Root Rot: Linguistic Conflicts of Place and Agency

This article presents a counter-theoretical commentary on Paul Reed’s rootedness as an epistemological framework for quantifying the measurement and linguistic realization of place attachment. By examining researcher positionality and problematizing rootedness when examining implications for the study of queer communities, the author shows how the current rootedness framework fails to adequately account for social conflicts between place and agency. Moreover, the author presents a theoretical expansion or counter-theory complementing Reed’s rootedness notion rather than criticizing it. The author explores how personal evaluations of security and communal hostility might undermine current metrics for the study of rootedness in these populations and outline (up)rootedness and root rot as a means of accounting for these complexities.