Reading and listening recommendations that acknowledge and explore the more than human world. Some of these offerings focus on relationships—kinship—with other beings around us and their relationships with one another. In this worldview wisdom and agency is granted not only to animals and plants, but often to ecosystems like rivers or elements of the landscape like mountains. Through this engagement with nature, we see how life on earth is a co-created dance, not devoid of competition, but much more defined by cooperation and reciprocity.
Acknowledging the more than human world is a fundamental step in healing our relationship with the earth, and restoring our connection to nature. Depending on where your personal ideology is grounded, this selection may ask you to expand your thinking beyond the traditional paradigm of Western science. Some of these works are by scientists who have done just that. This selection includes works that approach this subject from different angles: spiritual, scientific, philosophical, ecological, and more.
Many of the books link to WorldCat (library consortium) – put in your zip code to find copies in libraries near you. This list is not comprehensive – I will add to this page periodically.
Articles and Podcasts
To Start:
Emergence Magazine – online (click stories), podcast, and print magazine
While not exclusively about this topic, the more than human concept is ever present in the work featured.
For the Wild Podcast – specifically the ones in their More than Human (scroll down) category.
To Deepen:
Orion Magazine – Kinship is a Verb
The Poetics of Ecology – A Conversation with Andreas Weber by Hannah Close
Books
To Start:
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Kissed by a Fox -and- Tamed by a Bear – both by Priscilla Stuckey
Rooted – Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature and Spirit by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
To Deepen:
Becoming Animal – An Earthy Cosmology by David Abrams
Matter and Desire – An Erotic Ecology by Andreas Weber