Regulating an Unruly Nature. Invasive Alien Species, Monstrosity and the Law

Abstract

This article explores how invasive alien species are imagined, represented, and regulated in contemporary Sweden, focusing on the entanglement between biological threat, cultural fear, and bureaucratic control. Drawing on ethnographic material, policy analysis, and consultation documents, it examines how plants and animals such as Japanese knotweed, giant hogweed, and the “killer slug” are framed through tropes of monstrosity in media, legislation, and public discourse. Using monster theory (Cohen 1996) and scholarship on lists and classification, the article argues that monstrosity not only shapes perceptions of invasive species but also infuses the legal and administrative systems designed to contain them. The emerging regulating complex, a network of EU and Swedish regulations, lists, and responsibilities, appears both as a tool for ecological order and as a hybrid, excessive, and unruly entity in itself. The study shows how attempts to tame ecological disorder through listing practices mirror the very qualities attributed to invasive species: hybridity, excess, and uncontrollability. The result is a perfect monster of the present environmental moment – an assemblage of biological and bureaucratic life that reflects contemporary anxieties about nature, governance, and the limits of human control.