive rituals. Ceremonies with plants can teach people that, “life is a pro-
cess rather than a series of activities that are judged by whether they bring
us immediately to our goals,” and ceremonies can help us to learn, “how
to locate our human experience through metaphorical reflection and ac-
tual experience of our natural life cycle” (Rice 2016, 17-18). This may
mean linking social goals and growth to plants, or working with groups to
“cultivate images” that support a feeling of interconnectedness. Overall, it
is evident that the social dynamics of ritual are quite important for plant-
environments.
    In Collins’ formulation, the ritual begins in a moment of co-presence,
where people come together to attentively engage with each other or the
world (this is the beginning of the interaction), is an important opening
where things can be in flux and social organization may be open to new
possibilities. Co-presence is not necessarily a fresh start, as the history and
power arrangement of previous interaction rituals are likely to influence
how people come together, yet it would be impossible to explain away to-
tality of the co-presence with words. Note that from the framework of rit-
ual that Collins provides, interactions with people and plants need to be
repeated, sometimes deliberately, to promote solidarity.
    While simply being together in a location may not lead to new forms
of social organization, moments of congregation can be a stimulant for
social life at multiple scales (i.e. the coming together of previously sepa-
rated energy fields in a way that could generate unknown collective ener-
gy) for social organizations and transformations. In addition to co-
presence, Collins stipulates three ingredients for the interaction ritual to
DelSesto                                                                 111
gain momentum that include: mutual focus of attention, shared emotional
mood, and barriers to outsiders.
    These ingredients of the interaction ritual chain can be interpreted
through the lens of people-plant interactions – or what might be consid-
ered people-plant interaction ritual chains. Such ritual chains unfold new
possibilities, even from within the dominant socio-spatial logic of con-
straint, as they imagine previously unforeseen human possibilities inspired
by the flux of living plant worlds. They also require that people learn to
work with the unique qualities, movements, needs, and rhythms of partic-
ular plants and places.
    The first element of mutual focus of attention, is a process at the cen-
ter of interaction rituals (Collins 2004, 47-101). In this case, people-plant
interactions will not serve to disrupt the dominant constraining logic of an
institution or urban space if there is not some mutual focus of attention
on specific plants, spaces, or environmental symbols. Here, environmental
symbols are developed and transmitted as people interact in the context
of plants to create shared meanings. Environmental symbols might in-
clude garden plantings or arrangements that are designed to invoke a cer-
tain feeling or state – such as labyrinths or wandering walking paths – or
symbolic additions to a space that may include themed art, writings, or
built landscape elements such as gazebo or reflecting pool. These symbols
are especially powerful when they connect with group members personal
experience and social location (e.g., Cermak 2012). The mutual focus of
attention that such symbols can create is developed through discussion,
workshop, or guided sensory engagement.
    People may gradually come to take on shared moods about different
design elements of a horticultural space. For example, Elizabeth Murray
(1997) explores the archetypal elements of gardens that appeal to the five
human senses. These include focal points that draw at attention through
the creative use of paths and sight lines, strategic color-coordination, in-
corporation of flowing water, stone arrangements, and play with shadows
and light. Moreover, these elements help to create many types of color,
sound, plant, and flower vibrations. For example, Passion Flower vines
are a common garden plant that can grow up to six meters tall with strik-
ing flowers that are up to ten centimeters wide. It has an unusual corona
that is composed of hundreds of delicate filaments radiating out around
the star-like center. On a warm summer afternoon, the flower can be seen
opening in a matter of minutes, with the petals vibrating as they dramati-
cally unfurl.
    Another ingredient for interaction ritual chains is a shared emotional
mood. Here, there needs to be some kind of reckoning with the varying
experiences and situations that people may bring to a garden space. This
can take the form of group check-ins or a group conversational space (e.g.
using therapeutic techniques to promote openness and dialog) that could
allow space for people to bring how they are feeling in the moment they
arrive to a garden space. In other words, there needs to be some oppor-
112                                                                 Tecnoscienza – 10 (2)

tunity in the garden for the possibility of what Collins (2004, 66-67) calls
“conversational turn taking.” Such conversational turn taking may start
off slow and scattered, and slowly pick up pace or fall into a rhythmic en-
trainment.




      Figure 7 and 8: On the left, a passion flower opens. On the right, therapeu-
      tic garden design at a hospital in the United States engages patients and staff
      in healing through its accessible design and incorporation of symbols.
      (Image sources: Wikimedia Commons and Legacy Health)




      Figure 9: A well-designed and programmed garden space can create spaces
      for group congregation and conversation, shared activities and learning, or
      individual observations and activities. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
DelSesto                                                                  113
     A final ingredient is a barrier to outsiders. In the case of people plant
interaction rituals, the barrier to outsiders may involve a sense of owner-
ship. For example, people may invest time, energy, and money in growing
and caring for plants. There are many contexts where space may be lim-
ited, and the inclusion of some people means the exclusion of others. In
community garden settings, plots may be assigned to individual people, or
in institutional settings a certain organization may be responsible for de-
signing and managing a space. There is also the potential for people who
share a space or a particular landscape of plants to protect it from new
members who may not have the same knowledge of how to care for
plants. In other institutional cases, people may work with plants in the
context of an already-closed institution, which limits the degree of inclu-
sivity possible.
     Overall, this ingredient is a reminder that even in addressing anthro-
pocentric forms of constraint, some new kind of barrier will need to be
assembled in a way that promotes inclusion of new groups and ecologies.
For example, plant environments can allow for different degrees of partic-
ipation – from passive observation to active engagement and long-term
cultivation. While bright colors can attract a passerby, it may take some
time to fully include a newcomer to all of the collective meanings and
practices of a space.
     This new barrier could also be considered as a move toward more eco-
logical forms of constraint, with an openness to people and plants that
have been previously ignored. From within anthropocentric constraints, it
may appear that many life forms are expending themselves uselessly (Ba-
taille 1988, 19-44), like the cherry tree that “uselessly” drops its abundant
blossoms (Braungart and McDonough 2002). Yet it is precisely in paying
attention to the seemingly useless actions and qualities of plants, that
more life sustaining constraints may emerge. In other words, sustained
people-plant interaction rituals can nourish qualities of being that, “reject
prior calculation of returns as a defining feature of exchange” (Emerson
1976, 341). Note that this orientation towards more ecological constraints
does not reject calculation entirely, but rather rejects forms of “prior”
human calculation in order to nourish an orientation toward learning,
openness, curiosity, or justice – in people and organizations (e.g., Senge
1990; White 2018).
     While the dominant socio-spatial logic of constraint tends to ignore
the living realities of plant ecologies, the more ecological constraints asso-
ciated with the practice of people-plant interactions may open up possi-
bilities for new ways of relating to the Earth. In contrast to the develop-
ment of industrial capitalism, which is said to be characterized by the
“domination of nature” (Leiss 1994), people-plant interactions can en-
courage alternative approaches to a wider ecology that may be referred to
as the “wooing of the earth” (Dubos 1980). As Dubos explains, the envi-
ronmentalist approach of the 20th century typically argued that socio-
technical transitions toward a more environmentally-aware society would
114                                                         Tecnoscienza – 10 (2)

require humans to withdraw from their interactions with the environ-
ment, because of the damage that society can cause. Yet Dubos advocated
the need to learn from the wider ecological constraints of living plant
worlds—that may have a logic outside of calculative instrumental rational-
ity – in order to work with nonhuman systems from a place of respect and
imagination.


4. People-plant Interactions and Socio-Technical Transition
    There is a great significance in considering the dimensions of people-
plant interactions in the context of social-technical transitions. An over-
emphasis on anthropocentric “prior calculation” has been a defining fea-
ture of capitalist industrial development, and this emphasis often ignores
interactional dynamics in space, including how inner life shapes the social
world. This is to say that the reorganization of society might need to be
prefigured by or in tandem with a “reorganization of self” (Macy and
Molly 1998) – not as a technical achievement, but as part of an experien-
tial process or “ecology of participation” (Chilvers and Longhurst 2016)
in which people need to actively engage.
    Policies and architecture can change to promote some vision of sus-
tainability, but how do people actually experience the built and unbuilt
environment? When practitioners transform constrained institutions or
neglected spaces into intentional sites of repeated people-plant interac-
tions, they are creating conditions for the reorganization of self and socie-
ty. It is in this sense that the design of people-plant interactions may be a
case of how people may re-write given social or spatial scripts (cf., Akrich
and Latour 1992) to reflect more ecologically attuned social relations and
organization from the practice level.
    It is important to note that promising possibilities of people-plant in-
teractions are not a universal outcome of practice-based transition toward
a more sustainable life and society. In many ways, plants have historically
been part of urbanized societies—for example in the top-down planning
of urban parks and recreational spaces. What is new is the intention of
practitioners to cultivate healing or therapeutic spaces that are meant to
lead to personal, organizational, or community change in settings such as
schools, prisons, hospitals, or neighborhoods. In an era where concerns
about planetary and human health are increasingly connected, analysis
here suggests that it will be increasingly important to consider how inter-
actional dynamics of people-plant interactions can be facilitated in ways
that create lasting impacts for personal, institutional and societal trans-
formations.
    Overall, an attention towards people-plant interaction ritual chains
shifts the focus of people-plant interactions from top-down technical
management to presence, which is simultaneously oriented towards an
attentive mindfulness of micro-level needs and relaxed awareness of mac-
DelSesto                                                                         115
ro-level conditions. Such an orientation seeks to value the variation and
difference that might emerge in situations. Healing garden spaces, with
their boundless variety of people-plant interactions, are therefore poten-
tially well-suited to be oriented towards an “interdependence of mutual
(non-dominant) difference” (Lordre 1983). This difference can be initially
recognized, acknowledged, and welcomed through the senses.
     Overall, this paper has explored the ways that, the dynamics of peo-
ple-plant interactions may illuminate important, previously unconsidered,
pathways to socio-technical transition through more ecological forms of
constraint. It is long been noted that 20th century institutions and spaces
are characterized by widespread sensory deprivation that can constrain
social and psychological capacities (cf., Berman 1990; Louv 2009). Ac-
cordingly, people-plant interactions may orient social life toward qualities
of previously unconsidered plant ecologies through practices, rituals, and
a sensory re-orientation that includes the living more-than-human world.
It is this way that people-plant interaction rituals might open up new ways
for people and organizations to see, act, or be.
     The result of this re-orientation is not that people abandon all forms of
constraint or discerning judgement; but rather, practices and rituals with-
in plant environments may facilitate a shift – from the linear rhythms of
calculative instrumental rationality toward the more cyclical or reciprocal
rhythms of the plant world. The opening, or unfolding, potential of peo-
ple-plant interactions is therefore neither prescriptive nor certain. As an
important emerging practice that may contribute to socio-technical transi-
tions, the phenomenon of people-plant interactions calls for further inves-
tigation about how socio-spatial interventions can use plants to enable
new ways of organizing social life as part of a wider ecological community.


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