Naming species is a first step toward kinship, not a distancing taxonomy

Evidence

Once, when I was giving a talk on my research for this book at a Stanford urban studies working group, somebody asked whether using iNaturalist wasn’t alienating me from the landscape, since it represented an itemizing, scientific view. I answered that while I had to admit it looked that way, the app was a necessary step in the remediation of my ignorance, a temporary crutch. Learning the names of things was my first step in perceiving not just “land” or “greenery,” but living bodies instead. And, at least at home, it wasn’t as though I stopped paying attention once I learned their names. Instead I remained observant over the seasons, learning not just their names but what they did, or rather, who they were. And at some point, this led to something in excess of disinterested observation—not just with Crow and Crowson or the local night herons, but with everything, the plants and the rocks and the fungus. Eventually, to behold is to become beholden to. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 492

Categorization

• DEFINE: The aphoristic payoff: ‘to behold is to become beholden to’ — concise gloss on the chapter’s whole project of attention as obligation.
• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s defense of Odell against the withdrawal misreading — this is attention turned toward the world, not away from it. — connects to: Cultural identity for hunting peoples is defined by kinship relations with specific animals — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1648; Naming a plant falls far short of knowing the plant itself — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 155; Ecological restoration requires first knowing the organisms by name as individuals. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 298 (+3 more)
• SHARE: The iNaturalist defense (itemizing vs. kin-making) is a specific rebuttal worth sending to any naturalist/artist skeptic of citizen-science apps.
• CANDY: ‘to behold is to become beholden to’ — a compact, quotable aphorism.