REVIEW ARTICLE

PUBLISHED: 6 JUNE 2017 | VOLUME: 3 | ARTICLE NUMBER: 17075

The social dimensions of invasive plants

Lesley Head

Invasive plants pose a major environmental management issue. Research into the social dimensions of this issue has flourished
over the past decade, as part of the critical examination of relations between human and nonhuman worlds. The social sci-
ences and humanities have made substantial contributions to conceptualizing invasiveness and nativeness; understanding the
perceptions, attitudes and values of diverse stakeholders; and analysing the politics and practices of invasive plant manage-
ment. Cultural analysis allows areas of conflict and commonality to be identified. Social complexity must be added to ecological
complex­ity to understand the causal relationships underlying invasions; and linear understandings of science–policy relation-
ships are too simplistic. Productive connections have been established between recent social and natural science approaches in
the context of rapid environmental change and unpredictable futures. Nonetheless, the prevalence of human exceptionalism in
the ecological sciences constitutes a major point of divergence between social and natural science perspectives.

I
nvasive plants are a major environmental management issue,
becoming more severe under climate change and socioeconomic
globalization1–4. Much of the debate within the invasive plant sci-
ences focuses on the effectiveness of current policy settings and
management strategies5,6. Challenges include inadequate policy
commitment, lack of long-term funding, gaps in scientific knowl-
edge and the complexity of managing across increasingly fragmented
land tenure landscapes7–9. Yet potentially rapid shifts in ecological
boundary conditions10 challenge environmental policy and govern-
ance mechanisms developed for conditions of predictability 11,12. In
the broader environmental sciences, as well as the invasive plant sci-
ences specifically, it is now widely recognized that the sciences that
attend explicitly to people are essential to the task at hand13,14. Here,
I review the flourishing of social science and humanities perspec-
tives on invasive plants, particularly over the past decade.
The research reviewed here comes from a variety of disciplines,
particularly human geography, anthropology and history 15,16. These
disciplines use diverse methods, including archival and documen-
tary analysis, discourse and media analysis, ethnography, quanti-
tative surveys and in-depth qualitative interviews. These methods
draw out and analyse discourses, attitudes, practices, norms, val-
ues, concepts and policies. The human subjects of study include
farmers, pastoralists, gardeners, environmental managers, indig-
enous and local communities, scientists, policymakers and the
general public.
Social research into the field of invasive plant ecologies should be
understood as part of the wider critical social sciences and humani-
ties examination of relations between human and nonhuman worlds
over the past several decades. An important contribution of this
work has been to help break down the division that social scientists
only study people, while natural scientists only study the nonhuman
world. The work includes critique of the concepts of nature and cul-
ture, while also analysing how deeply these concepts are embedded
within Western thought and social structures17. Traditions some-
times referred to as ‘posthumanist’ critique ‘the human’ as an essen-
tialized and unified category, and argue for relational approaches
whereby the characteristics of phenomena are constituted in the
process of their relationships with other phenomena, including
entanglements between humans and other species18. Most of the
research discussed here is undertaken in the “classic” (as distinct
from the “applied” or “interdisciplinary”) conservation social sci-
ences19. For natural scientists looking for instrumental outcomes in
the form of direct applications to policy and management, research
that analyses and challenges foundational concepts can seem irrel-
evant, if not downright annoying. Yet such “reflexive” contributions
(one of seven types of contributions identified by Bennett et al.19)
are at the heart of social science contributions to invasive plant
research because the conceptual issues are so profound. The social
research reviewed here can also potentially assist with “diagnosing”
why certain policies succeed or fail and be “generative” of innovative
or alternate approaches19.
Further, as Sandbrook et al. note in their admittedly simplistic
but useful distinction between social research “for” and “on” con-
servation, there are parallel distinctions in the natural sciences, for
example between applied conservation biology and “long-term eco-
logical studies that challenge ideas of nativeness and demonstrate
the socially constructed nature of restoration targets and conserva-
tion baselines”20. New archaeological techniques have shown human
influences on environments over long timescales to be more subtle
and variable than previously thought 21, prompting considerations of
the extent to which our contemporary dilemmas are substantively
different to those of the past 10, or part of a continuum22. These paral-
lel trends in both natural and social sciences enhance the potential
for convergence.
Conceptualizing invasiveness and nativeness
At the heart of many debates around invasive plants—or, indeed,
invasive species more broadly—are a set of contested and entan-
gled concepts: nature, native, alien, exotic, introduced, weed. These
entanglements come to the fore in debates between social and natu-
ral scientists23–27, and between natural scientists themselves28–30. Part
of the communication gap between natural and social science lies
in their respective approaches to such concepts. Within the natural
sciences, these are terms to be defined in objective and unemotional
language31, and categorized in a way that enables objective eco-
logical and biogeographic study, and precise comparisons between
studies32,33. Within the social sciences, by contrast, the terms are
understood as concepts that have lives of their own and need to
be followed as they stabilize, change, are contested, and become
embedded in policies.

School of Geography, University of Melbourne, Melbourne 3053, Australia. e-mail: lesley.head@unimelb.edu.au

NATURE PLANTS 3, 17075 (2017) | DOI: 10.1038/nplants.2017.75 | www.nature.com/natureplants 1

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REVIEW ARTICLE NATURE PLANTS

There can be frustration between these approaches—it can feel as
though the natural sciences are trying to close things down while the
social sciences appear determined to open them up. Experimental
sciences seek to hold constant as many variables as possible, to facili-
tate comparison between different studies. In the parts of the social
sciences focused on here, it is difference itself that is the object of
interest; hence, depth and context are vital. In the interests of more
productive conversations across the natural/social science boundary,
it is important to explain why much social scholarship critiques cat-
egorizations (of plants and humans) and exposes the political nature
and assumptions underlying them34. An important contribution of
these approaches is to examine how particular knowledge becomes
accepted as common sense.
To say something is a concept or a discourse is not to give it any
less material reality than plants, soil or climatic conditions. Concepts
and discourses have power—in science, legislation and policy, and in
the mobilization of resources to kill invasive plants. Reliance on words
and labels inevitably makes any scientific discipline, including inva-
sion biology, a cultural practice, with its concepts having discursive
impacts that extend far beyond its immediate concerns35. Ecological
policies “reflect in complex ways” the underpinning social values
in their generating societies34. In invasive species policy framings,
metaphors of competition, war and security continue to be perva-
sive36–38. Part of the debate might be over the relative effectiveness of
such metaphors, but we can surely agree that they exist. Material out-
comes include the privileging of some species over others, in different
spatial contexts23.
Take, as example, the definitions provided in Pyšek and
Richardson’s summary 32:
• Alien species: those whose presence in a region is attributable to
human actions that enabled them to overcome fundamental bioge-
ographical barriers (synonyms: exotic species, non-native species).
• Invasive species: alien species that sustain self-replacing popula-
tions over several life cycles; produce reproductive offspring, often
in very large numbers at considerable distances from the parent
and/or site of introduction; and have the potential to spread over
long distances.
• Native species: taxa that have evolved in a given area without
human involvement or that have arrived there by natural means,
without intentional or unintentional intervention of humans,
from an area in which they are native.
To make these distinctions workable, exemptions are necessary—
for example, the usually smaller category of invasive natives. A strong
theme in the social science literature has been to explore what such
definitions and their associated practices say about understanding
humanness and the ways in which humanity is conceptualized as
separate from nature. So, in the definition of alienness, the human
species is distinguished from biogeographic processes. In the defini-
tion of nativeness, humans are counterposed against natural means,
and are separated from other processes of evolution. In an exchange
between social scientists and ecologists, Warren emphasized the role
of humanness in the definitions of nativeness and alienness, and
thus questioned the validity of the concepts23. Respondents argued
inter alia that the human role is essential in understanding processes
of invasion (a point agreed on by all authors) and defended the
human as a delineator in the definitions for this reason (the bone of
contention)24,25. There is disagreement within ecology about how well
founded the concept of nativeness is39, with some arguing that the
distinction between native and non-native does not provide guiding
principles for environmental management28. But if it does have bio-
logical justification, nativeness is defined in terms of the influence of
the human. Native plants are defined in terms of human activities and
influences, not in terms of the plants themselves.
This point may seem unremarkable to ecologists and biogeogra-
phers, but it is very striking to others. The absence of a fundamen-
tal biological meaning for the concept of nativeness is the most
remarked-on feature of the concept as discussed in the humani-
ties and social sciences23,40–44. Using historical legal analysis, Chew
and  Hamilton argued the concept to be both recent and theoreti-
cally incoherent43. A further expression of the tensions inherent in
such bounding practices is that humans are conceptually separated
even from their food; “most humans rely on alien species for the
bulk of their requirements for food and other basic requirements”32.
Note, however, that a nuanced defence of the concept of nativeness is
advanced by some45.
If the concepts of nativeness and alienness are contested, it is well
recognized in both the natural and social sciences that species are only
alien with respect to specific places and times. This recognition is in
large part due to the dynamic and detailed long-term changes now
visible through palaeoecology 46. The issues of spatial and temporal
demarcation47 are worth attending to separately.
As nativeness is defined in relation to the absence of human inter-
vention, the temporal threshold against which it is measured var-
ies according to how long different people have been in a particular
region and how well the human history is known. In Britain, native
species can be those in place prior to the last ice age48, although
Scottish definitions focus on the pre-Neolithic, about 6,000  years
ago23. In Germany, the periods pre- and post-1500 ce (representing
the influence of the Columbian exchange) are considered differently 49.
In countries with shifting political borders, the timeframes can be
explicitly arbitrary, as in Norway’s year zero of 1800 ce50. In colonial
contexts such as Australia, the moment of European colonization
is chosen, notwithstanding that indigenous peoples had consider-
able (albeit less visible) influence on plant distributions for millennia
before that39. In places such as Europe, the arbitrary nature of such
boundaries is widely acknowledged, but in colonial contexts they tend
to be taken as self-evident and real.
The spatial configuration of nativeness has several dimensions,
discussed in both natural and social science literature. It is partly a
question of scale: is a species considered native to a vegetation com-
munity, a broader ecosystem or landscape, or a continent? But further,
political boundaries and processes are inevitably woven into both
the conceptualization of nativeness and the governance structures
by which invasives are managed. The same organism can belong to
different categories in different places (Table 1), and categorizations
can change over time—as in Iceland, where natural scientists have
been on both sides of a debate over the case of lupins47. Historical
analysis is thus an important part of exploring shifts in attitude and
practice. In the example of Acacia, movements are understood to be
not just movements of the plant, but also accompanying bundles of
knowledge and technology, received into different social, political
and economic contexts40. A further spatial demarcation of relevance
is between urban and rural contexts, with most research focusing on
the latter. An emerging literature draws attention to the importance
of urban contexts51, where some pragmatic coexistence with invasives
will need to be tolerated52.
An important example in which temporal and spatial demarcations
play out is in the process of colonialism. It is no accident that both the
ecological impacts32 and social science literature are strongly focused in
postcolonial settler states such as the USA, Canada, South Africa53–55,
Australia and Aotearoa New  Zealand. This is partly because of the
dramatic ecological changes wrought by colonial processes, making
many parts of the world more prone to plant invasions through land
clearing and habitat loss. Such processes included not only “the bio-
logical expansion of Europe”56, but also more multidirectional plant
movements, including dispersal back to the metropolitan centres40.
The social science and humanities literature on plant invasions is
part of the broader analysis of the links between Western environ-
mentalism and the so-called Edenic sciences (including invasion
ecology)57, both of which hark back to a pre-colonial baseline of
pristine nature58. Indeed, it is argued that the concept of indigeneity
itself—whether applied to humans, plants or animals—is a structural

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NATURE PLANTS REVIEW ARTICLE
Table 1 | The perceptions, practices, times and locations of Australian Acacia.
Perceptions Practices When and where
Colonial—improving nature Acclimatization British colonies (E. Africa, S. India) 1820s onwards
Soil rehabilitation French Colonies (Algeria, Madagascar), 1900s onwards
Timber provision South Africa (Transvaal), throughout 1800s
National—productive landscapes Industrial planting Portugal, late 1800s until mid-1900s
International trade South Africa, post-1910
Symbolic appropriation Brazil, post-1940s
People-centred—sustainable development Agroforestry South Africa (Dept. Water Affairs and Forestry)
Community initiatives Vietnam’s afforestation strategies
Poverty alleviation Dominican Republic’s acacia woodlots
Ornamental—botanical symbolism Urban landscape design Mediterranean Europe, Southern France
Home gardening California
Wilderness protection Chile
Invasion biology—objective science Biodiversity conservation South Africa
Environmental control New Zealand
Ecosystem service protection Portugal
Global redistributions of the plant are understood here in relation to diverse perceptions, which are consequently used in different modes of practice. Data summarized from ref. 55.

outcome of colonialism59. If humans are acknowledged as always
already involved in the world—and thus inseparable from it—then
no such concept is needed. ‘Indigeneity’ can then be seen as a mani-
festation of the structure of settler colonialism and the disruptions of
belonging that it entailed. Further, historical perspectives on particu-
lar invasive plants show that settler colonialism was less monolithic
than often understood; analysis of prickly pear in Queensland empha-
sizes the important role of non-white settlers60.
Fall suggests that because this literature is in English and widely
read, the colonial perspective in fact speaks back to and has influenced
wider debates around invasive species34. This important argument
warrants further research.
In summary, there is widespread recognition in both the social
and natural sciences that, in principle at least, the framing of inva-
sive plants is both spatially and temporally contingent. This has led
to many calls for management to be concerned about invasiveness (a
quality of plant behaviour, in relation to other organisms and condi-
tions) rather than nativeness or its absence (a categorization of the
plant). Or, more precisely, to be as specific as possible about exactly
what is considered problematic in that behaviour rather than using
broad generalizations such as ‘invasive’61. Nevertheless, the distinction
between invasive and native is still used in ecological discussion and
operationalized in management62.
The purpose of this Review Article is not to render the relevant
concepts redundant or useless. Rather, being rigorous in their analy-
sis helps ground scientific practice in more realistic approaches. The
social research discussed here clearly demonstrates that the concepts
at the heart of invasion biology are fluid and contestable terms, framed
using human bounding practices. They are, for this reason, culturally
and emotionally freighted terms. The historical evolution of these
concepts is closely tied with human governance structures including
colonialism and nationalism. Science has been part of this complex
evolution and is not separable from it. In such a context, being rigor-
ous requires working with this messy reality rather than trying to strip
it away in tighter definitions.
Understanding perceptions, attitudes and values
A major contribution of social research into invasives has been to
document the diversity of perceptions of (and attitudes to) invasive
plants, and the different aesthetic responses among different com-
munities. The same taxon can occasion different perceptions and
be valued differently across these different contexts (Table 1). These
cultural dimensions are of interest in their own right, illustrating
diverse environmental imaginaries and ways of interacting with
environments. They also have outcomes on the ground; whether
favourable or unfavourable, such responses play a major role in the
treatment of different species in different contexts35.
In a world where policy is expected to be evidence based63, the
relationship between expert (scientist or manager) and lay (public)
attitudes and knowledge is important. There are many more stud-
ies of the latter, and comparative studies are still emerging, perhaps
because of ongoing assumptions that the purpose of studying public
attitudes is to remove barriers to the execution of policy as developed
by experts, rather than to consider both experts and the public as
groups who have cultures that need to be understood.
Scientists are shown in some studies to be more normative than
the public. The latter tend to respond on the more experiential basis
of their engagement with plants, being more emotional and attached
to individual plants64. In a Swiss example, scientists concerned about
gardening practices that encouraged invasives discussed their own
strategic decisions to focus on plants causing health problems, thus
generating ‘social anxiety’ that was seen as a way of getting their
point across and provoking action65.
Increasingly, however, there is evidence of nuance and common-
ality in expert and lay judgments. Survey research in Scotland and
Canada has shown that neither experts nor the public judge species
primarily on their origins66. Questions of nativeness are not per-
ceived as unimportant, but abundance and perceived damage are
considered to be of greater significance. Whereas professionals tend
to make blanket judgments about non-native species in line with
their approach to risk management, the public make assessments on
each case, based on potential harm67. These studies illustrate path-
ways for collaboration and mutual understanding, if viewpoints are
discussed openly before management programmes commence.
Survey research among invasion biologists themselves shows
agreement that the level of current invasion is unprecedented, disa-
greement that invasion is the second biggest threat to biodiversity,
and agreement that hyperbole should be avoided68. There is a range
of views about how much emotional connection is needed to engen-
der debate among the broader community. Scientific perceptions of
aggressive invaders can persist in the face of biogeographical evi-
dence to the contrary 69. The social sciences can help the plant ecology
community make sense of the strong emotions that they articulate
themselves as experiencing 70. These include the tensions between
describing the world as it is and shaping it as they want it to be, and
the co-existence of strong emotions with rational scientific practice57.
Although indigenous voices and values have been historically
underrepresented in invasive species scholarship71, there is now an

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REVIEW ARTICLE NATURE PLANTS

emergent body of work in this field. Within indigenous worldviews the
scientific categories of ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ species—themselves
partly a product of colonialism, as argued above—do not necessar-
ily make sense. Nor should all indigenous communities be expected
to respond in the same way. Non-native species are welcomed in
some contexts72, although this can change over time73. The depth and
complexity deducible via anthropological research is well evident in
Martin and Trigger’s59 study of the culturally diverse meanings and
historical relationships around individual Australian trees, including
one commonly perceived as an iconic native (Eucalyptus coolabah),
and another as potentially invasive (Cocos nucifera).
In many parts of Australia, indigenous communities have become
important partners in invasive plant management, with indigenous
rangers key to the labour force74. Different members of communities
have been shown to talk and act differently in relation to invasives
in Western Australia’s Kimberley region. Aboriginal elders use a dis-
course of caring for country, whereas younger Aboriginal rangers use
a warlike discourse because of their European science-based train-
ing 75. These diverse views affect how the two groups view success—
the latter are disappointed by their inability to kill all plants.
The category of ‘local knowledge’ is usually applied to rural
communities, often trying to maintain agricultural livelihoods.
Management strategies vary with how particular plants are valued,
for use or other attributes76. Study of these strategies helps elucidate
the social processes influencing invasion—for example, the vary-
ing approaches over time to the management and cultural value of
Typha domingensis (cattail) and Schoenoplectus californicus (bulrush)
in Lake Pátzcuaro, Mexico77. Examples include attempts to incor-
porate the knowledge of marsh hayers into understanding the pro-
cesses of invasion of Phalaris arundinacea (reed canary grass) in the
American Midwest78. Local knowledge is sometimes used together
with ecological surveys to document change over time, as in the
Eastern Cape, South Africa, where local elders were interviewed about
their knowledge of Lantana camara invasion, a process that has been
detrimental to medicinally and ritually important forest tree species79.
A research focus on gardens and gardeners is particularly relevant
because many invasives started life as garden plants transferred from
one place to another in the process of human migration. Gardeners
today can be seen as vectors in the flow of potential invasives at
two key points: the purchase of plants and the dumping of garden
waste into neighbouring bushland80. A survey study in southeastern
Australia demonstrated the important role of commercial nurseries
(and minor role of environmental initiatives) in purchasing deci-
sions, which tended to prioritize the appearance and aesthetics of
plants. This is consistent with a well-documented trend in Australia
that shows vernacular preferences for exotic gardens, or mixed
gardens of natives and non-natives, rather than native species81,82.
Norwegian gardeners are not at all concerned about the native/non-
native status (as defined in Norwegian environmental management)
of their plants, but are concerned about their behavioural attributes,
such as invasiveness83. Even then, invasiveness is not necessarily seen
as bad, provided it is within certain bounds of garden control. Similar
attitudes are reported in Sweden84.
An important theme across many of these studies is the emotional
and embodied entanglements between people and plants, as their
interactions unfold in diverse contexts relevant to invasiveness85–88.
These emotions connect to wider thinking about change and stability
in nature89. In contrast to humanist perspectives that have historically
emphasized the agency and power of human beings, empirical evi-
dence has led many social scientists to recognize the agency of plants.
Studies illustrate the dynamic relations that emerge as plants accom-
modate, cooperate with or struggle against human aspirations90–93.
Analysing management politics and practice
The types of studies discussed in the previous sections have impli-
cations for invasive plant management, as concepts are expressed
in legislation and policy, and attitudes and perceptions flow into
practice. The many challenges of translating science into policy are
exacerbated in a “value pluralistic world”94. The need to understand
diverse values and experiences is acknowledged for different reasons.
In some cases, the native/alien dichotomy is rejected as a manage-
ment principle95; in other cases, the need to involve stakeholders is a
more pragmatic choice as social and political support is understood
as critical to the sustainability of invasive species management 13,63.
Note that, as outlined in the introduction, this paper does not
provide a full review of the social sciences of invasive plant govern-
ance, as might be found in the political and legal sciences. (Albeit
some of the mainstream governance literature has noted the difficul-
ties posed by the “ambiguity” of the concept of invasive species96,97.)
This section focuses on explicit analyses of the practice of invasive
plant management, including the ways it is entangled with politics.
The broader framing of biosecurity, which has become the
“master frame” for policy and debate around ecological threat
(whether human-, animal- or plant-based) and the mitigation of
associated risk98, provides useful context to the present discussion.
Biosecurity governance provides another example of how temporal
and spatial demarcations to which organisms belong play out at dif-
ferent scales. “Biosecurity cannot be seen as a purely technical chal-
lenge. Rather it is a highly contested geopolitical process that cannot
be disentangled from the risks perceived and posed by different
stakeholder groups”63.
Complex geopolitics emerge in the tensions between neoliberal
priorities of unimpeded international trade, and what is required for
effective biosecurity governance. There are contradictions between
our widespread desires to move people and goods freely, while
simultaneously constraining all sorts of organisms99. The World
Trade Organization itself recognizes that global trade poses a bio­
security risk, but argues that policies to control this risk need to not
restrict trade98. Put differently, “environmental invaders are an exter-
nality of global trade”100, not least the nursery industry 101.
Questions of biosecurity are closely linked to the scale of the
nation state, the operational unit within global agreements such as
the Biodiversity Convention. In order to protect biodiversity, signa-
tories must produce national lists of invasive species. This can make
ecological sense when the national border corresponds with a sig-
nificant terrestrial ecological boundary, as in the cases of Australia
and New Zealand85, but is more complex in the case of continen-
tal Europe, with the many national boundaries and complex gov-
ernance agreements of the European Union (EU)102,103. Further,
some have argued that EU actions are hindered by the ongoing
perception of Europe as a source of, rather than a destination for,
invasive species104.
Regardless of intention, biosecurity approaches intensify the
long-observed links between nation, nature and identity 34,105. In
Aotearoa New Zealand, for example, the governance processes that
produce good ecological citizens function at the level of the indi-
vidual, who has legal obligations to participate in surveillance and
reporting of invasives, or who is mobilized against transgressions of
the border, as in the case of community ‘Weedbuster’ teams85.
The diversity of attitudes and values reviewed in the previous sec-
tion take one expression in the policy world as the views of ‘stake-
holders’. The need to involve diverse groups is better recognized with
respect to invasives in agriculture, and biosecurity around human
disease, than in the literature regarding invasive plants in wild-
lands13,100,106. At one level, it may seem obvious that the role of human
values is strongly acknowledged in more overtly human activi-
ties, but this simply highlights the exceptionalist case of the wild-
land examples. It also helps explain, for example, why many more
resources are invested in managing invasives that threaten agricul-
tural production than those of purely environmental concern98.
An expanding methodological literature discusses practical
examples of how to develop and improve methods for stakeholder

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NATURE PLANTS
mapping 107, including structured decision making 106. Knowledge of
stakeholder attitudes can have contrasting applications, as two dif-
ferent studies in Spain showed. A study in Galicia108 showed overlap-
ping attitudes to the main invasive plants among key stakeholders,
contributing to the potential for consensus building about appropri-
ate actions. In another context 109, researchers found remarkably dif-
ferent perceptions about impacts and benefits, leading to the need to
consider trade-offs for action between different positions.
Social factors can be analysed as both enablers and barriers to
management of invasives110. As in the above cases that show both
conflict and commonality, stakeholder mapping studies do not in
themselves answer the inherently political question of whose views
should count more, and in what contexts. Relevant political pro-
cesses operate at multiple scales. For example, invasive buffel grass
(Pennisetum ciliare) in Mexico’s Sonoran Desert is influenced by both
political economic structures (international relations of production
in feeder calf manufacture) and the behaviours (rational and irra-
tional) of individual ranchers, in addition to ecological factors111. The
use of glyphosate as a management strategy can quickly create tech-
nological lock-in and loss of knowledge about alternative methods112.
Changing patterns of land use and amenity migration have made the
management of serrated tussock (Nassella trichotoma) more difficult
in southeastern Australia8. Moreover, attention to questions of trust
and power is vital to scale-up effective management from individual
landholders to a collective landscape or ecosystem scale113.
An emergent body of work is undertaking explicit analysis of the
practices of invasive plant management. One widespread finding is
that there is a high degree of reflexivity in the practice of invasive
plant management, that is, that the experience of interacting with
plants changes people’s perceptions of them. Examples include the
science of biocontrol114, and the management of gorse (Ulex spp.) in
Aotearoa New Zealand85. In contrast to continued policy metaphors
of war and battle36, the actual practice of management shows consid-
erably more nuance and subtlety, albeit sometimes in tension with
policy 115. Interview research with Typha managers in Mexico not
only drew attention to diverse and practical knowledge but also sug-
gested improved management practices77. Some studies show that
collaborative participatory methods such as citizen science mapping
of non-native invasives can enhance management success116.
Overall, the complexities outlined in this section challenge any
presumption that management is a simple process of increasing
awareness, or that people just need to be educated to do the right
thing according to a dominant scientific view 35.
Implications and convergent pathways
This concluding section summarizes the key contributions of social
research and identifies productive connections (actual or poten-
tial) with natural science approaches. The issue of invasive plants is
here one example of the wider challenges of global environ­mental
change, with increased levels of uncertainty and high potential
for surprise over the coming decades. Environmental governance
frameworks developed for relatively stable conditions will be chal-
lenged by climate change117.
The spatial and temporal variability identified in studies of both
plant movements and people’s understandings of where they belong
affirms that both nativeness and invasiveness are unstable, evolv-
ing concepts35. Rather than attempt to pin the concepts down, sci-
entists and policymakers need to realise how they are understood
and expressed in different times and places. Across many different
groups of people, experiential engagements with plants have been
shown to be an important influence on attitudes and practice. Focus
on the behaviours of plants (in combination with wider assem-
blages), rather than on pre-defined categories, will lead to more
productive outcomes.
The depth and diversity identified using cultural analysis allows
areas of conflict and compatibility to be more clearly identified.
REVIEW ARTICLE
Whether this is between different stakeholders or between expert
and lay perspectives, constructive pathways forward depend on
clear understanding of differences and commonalities in meanings,
norms and resultant practices. The alternatives offered by cultur-
ally different approaches to invasive plants could yet be seen as an
important resource in times of rapid change.
The addition of social complexity to ecological complexity fur-
ther undermines the notion of single causes or drivers. There is
potential for both social and natural science perspectives to better
integrate multiple drivers of change into their thinking. The broad-
ening of socioeconomic and political processes exemplified here
has some parallels with the extension of the concept of species
invasiveness to community invasibility 118. Invasive networks119 and
assemblages120 are useful frameworks that can accommodate the
complexity and contingency evident in both social and ecological
domains. Indeed policy may be a relatively minor lever of change
in some contexts.
The expectation that the problems of invasive plants can be
solved with a linear translation of good science into policy is an
overly simplistic framing, quite inconsistent with the complex-
ity illustrated in these works. More contingent and provisional
stabil­izations are likely. Science is used in complex ways and these
processes themselves require ongoing analysis. There are varying
responses to social approaches in the natural science community,
particularly when ecologists themselves may be uncomfortable
being the subject of research. However, there should be much to
welcome for ecologists in this work, including understanding
that their own emotional responses are not incompatible with
rational research.
Living with and killing invasive plants involves political and eth-
ical choices. Discourses of war are at odds with much invasive plant
management practice and need to give way to a more nuanced
understanding that we both live with and kill plants in different
contexts. A more honest acknowledgement of the cultural bases of
historical decisions may also help us have more explicit discussions
around the political and ethical dilemmas of invasive plant man-
agement. In some contexts the many positive features and consid-
erable adaptive potential of invasive plants need to be recognized35.
Much of the social research cited here attempts to go beyond
human exceptionalism, and aspires to contribute “more creative
adaptations to changing environments into the future”59, in which
humans are considered as existing within nature rather than apart
from it. Ongoing (and incomplete) social science and humanities
attempts to include humans and nature in the same conceptual
framework stand in stark contrast to the separationist definitions
prevalent in invasion ecology. However, they do have some features
in common with those parts of ecology and biogeography attempt-
ing to conceptually and empirically include humans, for example
the concepts of novel ecosystems121 and anthropogenic biomes
or anthromes122.
For many ecologists interested in invasive plant management,
social processes constitute complications: stumbling blocks or bar-
riers that must be removed for effective action to occur. Social sci-
entists on the other hand are more likely to regard complication as
normal, and plant transfers as integral to “the human process of
regional differentiation”40. Messy complexity is not something that
can be ignored, but part of the world we are trying to understand
and live in. That is not to say that difference does not exist, nor that
categories are not useful—rather, the ways they are constituted and
take effect are empirically open questions to be studied in diverse
contexts. This commitment to empirically grounded research is
perhaps the most important shared characteristic that enhances
social and natural science connections.
Received 26 September 2016; accepted 26 April 2017;
published 6 June 2017

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Acknowledgements
Funding was provided by the Australian Research Council (FL0992397). I am grateful to
many colleagues who have discussed these issues over the years, particularly J. Atchison,
N. Gill and D. Trigger. Thanks to T. Roberts and I. Aguirre-Bielschowsky for assistance
with literature searches.
Author contributions
L.H. was responsible for all project design and planning, analysis of literature,
conceptualization and writing of the paper.
Additional information
Reprints and permissions information is available at www.nature.com/reprints.
Correspondence should be addressed to L.H.
How to cite this article: Head, L. The social dimensions of invasive plants. Nat. Plants
3, 17075 (2017).
Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional affiliations.
Competing interests
The author declares no competing financial interests.

NATURE PLANTS 3, 17075 (2017) | DOI: 10.1038/nplants.2017.75 | www.nature.com/natureplants 7

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