Although the yard is a hybrid social and material landscape, much social science research emphasizes the socio-cultural factors and has mostly neglected the potentially important influence of plants, animals, and the nonliving material world on homeowners’ decision-making. Using interviews across six metropolitan areas in the United States, we investigated the ways residential yards’ nonhuman context is perceived to influence homeowners’ relationships with and planning for their yards. We found that nonhuman dynamics establish boundaries of yard-related decision-making, and that homeowners described their relations with the nonhuman context of the yard as cooperative, oppositional, and negotiable. We call for social science in urban spaces to be more explicitly informed by a consideration of nonhuman agency, and offer an ethical reflection of who or what is considered to have a right to cohabitate in homeowners’ yards.

中文翻译：

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非人类世界如何影响美国住宅宏观系统中的房主庭院管理

虽然院子是社会和物质的混合景观，但许多社会科学研究强调社会文化因素，而大多忽略了植物、动物和非生物物质世界对房主决策的潜在重要影响。通过对美国六个大都市区的采访，我们调查了住宅院子的非人类环境如何影响房主与院子的关系和规划。我们发现非人类动态建立了院子相关决策的界限，房主将他们与院子的非人类环境的关系描述为合作、对立和可协商。我们呼吁城市空间中的社会科学更明确地考虑非人类能动性，