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Between ‘The Outlier’ and ‘The Dead’: Ethnographic and Phenomenological Encounters with a Mangrove Community

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  • Shelley Kolstad
Shelley Kolstad
QUT Law School, PhD Student
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3197/WHPPP.63876246815925

Published 2026-05-18

Keywords

  • Mangroves,
  • Ethnography,
  • Goethe,
  • Phenomenology

How to Cite

Kolstad, Shelley. 2026. “Between ‘The Outlier’ and ‘The Dead’: Ethnographic and Phenomenological Encounters With a Mangrove Community”. Plant Perspectives, May, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.3197/WHPPP.63876246815925.

Copyright (c) 2026 Shelley Kolstad

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

In this paper I share encounters with a mangrove community facilitated by practical engagement with concepts drawn from natural philosophy and anthropology. Ways of encountering mangroves which compel the process of ‘becoming with mangroves’ are elucidated as well as a reflection on personal impacts of being with mangroves. By employing Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s ‘observation as phenomenology’ and plant ethnography I was able to record through narrative and photography a place-based ontology which shapes ways of being. I found that understanding what it means to be mangrove is grounded in place-based experience. Further, the emergence of the self is synonymous with the process of experiencing mangroves and mangrove places.

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