Trees and Ecological Agency in Scandinavia

Trees are increasingly emerging as lively beings in forest management in Scandinavia. Based on anthropological fieldwork and archival research in the three Scandinavian countries, I examine human encounters with trees and their ‘will to grow’ with a view to discuss the ethical dilemmas involved in the recognition of the ecological agency of trees. Methodologically, I use the idea of a transect found in biological field research, to register human conflicts and debates about more-than-human agency in forests across Scandinavia. This enabled me to identify nuances in new management regimes, and conflicts around trees’ growth and agency in spaces beyond leisure life. Inspired by Baruch Spinoza’s (2020 [1677]) concept of conatus, I argue for a need to ecologize the concept of agency by paying attention to a distributed understanding of intentionality. This implies a recognition of how unfolding life projects and associated capacities to act are diverse, yet horizontally and relationally organized even within everyday work practices in new forest management.