UNDERSTANDING HUMAN-NONHUMAN ENTANGLEMENTS IN BUSINESS ETHICS

In the 1990s, scholars began to debate how managerial organizing relates to nature (Shrivastava Reference Shrivastava1995; Throop, Starik, and Rands Reference Throop, Starik and Rands1993), considering topics like environmental ethics (Hoffman Reference Hoffman1991) and whether other species have managerial standing (Starik Reference Starik1995). In debates on environmental ethics, there is a divide between an instrumental and intrinsic approach to understanding the relationship between organizations and nature. Some scholars argue that most business ethics scholarship, including stakeholder management (Chowdhury, Sarasvathy, and Freeman Reference Chowdhury, Sarasvathy and Freeman2022; Harrison and Wicks Reference Harrison and Wicks2013) and sustainability management (Starik and Kanashiro Reference Starik and Kanashiro2013), follow an instrumental, natural resource-based view (Gabler, Itani, and Agnihotri Reference Gabler, Itani and Agnihotri2023; Hart Reference Hart1995), which highlights the utilitarian value of ecosystems for human well-being and organizing (see also Johnsen Reference Johnsen2021; Painter-Morland and ten Bos Reference Painter-Morland and ten Bos2016). While this scholarship acknowledges the importance of environmental ethics for business and society, the firm-centric analyses (Jiang, Wang, and Zhou Reference Jiang, Wang and Zhou2023) tend to highlight the ability of the firm and its employees to manage the environment (Aravind and Christmann Reference Aravind and Christmann2011).

In instrumental organizational contexts, most nonhuman species are objectified and assigned passive roles as resources (Tallberg, García-Rosell, and Haanpää Reference Tallberg, García-Rosell and Haanpää2022) or “lively commodities” (Collard and Dempsey Reference Collard and Dempsey2013). How nonhumans are treated often depends on how their species-specific functions can be converted into something of (economic) value for humans (Clarke and Knights Reference Clarke and Knights2022; Coulter Reference Coulter, Hamilton and Tallberg2022; Kandel, Dlouhy, and Schmitt Reference Kandel, Dlouhy and Schmitt2023; Painter-Morland and ten Bos Reference Painter-Morland and ten Bos2016). Thus, from an instrumental ethical viewpoint, animals are given limited capacity to exert agency (Sage et al. Reference Sage, Justesen, Dainty, Tryggestad and Mouritsen2016; Kandel, Dlouhy, and Schmitt Reference Kandel, Dlouhy and Schmitt2023) or are even systematically removed and killed when they do not perform according to managerial expectations (Coulter Reference Coulter, Hamilton and Tallberg2022; Clarke and Knights Reference Clarke and Knights2022; Sage et al. Reference Sage, Justesen, Dainty, Tryggestad and Mouritsen2016). Thus, animals and ecosystems are seen as resource-rich stakeholders that provide economic value to the firm (Dale and Latham Reference Dale and Latham2015; Hoffman Reference Hoffman1991).

This instrumental view has consequences for the web of life because it encourages the existence of only a few “standardized” species, domesticated, genetically altered, or carefully selected for their maximizing yield properties (Coulter Reference Coulter, Hamilton and Tallberg2022; Gillespie Reference Gillespie2021), which are placed in carefully controlled environments (e.g., factory-farmed pigs) (Sayers Reference Sayers2016) or wholly removed from their natural habitat (e.g., plants cultivated in laboratories) (Sexton, Garnett, and Lorimer Reference Sexton, Garnett and Lorimer2019). This approach to nature destroys ecosystems and drives the mass extinction of species and biodiversity loss (Kröger Reference Kröger2022). This instrumental view changes slightly with the notion of “regenerative capitalism” (Fullerton Reference Fullerton2015), where the work of other species is appreciated for their ability to play a “value-adding role in regenerating life,” yet still centered on “the long-term economic health and even the survival of the human species” (Fullerton Reference Fullerton2015, 45–46), and not the health and well-being of the web of life.

In contrast, an intrinsic approach sees nature as having inherent value outside of contributing to resources or economic gain. Here, humans are seen as a part of nature and “embedded in a biospheric net” (Schuler et al. Reference Schuler, Rasche, Etzion and Newton2017, 217), which involves a multitude of entanglements between humans and the environment (Dale and Latham Reference Dale and Latham2015; Hoffman Reference Hoffman1991). From this position, people should not manage nature as a resource for human consumption. Rather, humans need to adapt to how nature functions (Ezzamel and Willmott Reference Ezzamel and Willmott2014; Heikkurinen et al. Reference Heikkurinen, Rinkinen, Järvensivu, Wilén and Ruuska2016). However, the assumption that nature holds intrinsic value for its own sake is still assessed through disembodied and impersonal relations, which privilege abstract knowledge and not the relational, embodied experiences (Pullen and Rhodes Reference Pullen and Rhodes2015) that emerge from being immersed in the web of life. Simply focusing on human-derived “value propositions” (Laasch, Ryzanova, and Wright Reference Laasch, Ryazanova and Wright2022, 2) or how nature is valued by humans, instrumentally or intrinsically, does not afford explorations of the ethical sensibilities and relational and political dynamics of distributed agencies among humans and other species working to restore the web of life in particular ecological contexts.

To deal with the relationalities forged among humans and nonhumans, some authors have called for a “posthuman” turn in management and organization studies (de Vaujany, Gherardi, and Silva Reference de Vaujany, Gherardi and Silva2024; Sayers, Martin, and Bell Reference Sayers, Martin and Bell2022). These posthuman approaches reject the centrality of humans as the site of intentional action (Gherardi and Laasch Reference Gherardi and Laasch2022). Instead, they highlight the central role of “the knower in knowledge production and the material configurations of the world’s becoming” (Gherardi Reference Gherardi, de Vaujany, Aroles and Pérezts2023, 317). Here, knowledge is always situated and shaped by the relations to the nonhuman beings through which it is produced, as illustrated by the notions of “thinking with” (Haraway Reference Haraway2008; Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2012) and “writing with” nonhumans such as rocks (Valtonen and Pullen Reference Valtonen and Pullen2021) or dogs (Huopalainen Reference Huopalainen2022). Such a shift “decentralises the human subject and emphasises our common worlding as well as the non-oppositional interconnections between humans and [other beings]” (Huopalainen Reference Huopalainen2022, 965).

Posthuman approaches depart from universalist and detached assumptions about instrumental and intrinsic cultural and organizational value systems. Instead, the focus lies on how humans and other beings become with, and relate to, each other through their affective and corporeal encounters (Fotaki, Kenny, and Vachhani Reference Fotaki, Kenny and Vachhani2017), constantly “in a state of interdependent embodied becoming: being born, becoming co-constituted in ecologies, capable of pleasure, pain, suffering, and dying” (Sayers Reference Sayers2016, 372). As such, posthumanism challenges the binaries that separate culture (values) from nature (materialities) and the assumed human exceptionalism in organizations that elevates human agency over that of animals (Ergene and Calás Reference Ergene and Calás2023; Paring Reference Paring, de Vaujany, Aroles and Pérezts2023). Organizations are understood as hybrid assemblages constituted by humans and multiple other nonhumans that, through their everyday practices and distributed agencies, shape management’s organizing space (Gherardi and Laasch Reference Gherardi and Laasch2022; Sage et al. Reference Sage, Justesen, Dainty, Tryggestad and Mouritsen2016; Valtonen and Pullen Reference Valtonen and Pullen2021).

Within this relational context, ethics is not separated from politics. Rather, it is practiced through the affective, relational organizing processes that bring particular worlds into being. As such, ethics is embedded in situated doings and affective relations of care.

FROM CARE FOR ANIMALS TO MULTISPECIES ETHNOGRAPHIES

Scholars have increasingly emphasized the different configurations of care and ethical commitments toward animals in organizational and business contexts. Tallberg, García-Rosell, and Haanpää’s (Reference Tallberg, García-Rosell and Haanpää2022) research on how dogs are cared for as workers in tourist companies and as pets in animal shelters shows how different organizational configurations create different possibilities for compassionate relations to emerge. Likewise, Kandel, Dlouhy, and Schmitt (Reference Kandel, Dlouhy and Schmitt2023) point to how the roles assigned to animals define how they are cared for and how much freedom they have to exert their agency within organizations. Sayers’s (Reference Sayers2016) account of how badly pigs are treated in factory farms shows how the suffering of some animals is normalized and ignored, enabling widespread violence. Likewise, Clarke and Knights (Reference Clarke and Knights2022) illustrate how veterinarians morally distance themselves from the suffering of dairy cows by using the language of economic rationality, linking productivity with animal well-being while justifying the harsh exploitation of cows for human preferences and profits.

However, with a few exceptions (Beacham Reference Beacham2018; Davies and Riach Reference Davies and Riach2019), the debate on the care for animals within organizational contexts has been chiefly focused on people’s relationships with a given animal, portrayed as either harshly exploited (Clarke and Knight Reference Clarke and Knights2022; Sayers Reference Sayers2016) or deeply loved (Huopalainen Reference Huopalainen2022). Less emphasis has been put on organizational contexts where “multitudes of lively agents … bring one another into being through entangled relations” (Van Dooren, Kirksey, and Münster Reference Van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster2016, 3). Labatut (Reference Labatut2023, 1233) notes how these animal-centered studies are “rooted in an anthropomorphic approach to nature, focusing only on certain parts of non-human life,” which “might give a limited account of the dynamics of ecosystems and their complex relations with human organizations.” Davies and Riach (Reference Davies and Riach2019) call for novel ways of approaching “multispecies sustainability” based on “alternative ways of considering relations and reciprocity … embracing the entanglement of human, animal and other organic forces at play” (Davies and Riach Reference Davies and Riach2019, 247).

In ecologically embedded contexts, what is cared for is not only marked by how humans relate to particular species through emotional bonds and compassion but also by the material interactions among a multitude of lively agents that, through their collective doings, sustain (and are sustained by) the ecology-in-place. To study the politico-ethical dynamics of such multispecies organizing, the focus must be on the situated practices among different species and their entanglements with ethics, responsibility, and sustainability (Gherardi and Laasch Reference Gherardi and Laasch2022).

Although we rely extensively on work by scholars who frame these types of organizational contexts (or assemblages) as “posthuman,” we deliberately choose to work with the concepts of “multispecies organizing” rather than the abstract terms prevalent in current debates on relational ontologies in business ethics, such as “more-than-human” and “naturecultures” (Beacham Reference Beacham2018; Ergene and Calás Reference Ergene and Calás2023; Ergene, Banerjee, and Hoffman Reference Ergene, Banerjee and Hoffman2021; Gherardi and Laasch Reference Gherardi and Laasch2022). We make this choice because it grounds the organizing process in the relational threads between different species as they care for (and are cared for by) the specific ecologies upon which their lives depend (Davies and Riach Reference Davies and Riach2019). The term “species” is not understood as a separate entity defined by the Linnean taxonomy (Kröger Reference Kröger2022). Rather, we use this term to make visible “the diverse ways of life that constitute worlds,” acknowledging that these relations consist of entangled agents that “torque one another with their practices … enacted and sensed in the ongoing ebb and flow of agency in multispecies worlds” (Van Dooren, Kirksey, and Münster Reference Van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster2016, 5)

The concept of “multispecies” points to the constantly changing and complex relationalities of a multiplicity of overlapping worlds, where organizing brings these worlds together in ways that coexist, conflict, combine, and co-constitute each species’ existence (Paring Reference Paring, de Vaujany, Aroles and Pérezts2023). In this sense, while acknowledging multiple ways of caring for other species, we remain cautious about mobilizing the word “speculative” as an endeavor of endless possibilities (Sayers, Martin, and Bell Reference Sayers, Martin and Bell2022). The ecology-in-place and the specific characteristics of different species come with conflicting and temporal constraints that have existential consequences for those whose lives are (not) cared for through these organizational assemblages—see the example of dock beetles and lettuce in Beacham (Reference Beacham2018). This points to the need to examine the ethico-political dimension of multispecies organizing, as not all multispecies encounters are always appreciated in the ecology-in-place. Here, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s (Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2012, Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017) concept of “matters of care” helps us situate multispecies organizing within an ethico-political dynamics that involve both relational and species-specific agencies, which collectively sustain the conditions for life (and death) in the ecology-in-place.

MULTISPECIES ORGANIZING AS MATTERS OF CARE IN THE ECOLOGY-IN-PLACE: A FRAMEWORK

In this article, we position care as a central feature of multispecies organizing that sustains life in the ecology-in-place. We build our framework for multispecies organizing on Puig de la Bellacasa’s (Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017, 2) work on “matters of care,” in which she explores “the significance of care for thinking and living in more than human worlds.”

Care theory acknowledges that humans are born dependent, and adults are also interdependent due to sickness, disability, aging, and their need for companionship. This interdependence is addressed through care (Phillips Reference Phillips2019). In human-animal studies, care has been mostly thought of as being delivered by humans to other species (e.g., Kandel, Dlouhy, and Schmitt Reference Kandel, Dlouhy and Schmitt2023; Kortetmäki, Heikkinen, and Jokinen Reference Kortetmäki, Heikkinen and Jokinen2023; Tallberg, García-Rosell, and Haanpää Reference Tallberg, García-Rosell and Haanpää2022). However, humans also need the care of other species to survive. Multispecies care does not emerge from human-centric values about how nature contributes to human well-being through its economic worth, natural capital, ecosystem services, or compassionate affection. Instead, Puig de la Bellacasa’s (Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017) conceptualization of “matters of care” parts from the ontological condition of how entanglements among multispecies communities sustain life.

This does not imply that humans have no role in multispecies care relations. Instead, matter of care points at how other “caring subjects” are also actively engaged in shaping the web of life. As Robinson et al. (Reference Robinson, Fiona Seaton, Sharps, Thomas, Roberts, van der Ploeg and Jones2017, 13) argue when discussing human-soil relations, “[w]hile the ethical responsibility of soil care is a human affair, its concrete realisation depends on how different soils respond. The care we put into the soils—or the absence of care, neglect—will inevitably affect the capacity of soils to care for all the living beings and processes depending on it.” Here, care functions as a relational force that interweaves multispecies life in an “ontological state in which humans and countless other beings unavoidably live” (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017, 4).

Puig de la Bellacasa (Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017) refers to Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto’s definition of care as a political practice that includes “everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web” (Fisher and Tronto Reference Fisher, Tronto, Abel and Nelson1990, 34). To make visible that care includes others than just humans, Puig de la Bellacasa (Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017, 161) replaces “what we do” with “what is done” so that not just we, humans, but all beings “can live as well as possible.” This definition of care fosters an understanding of the ethical sensibilities of multispecies organizing as something that is not defined by abstract moral stances but embodied in everyday practices, involving hands-on agencies with material consequences for the web of life.

Puig de la Bellacasa (Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017) builds on actor-network theory by connecting care with matter. However, she argues that how things come to matter in real material terms is not just a “matter of concern” (Latour Reference Latour2005) but an ethically and politically charged practice of care. Matters of care involve a multilayered engagement with care through three different dimensions: as an affective state of being (e.g., “caring about” something), as a material practice (e.g., “taking care” of things), and as an ethical obligation (so that all are “cared for” as well as possible) (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017). As such, “to care joins an affective state, a material vital doing, and an ethico-political obligation” (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017, 42). Hence, matters of care cannot be understood from a singular dimension or in an abstract way. Rather, all dimensions of affective, practical, and ethical engagements with care involve embodied relations embedded in concrete conditions (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017). Thus, all three dimensions are important to understand how the concrete conditions materialize through multispecies organizing in specific ecologies.

Next, we provide an illustrative case that helps us to “think with” (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2012, 198) multispecies organizing as matters of care in a particular ecology-in-place. Drawing on the rewilding project at the Knepp Estate in England, we discuss how matters of care make visible the ethico-political dynamics that define life and death in the multispecies encounters of a concrete place.

THE KNEPP ESTATE, ENGLAND

The 3500-acre Knepp Estate, near London’s Gatwick airport, operated as an industrial farm until the early 2000s when—due to declining profitability—it sold the remaining dairy herd and embarked on its first ecological restoration project (Dempsey Reference Dempsey2021). Aside from the inability to make a living from the farm, the owners felt that the multiple decades of pesticide use, and intensive agricultural practice had caused a collapse in the wildlife, for example, insect and bird populations (Kneppflix 2023). This spurred the owners to change, rethinking how they wanted to relate to the land and reconsidering the species with which they wanted to share the land. Following this decision, the land management strategies put into use at the Estate depart from “traditional” conservation: instead of setting specific ecological targets, there is reliance on observing the processes that emerge in place and their landscape-level effects (Dempsey Reference Dempsey2021; Tree Reference Tree2019).

To “rewild” the land, the owners have gradually introduced free-roaming, large herbivores—mainly longhorn cattle, Exmoor ponies, and deer. The estate owners have created experimental refuges in which herbivores are allowed to graze to simulate the activities of their wild ancestors, and planted tree saplings are used to catalyze the regrowth of forests (Lorimer Reference Lorimer2020, 97–98). The reintroduction of large herbivores that restore grazing and decomposition has enabled the emergence of a mosaic of forest-pasture landscapes (Lorimer Reference Lorimer2020). Isabella Tree, one of the owners of the Knepp Estate, elaborates on their approach: “what we are doing is putting more emphasis on natural processes … we are letting nature take the driving seat” (Kneppflix 2023, 3:58–4:04). Tree continues to explain, “[the animals] are grazing in ways that stimulate different types of vegetation. So, you get a very complex system that’s ever shifting” (Kneppflix 2023, 5:12–5:19).

Herd sizes are managed by controlled breeding to generate sustainable grazing and browsing intensity, while surplus animals are slaughtered and sold as wild meat. The estate also runs wildlife safaris where the herbivores are the star attractions (Lorimer Reference Lorimer2020). Thus, the rewilding at Knepp is not an example of “wilderness” per se. Rather, it is a farmland subject to low-grade management focused on attaining biodiversity by creating an ecology where multiple species can thrive while also operating a functioning business (Dempsey Reference Dempsey2021). The owners of the Estate freely acknowledge that financial viability impacts the approaches chosen for their rewilding work. However, the underlying philosophy of “self-willed ecological processes” is woven through all the Estates’ projects (Tree Reference Tree2019, 8).

The shift in logics at the Knepp Estate points to a way of relating to other species and the land in ways that encourage organizational configurations where humans and other species collaborate “in service to life” (Wahl 2020, n.p.). Some refer to this shift as a probiotic turn that involves “deliberate efforts to engineer ecologies through the introduction of keystone species” (Lorimer Reference Lorimer2017, 27) through which humans use “life to manage life” (Lorimer Reference Lorimer2020). Others refer to a “regenerative turn,” where organizations “pay greater attention to the inherent capacity of living ecologies to regenerate through diversity and reciprocity in human-nature relations” (Egmose et al. Reference Egmose, Jacobsen, Hauggaard-Nielsen and Hulgård2021, 1272; Muñoz and Brenzei Reference Muñoz and Branzei2021; Vlasov Reference Vlasov2021).

However, the shift at the Knepp Estate is not only the outcome of how the landholders manage the land. Rather, the changes result from a shift in what is being cared for, which is not strictly derived from how humans care for nature. Other species at the farm also care in ways that enhance life in the ecology-in-place. These processes are not dependent on how humans “manage” life (Lorimer Reference Lorimer2020), or how humans design and manipulate nature (Heikkurinen et al. Reference Heikkurinen, Clegg, Pinnington, Nicolopoulou and Alcaraz2019; Muñoz and Brenzei Reference Muñoz and Branzei2021; Vlasov Reference Vlasov2021). Instead, the relational and distributed agencies among different species (including humans) care for the web of life in ways that enable shifts in how the ecology-in-place functions—regenerating life and landscapes.

Next, we discuss how these multispecies organizing processes are enacted as a matter of care through the relational threads of affect, vital doings, and ethico-political obligations among humans and other species.

MULTISPECIES CARE AS AFFECTIVE BEING AND RELATING

As an affective state of being and way of relating, care is an embodied phenomenon, which allows us to be affected by others and become emotionally involved with them (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017). Puig de la Bellacasa’s work stresses how this affective state of care acts as a “relational thread” that involves “a strong sense of attachment and commitment” that makes humans “interested and involved in the things that plants care about” (Myers 2013, cited in Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017, 64). Similarly, Fotaki, Kenny, and Vachhani (Reference Fotaki, Kenny and Vachhani2017, 11) note that affect acts as a relational force where “the ephemeral meets with history and remembering … flowing through encounters between humans and non-human factors that include sound, space, and weather.” Huopalainen (Reference Huopalainen2022, 964) stresses how the affective elements of human-dog encounters involve “the interacting senses of smell, touch, hearing, taste, and sight.”

At Knepp, the landholders were drawn into the field of rewilding due to their memories of wildlife experiences while traveling abroad. In particular, they were activated by Frans Vera’s (Reference Vera2000) book about the history of grazing ecology in Europe and their experience with the results of rewilding firsthand at the Oostvaardersplassen Nature Reserve. This drew one of the owners, Charles Burrell, into becoming interested in and caring for free-ranging herbivores to restore the ecology at Knepp. It was the affective forces of other beings, transmitted through smell, touch, hearing, and sight in the Netherlands that drew his attention towards caring for large herbivores at home (Linnean Society Reference Society2021).

However, it was not the care for large herbivores that inspired the move into rewilding. Instead, it was what these herbivores could do—through their affective capacities—to the damaged farmland that attracted the landholders to them. As Tree (Linnean Society Reference Society2021, 14:20–14:36) notes, they “thought Vera’s theories were fascinating and if [by] using free-roaming herbivores on our land to recover biodiversity, even if we managed to bring back life on our post-agricultural land just a little bit, that would be an experiment worth taking.” Tree (Reference Tree2019, 82–84) describes how these relational forces affected the ecology-in-place shortly after they embarked on the rewilding journey:

The affective, relational threads woven in the ecology-in-place by humans, herbivores, and plants—instead of excavated soils, machinery, and fences—attracted more species that through their affective “touch,” the sensation of the place being “hospitable” again was created, “homing” them in the ecology-in-place.

Puig de la Bellacasa (Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017) argues that the ethico-political dynamics of relational affect are transmitted through touch and touching bodies that allows for a sensory approach to perceive the less noticeable politics of ordinary material transformation (Bell and Vachhani Reference Bell and Vachhani2020; Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017). The affective and embodied experiences of touch allow for an understanding of politics as inseparable from ethics within an everyday, practical setting. Thus, touch functions as “a force that places people [and other beings] in a co-subjective circuit of feeling and sensation” (Fotaki, Kenny, and Vachhani Reference Fotaki, Kenny and Vachhani2017, 4), influencing their motivations, behaviors, and decision-making. This points to how humans care for things—whether living beings or dead material (e.g., garments or rocks) (Bell and Vachhani Reference Bell and Vachhani2020; Valtonen and Pullen Reference Valtonen and Pullen2021)—has consequences for the ecologies brought into being (see the second dimension, vital doings). This “affective ethics of mattering” is a materially and ecologically grounded politics shaped by “a form of care(fulness) that emerges through situated, embodied encounters” (Bell and Vachhani Reference Bell and Vachhani2020, 696). At Knepp, this affective ethics of mattering depends on what things humans and other species care for, provoking drastic transformations for a multiplicity of plants, insects, fungi, and animals.

Puig de la Bellacasa’s work focuses on the direct encounters between humans and soils and not the “affective atmospheres” (Anderson Reference Anderson2009) that emerge at a collective level of organizing. Anderson (Reference Anderson2009, 80) suggests that “atmospheres are interlinked with forms of enclosure—the couple, the room, the garden—and particular forms of circulation—enveloping, surrounding and radiating.” These atmospheres are a “spatial carrier of attunement” (Böhme Reference Böhme1995, 29) that influence both what kind of objects are perceived and how they are sensed at a given time (LaFleur, Reference LaFleur2023).

At Knepp, there was a time when the care for “huge quantities of wheat” used to provoke a sense of “shared joy” and “the feeling that you are doing something positive” (Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery 2023, 18:06–18:22) as it related to producing foodstuffs. At that time, Knepp was immersed in an atmosphere of productivism, foregrounding the care for only one species (i.e., wheat) to attain food security for the human population (Oxford Biodiversity Network 2023). Then, the atmosphere drastically changed as the landholders focused on the appearance of multiple life forms at their estate. Under an atmosphere of rewilding, Burrell describes that they were “thrilled and excited” when the large tortoiseshell butterfly appeared at Knepp, which had not “been present in this country for 50 years” (Oxford Biodiversity Network 2023, 24:53–25:10).

Tree (Linnean Society Reference Society2021 20:32–20:35) also expressed amazement about how “domesticated animals behave when they’re released into a larger landscape.” She was particularly struck by how the Tamworth pigs behave like hippos when searching for food in the bottom of the pond beds because she explains that as farm livestock stock “they just don’t have the opportunity to express themselves as they would in a wilder freer landscape” (Linnean Society Reference Society2021, 21:08–21:14). This illustrates the transformations animals undergo with changing affective atmospheres from industrial agriculture to rewilded landscapes where the same animals are seen as “keystone species” holding the capacity to shape ecologies-in-place (Linnean Society Reference Society2021).

Depending on the (human-sensed) affective atmosphere, animals (e.g., bison, beavers, pigs, cows) become cared for as “keystone species,” “ecosystem engineers” (Cusworth et al. Reference Cusworth, Lorimer, Brice and Garnett2022), “workers,” “laborers,” “collaborators” (Welden Reference Welden2023), and “relatives” (Wall Kimmerer Reference Kimmerer and Robin2013). This also shapes how these animals are cared for by humans. For example, Indigenous scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer (Reference Kimmerer and Robin2013) refers to plants, mountains, and lakes as relatives who freely give back love, care, and respect to those who take care of them through reciprocal relations. In contrast, Cusworth et al. (Reference Cusworth, Lorimer, Brice and Garnett2022, 1020) note that when cattle are seen as ecological engineers, providing “nature-based solutions” to planetary environmental problems, humans are “geared less towards securing the size, health and identity of animal breeds to enable protein production, and more towards the modulation of earth systems to deliver desired processes and functions.” Krzywoszynska (Reference Krzywoszynska2020, 231) has pointed out that when soils and animals are cared for as “labor,” it enables the same “processes of alienation and exploitation that characterize the relations between capital and human labor,” expanding “the enrollment of ecosystems into capital accumulation” (Krzywoszynska Reference Krzywoszynska2020, 244). Paying attention to the different affective atmospheres under which the roles of different contributors to multispecies organizing are defined is important as these atmospheres always risk being captured as “an input that can be converted into a capital, a new form of accumulation and dispossession” (Endrissat and Islam Reference Endrissat and Islam2022, 1042).

While the cows and pigs at Knepp do play an important role as “keystone species” (Tree Reference Tree2019, 109), they are also cared for as “wildlife safari attractions” (Lorimer Reference Lorimer2020, 99) and as “meat for premium markets” (Lorimer Reference Lorimer2020, 99). These different modes of relating to the same species suggest differences in how these animals are cared for (as rewilders vs. resources) (Kandel, Dlouhy, and Schmitt Reference Kandel, Dlouhy and Schmitt2023) at different points in time, shaping their roles and affective states of being in the ecology-in-place. Despite the suggestion that the landholders left “nature in the driving seat” (Tree Reference Tree2019, 88) when shifting to rewilding, humans and their organizational goals still largely dominate the affective atmosphere. The land managers control the locations where the herbivores graze, while the herds are carefully selected, bred, and culled to maintain the balance among species on the land (Lorimer Reference Lorimer2020).

Recently, the affective relationalities at Knepp have become immersed in an atmosphere of “natural capital investments.” As Burrell explains, rewilding is increasingly attracting the care of financial investors and corporations searching to “spend money on mitigation and on offsetting … of carbon and … biodiversity” (Oxford Biodiversity Network 2023, 1:12:12–1:12:19) to compensate for being perceived as “dirty companies … not doing anything for the planet” (Oxford Biodiversity Network 2023, 1:11:27–1:11:34). The affective care of humans shifts from the (touch of) multispecies dynamics in the ecology-in-place towards care for abstract, standardized representations that show how rewilding increases carbon in the soil (Burrell et al. Reference Burrell, Jeffers, Macias‐Fauria and Willis2024).

Thus, affect is not only a relational quality that, through its various forms of touch, shapes the ethico-political dynamics of human (Fotaki, Kenny, and Vachhani Reference Fotaki, Kenny and Vachhani2017), material (Bell and Vachhani Reference Bell and Vachhani2020), animal (Huopalainen Reference Huopalainen2022; Sayers Reference Sayers2016), and soil (Beacham Reference Beacham2018; Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017) relations. Rather, continuously unfolding within shifting atmospheres, affect expresses itself differently, defining who or what is (not) cared for. The next section explores the consequences of such shifting affectivities by focusing on how matters of care come into being through the vital doings in the ecology-in-place.

MULTISPECIES CARE AS VITAL DOINGS IN THE ECOLOGY-IN-PLACE

As a “material vital doing” (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017, 161) matter of care continuously shapes the materialities and existences in the ecology-in-place. These vital doings are spread among “the agencies, materialities, and practicalities involved in the processes of caring” (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017, 161). This turn to the (multispecies) practices of care that shape not just materialities but entire worlds is partly inspired by Haraway’s (Reference Haraway2016, 97) work on “worldings,” or how “nothing comes without its world” (Haraway Reference Haraway1997, 137) that points at how humans and others always “become-with each other, compose and decompose each other, in every scale and register of time and stuff” (Haraway Reference Haraway2016, 97).

At Knepp, farm practices initially focused on achieving profitability by intensively managing the land so it would produce as much output per hectare as possible. This business-centric focus neglected the needs of other species, with disastrous consequences for their lives. As Burrell explains, the point was to make:

Here, it is important to be attentive to what is being “neglected” through such caring practices. To stay committed to a world in which all species can live as well as possible, the ethical obligation needs to be “embedded in practices for remediating the neglect on Earth’s need … [paying] attention to the invisible but indispensable labors and experiences of Earth’s beings and resources” (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017, 162). In this context, neglect is understood as “what happens when the doings of care are not attended” (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017, 162), which is not the same as when care is more fully enacted by leaving something alone. This requires a shift toward the neglected labor and care work of all species that sustain the web of life.

Plants, animals, fungi, and insects are not passive background “props” (Haraway Reference Haraway2016) that do not matter for how humans organize. Through their species-specific capacity to care for others, these species are materially and intrinsically entangled with all life forms in the ecology-in-place. To stay attuned to the care enacted through such multispecies collaborative vital doings, humans need to cultivate an art of noticing (Tsing Reference Tsing2015) or an attentiveness towards the multiple and simultaneous rhythms of others “in their intimate particularity” while responding to their needs in ways that “cultivate worlds of mutual flourishing” (Van Dooren, Kirksey, and Münster Reference Van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster2016, 17).

As the Knepp Estate changed its focus and introduced new species to the ecology-in-place, this enabled new life to surface where industrial agricultural practices had previously violently suppressed it. Tree describes an example of these vital multispecies doings:

This example points to how humans can contribute to the vital doings of multispecies care by being attentive to the rhythms and relations of other species. Through their capacity to evaluate what kind of vital doings were missing, the landholders brought in pigs that, through their species-specific characters, were then capable of creating the conditions for life for a multitude of plants and birds to flourish.

However, care is sometimes more fully enacted by leaving things alone (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017), as Burrell also explained:

At other moments, the role of human care work is more pronounced, mending the landscape while restraining the vital doings of some species in ways that materially support the human visions of what kind of landscapes should be sustained. As Burrell explains:

This quote shows how the ethico-political dynamics of multispecies organizing is an outcome of humans’ ability to respond to the needs of many different species while also tending to the visions, goals, and needs of humans (Vlasov Reference Vlasov2021). Hence, humans have a delicate role when balancing human-centered interests and the ecology-in-place. Puig de la Bellacasa (Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017, 164) warns us of falling into the trap of regarding care as ideal “good feel” relationships, as “sometimes the question of how to care might mean that we have to engage with issues concerning if, why, and how to kill and for what.” As Burrell explains:

This shows how the landholders seek to control herbivores’ grazing patterns by carefully selecting and culling the number of animals to maintain the balance among species while supporting each animal’s well-being (Lorimer Reference Lorimer2020). Such decisions are partly a consequence of the affective atmosphere of Knepp’s business operations. Without visiting tourists, the landholders could just let the animals die a natural death, leaving “fallen stock on the land … [letting] the bones, the flesh, the skin to rot down into the soil and return all those trace elements” (Linnean Society Reference Society2021, 49:40–49:57). However, the Knepp Estate is affectively invested in deriving an income from ecotourism and meat sales. Having dead bodies of herbivores lying around would be unlikely to attract paying tourists or produce revenue from meat sales.

“Rewilding” has become a business shaped by capitalist market relations (Tsing Reference Tsing2015), involving specific affective atmospheres (see the first dimension of matter of care). With the recent shift in human care towards attracting natural capital investments from financial markets (Oxford Biodiversity Network 2023) to scale up rewilding efforts, the practices of humans are shifting towards controlling, measuring, and reporting the amount of carbon that multispecies care work brings to the ecology-in-place (see Burrell et al. Reference Burrell, Jeffers, Macias‐Fauria and Willis2024). As Tree explains:

This monitoring and measuring of the outcomes of multispecies care work based on standardized figures for carbon sequestration risks instrumentalizing multispecies care work. Based on the premise that “only that which can be measured can be valued,” which dominates corporate-financial relations (Painter-Morland and ten Bos Reference Painter-Morland and ten Bos2016), the appreciation and care for alternative organizing multispecies ties are made more difficult (Davies and Riach Reference Davies and Riach2019). By operating on the principles of measurability, the vital doings of multispecies care are no longer based on assuring the health and well-being of different beings but on how these doings are “calculable, comparable and exchangeable” (Nyberg and Wright Reference Nyberg and Wright2016, 634) according to predetermined, scientifically monitored, and universalized standards of carbon sequestration (Burrell et al. Reference Burrell, Jeffers, Macias‐Fauria and Willis2024).

Rather than cultivating an attentiveness towards the multiple rhythms of others (Van Dooren et al. Reference Van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster2016), this shift toward the care work is mediated through practices of detachment and alienation (Schroer et al. Reference Schroer, van Dooren, Ursula Münster and Reinert2021), this risks neglecting the unmeasurable (and at times unknown) vital doings of multiple species (Kallio and LaFleur Reference Kallio and LaFleur2023) while converting multispecies care into exploitative labor (Krzywoszynska Reference Krzywoszynska2020) serving business-centric interest in capitalist (and financialized) markets (Fullerton Reference Fullerton2015).

This points to “the diverse, situated, and often conflicting practices of care” (Schroer et al. Reference Schroer, van Dooren, Ursula Münster and Reinert2021, n.p.). An analysis of the ethico-political dynamics of the vital doings of multispecies care must, therefore, always be grounded in understanding their material consequences. This brings us to the final dimension of what the ethical obligations of matters of care imply.

THE ETHICO-POLITICAL OBLIGATION OF MULTISPECIES CARE

Puig de la Bellacasa’s (Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017) third dimension of matter of care involves “an ethico-political obligation” that requires us to think about “what worlds are being maintained and at the expense of which others” (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017, 52). Care “obliges in that for life to be liveable it needs being fostered” (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2012, 198). From a feminist standpoint, she reminds us that matters of care often involve unvalued and invisible labor linked to exploitation and domination. This dimension prompts us to interrogate the power asymmetries related to care, which are often grounded in gendered and racialized injustices (Davies and Riach Reference Davies and Riach2019; Jammaers and Huopalainen Reference Jammaers and Huopalainen2023; Tironi and Rodríguez-Giralt Reference Tironi and Rodríguez-Giralt2017). Interrogating what worlds we care for makes the politically contested nature of care visible, showing how non-innocent engagement with care may unknowingly reproduce asymmetric power relations (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017).

As all caring relations in interdependent worlds emerge out of situated knowledge, Puig de la Bellacasa (Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017, 204) urges scholars to “stay with the trouble of our own complicities and implications,” reminding us that our non-innocent thinking must reside “in the inevitable entanglement between the critical and the speculative stance” as “there is not such an outside position that our involvements have no effects.” Drawing on Haraway’s (Reference Haraway2016, 35) notions of how “[i]t matters what worlds world worlds” and “[i]t matters what stories tell stories,” Puig de la Bellacasa (Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017) encourages us to carefully examine the assumptions that shape caring relations, pointing to how care relations have consequences for the kind of world brought into being. Thus, the ethico-political obligation of care requires reflections on what is being cared for and neglected while also engaging with our complicities as researchers in sustaining particular worlds of (un)caring relations. This obligation is, hence, a speculative practice that invites us to “move beyond describing and unpacking things as they are in order to consider how they might be” (Coulter Reference Coulter, Hamilton and Tallberg2022, 19), reflecting on what the future might look like if multispecies care became more widespread. As such, it “refers to a mode of thought committed to fostering visions of other worlds possible” (Puig de la Bellacasa Reference de la Bellacasa and Maria2017, 110).

At Knepp, the obligation to care has been directed towards damaged agricultural landscapes deprived of biodiversity. Although an increasing number of species can now flourish at Knepp, it is still important to note that how the landholders’ care has implications for other worlds. The conversion of farmland into rewilding sites means that care for human aliment becomes neglected (or at least of secondary importance), which may encourage the extension of biodiversity-damaging monocultural food production elsewhere. The United Kingdom imports almost half of its food (UK Health Security Agency Reference by, Duarte-Davidson, Phalkey and Ford2023), while more than two-thirds of the land needed to produce the UK’s food is in countries with looser environmental regulations (de Ruiter et al. Reference de Ruiter, Macdiarmid, Matthews, Kastner and Smith2016). Hence, if rewilding in the UK were to scale up—which the Knepp landholders actively encourage through their books and seminars—this may lead to an intensification of destructive industrial agricultural practices elsewhere (Cusworth et al. Reference Cusworth, Lorimer, Brice and Garnett2022). Thus, our ethical-political obligation as researchers extends beyond specific rewilded ecologies, and it involves asking questions about what it would mean for multispecies life worlds if many farmers—in the name of rewilding—abandoned their ethical obligation to produce food for humans.

At Knepp, we note that there are two different ways in which the care for food (for humans) is envisioned. While presenting his vision of the future Knepp landscape, Burrell (Oxford Biodiversity Network 2023) reveals the ethical obligations he holds towards the needs of humans regarding food. Citing the work of George Monbiot (Reference Monbiot2022), Burrell’s vision includes a high-tech system of precision fermentation of bacteria in large factories that produce proteins, fat, and carbohydrates, which, according to abstract mathematical calculations, could release large areas of land from intensive agriculture for rewilding purposes (Oxford Biodiversity Network 2023). Citing the work of regenerative farmers (Brown Reference Brown2018), Tree provides a different vision for Knepp, where industrial farming shifts to regenerative practices (Linnean Society Reference Society2021). Such a shift, she argues, would make it possible to combine rewilding with the production of “as much food from the same amount of land without [soil damaging chemical] inputs [where also] food is healthier for us as human beings to eat” (Linnean Society Reference Society2021, 33:22–33:35).

Here, we can see how two different ethical obligations are at play. One sides with the business innovations of food fermentation in large-scale factories, neglecting the care for the ecologies (the so called “sacrifice zones”) where the materials needed for the factories would be extracted (see De Bruyn Reference De Bruyn2023). The other situates its care for human needs of food produced through multispecies care in the ecology-in-place, neglecting the care for high-tech solutions and factory-based human nutrition. Each way of caring for food has implications for the materialities and ethical entanglements brought into being. The factory-based foods would produce rewilded ecologies but also sacrificed ecologies. At the same time, an integrated system would have implications for what animal and plant species would be allowed to care for the ecology-in-place. Hence, because “it matters what worlds world worlds” (Haraway Reference Haraway2016, 35); how we frame what food is and from where it is sourced has implications for the multispecies lives and ecologies (not) being cared for.

In another example of Haraway’s (Reference Haraway2016) contention about which worlds are worlding worlds, one can point to the prominent position of the Burrell family in the British upper class and Tree’s profession as an author and journalist. This has helped the propagation of their rewilding stories, which have inspired many others. However, these stories are also a symptom of a world steeped in troubling power asymmetries that influence who can shape public debates and whose worlds are being cared for by whom. The Knepp Estate belongs to a family that has benefitted from the long-standing concentration of land ownership in the UK (Cahill Reference Cahill2002). While their ethical obligation to care deeply for their land heritage inspired the landholders to look for alternatives to their death-making agricultural practices, it is important to note that most people in the UK cannot foster such an affective relation to their home places other than as paying consumers of ecotourism and special meats. The concentration of land ownership in the hands of a wealthy few liberates ordinary consumers from having an obligation to care for the land through their everyday vital doings. From a speculative standpoint, one could ask: What would a world of multispecies care be like? What kinds of life forms would it encourage if more humans could engage in multispecies care, not only as paying consumers but as caring citizens engaged in revitalizing the liveliness of their ecologies-in-place? For example, some rewilding sites in the UK today encourage more community participation (Martin, Fischer, and McMorran Reference Martin, Fischer and McMorran2023), inspiring us to think with care differently than through inherited land ownership.

Another important aspect of what worlds are being cared for can be noted in how the increasing entanglements with financial investors shift the ethical commitments and obligations at Knepp (Oxford Biodiversity Network 2023). While the landholders used to derive their income from caring for what the land provided them—through ecotourism and meat sales—these novel financial arrangements entangle rewilding landholders with new assemblages of (un)care. As Burrell notes, these investments “will turn a bit of plowed land into a Knepp, and it will have life pouring back in it and will be important regionally for life [by selling] carbon and biodiversity credits” (Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery 2023, 56:41–56:59). However, are these investors truly committed to multispecies organizing? Or, perhaps, are their ethical obligations geared towards caring for companies “perceived to be dirty and not doing anything for the planet [seeking to invest in rewilding so that their] product[s can] have a shine on [them]” (Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery 2023, 1:11:31–1:11:36)? This corporate move into financing rewilding follows similar dynamics and injustices previously noted in the field of corporate social responsibility (CSR), where the liveliness of multispecies worlds are converted to representations in CSR reports (Ehrnström-Fuentes and Böhm Reference Ehrnström-Fuentes and Böhm2022) that signal that corporations care for things such as carbon emission (Gond and Nyberg Reference Gond and Nyberg2017), coffee plantations (Levy, Reinecke, and Manning Reference Levy, Reinecke and Manning2016), and planted forests (Moog, Spicer, and Böhm Reference Moog, Spicer and Böhm2015). However, the representational politics involved in how these entities come to matter (Latour Reference Latour2005) hide alternative caring relations that do not use rewilding as a way of greenwashing their image (Ehrnström-Fuentes and Böhm Reference Ehrnström-Fuentes and Böhm2022). While turning other worlds into wastelands and sacrifice zones, these companies can continue to neglect their obligation to care for multispecies lives in the places that materially sustain their profits while compensating for their uncaring activity by investing in carbon and biodiversity credits at Knepp.

The multispecies injustices inherent in carbon and biodiversity offsetting schemes exploit the affective and vital doings of multispecies collectives in one place while destroying others somewhere else. These schemes also redirect what is being cared for away from affective and sensuous experiences to the care for carbon measures, which reduces the landholders’ capacity to cultivate an attentiveness for the rhythms and relations (Van Doreen Reference Van Dooren, Kirksey and Münster2016) that make multispecies lives possible in ecologies-in-place. Kallio and LaFleur (Reference Kallio and LaFleur2023, 3) warn us that universalized standards make local ways of relating to the land “vulnerable to manipulation or control from a distance,” which marginalizes “the situated, sensuous and more-than-representational ways of knowing” in the ecology-in-place. Thus, the arrival of biodiversity and carbon credits risks shifting care obligations away from the situated and affective towards the standardized and universal, controlled from a distance.

As scholars committed to making visible environmental injustices, we acknowledge that it also matters what kind of worlds we, as scholars, world through our work. The cases with which we choose to think are not just intellectual and illustrative; they are ethical and political (Coulter Reference Coulter, Hamilton and Tallberg2022) in terms of the affective relationalities they illuminate and obscure. By choosing to think with Knepp, we chose a “privileged” ecology in the Global North. However, what about the sacrifice zones in the Global South? In these sacrifice zones, multispecies communities must come together to care for and repair the toxic lives forced upon them despite feeling displaced, unheard, and unseen (Tironi and Rodríguez-Giralt Reference Tironi and Rodríguez-Giralt2017).

In our writing, our ethical obligation is directed towards a world where multispecies life can flourish everywhere. We acknowledge that this requires systemic changes in how land is managed and distributed and how economies are performed into being. Such changes demand more from us humans than setting up natural capital investments for rewilding and nature-based solutions that compensate for dirty businesses elsewhere. It requires that we all learn to “think with care” (Haraway Reference Haraway2016) and how to be touched by the affective multispecies relationalities of care. Our organizing processes need to become affectively invested in what plants, animals, and other species care about while also allowing ourselves to be touched by their affective care.