Focusing on invasive plant species management issues, we propose an empirically based contribution to one of the main challenges of contemporary geography theory, that of materiality. In keeping with the aim of analysing how practitioners on the ground engage with invasive aquatic plants in the littoral lakes of Aquitaine (south-west France), we endorse a relational approach to categorisation, one that specifically emphasises categorisation as a process embedding, and fashioning, materiality and material agency. Nevertheless, we advocate a still overlooked critical attention to the most vibrant trends in new materialist geography, namely, the risk of minimising the separation issue. The results of our ethnographic inquiry show that the process of categorisation recognises, on the one hand, the indeterminacy of plants’ behaviour, mobility, and various other characteristics – i.e., a process pervaded with ideas of fluidity. Moreover, our results show that the process of categorisation comes with a large array of contextualised management objectives, imbued with the determination of people to keep some control over spreading phenomena – i.e., a process pervaded with ideas of creativity and responsibility. These results suggest that a reasonably sustained critical attention, firmly grounded in empirical analysis, can enable research to open up to novel opportunities for operational engagement with rapidly changing environments. We discuss how participatory territorial governance mechanisms should give way to ordinary modes of relating and separating, a condition for successful implementation of everyday contextualised struggles against invasive species, far from vitalist or eradication rhetoric.

中文翻译：

---

水生入侵植物失利之战：“流体”分类与多种形式的普通承诺

着眼于入侵植物物种管理问题，我们针对当代地理学理论的主要挑战之一，即物质性提出了基于经验的贡献。为了分析实地从业者如何处理阿基坦（法国西南部）沿岸湖泊中的入侵水生植物，我们支持一种相关的分类方法，该方法特别强调分类作为过程嵌入和塑造、重要性和材料代理。然而，我们主张对新唯物主义地理学中最活跃的趋势，即最小化分离问题的风险，给予一种仍然被忽视的批判性关注。我们的民族志调查结果表明，一方面，分类过程承认植物行为、流动性、以及其他各种特征——即一个充满流动性思想的过程。此外，我们的结果表明，分类过程伴随着大量情境化的管理目标，充满了人们对传播现象保持一定控制的决心——即，一个充满创造力和责任感的过程。这些结果表明，以实证分析为基础的合理持续的批判性关注可以使研究为与快速变化的环境的作战参与开辟新的机会。我们讨论了参与式领土治理机制应该如何让位于普通的关联和分离模式，这是成功实施日常针对入侵物种的背景化斗争的条件，