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On these grounds Murdoch argues that the concept of hybridity, which is as yet
'not in common usage' in rural studies, has 'the potential to capture the socio-
natural complexity of the countryside more easily than traditional modes of repre-
sentation' (p. 264). Signifi cantly, the suggestion is that taking non-humans seriously
should not be a specialised and discrete form of study, but rather that non-humans
are likely to be actively present, and thus, deserving of theoretical and empirical
attention,
in just about any consideration of any rural phenomena
. Therefore a
general sensitivity to hybridity is needed.
ANT is a persuasive, even arresting view of the world. It seems undeniable that
most everyday processes of life involve a whole host of actants from right across
the spectrum of existence (ideas, texts, chemicals, machines, organisms, processes,
fi nances and so on). However, ANT has been questioned in a number of ways. Its
view of dispersed power leaves it open to the accusation that it cannot account for
uneven power relations and the victimisation or injustice that stems from them.
Thrift (1999) suggests that it fails to deal very well with ideas and realities of place,
and Bingham and Thrift (2002: 299) argue that it misses 'the sizzle of the event' - in
other words, the affective dimensions of interaction between actants. It certainly
has a strongly technological infl ection, which seems to under-represent living things
and their characteristics (Whatmore and Thorne, 2000). Its treatment of thing-iden-
tity as purely relational has also been questioned (Philo and Wilbert, 2000).
So ANT can be seen as an effective way of diagramming the world 'after nature',
but other approaches are needed to fl esh-out how these mappings develop. ANT
establishes the fi rst principles of interconnectedness and distributed agency, but then
how life feels and functions for bodies in networks, and the kinds of spaces, places
and experiences they fi nd themselves in need to be dealt with. The next two
approaches to be discussed might help in that respect.
Dwelling
Dwelling is 'the thesis that the production of life involves the unfolding of a fi eld
of relations that
crosscuts
the boundary between human and non-human.' (Ingold,
2005, p. 504). Springing from the later work of Heidegger and phenomenology of
Merleau-Ponty, it offers a ground from which life (human and non-human) can be
rethought away from Cartesian-derived dualisms. Dwelling takes
The immersion of the organism-person in an environment or life world as an inescap-
able condition of existence. [ ] The world continually comes into being around the
inhabitant, and its manifold constituents take on a signifi cance through their incorpora-
tion into a regular pattern of life activity (Ingold, 2000, p. 153).
It is thus focused upon the ever-active and becoming push of life and centred on
the body-in-environment which is always sensing, engaging, doing, and remember-
ing. No great distinction is made between human and (organic) non-human life.
Ingold (2000), Thrift (2005), and Harrison et al. (2004) use dwelling, and Von
Uexküll's (1957) closely linked notion of 'life-world', to stress the 'intelligences' and
embodied practices of everyday human and non-human life. As Whatmore and
Hinchcliffe (2003, p. 5) put it dwelling is about 'the ways in which
humans
and other animals
make themselves at home in the world through a bodily register
of ecological conduct' (emphasis added).
