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- Convenors:
-
Vanessa Wijngaarden
(University of Johannesburg)
Verónica Policarpo (Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa)
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- Formats:
- Panels
- Sessions:
- Thursday 23 July, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
We summon multispecies, interspecies, more-than-human and posthuman research efforts to explore the practical and methodological implications of working with multiple ontologies and non-human agents, and how this affects modernist dichotomies, environmental debates and scientific knowledge making.
Long Abstract:
The 'ontological turn' and 'species turn' have opened up new horizons for anthropological research, which we are still in the process of discovering, also with regard to their potential to affect our practices. In this panel we summon multispecies, interspecies, more-than-human and posthuman research efforts, to explore their methodological approaches and results. We are especially interested in the practical implications of working from the premise of a variety of ontologies and non-human agency, and ask what this means for how we reinvent methodologies, and how these innovative research strategies and results may impact and challenge our insights in and reflections on what scientific knowledge (making) entails. This is not only academically timely, but also inspired by recent developments across continents, involving a boom in professional careers, projects and documentaries on intuitive interspecies connections and interactions, as well as the urgency of global questions surfacing in relation to the Anthropocene and environmental concerns. In this panel we aim to explore how dichotomies of human/animal, culture/nature, self/other and fact/value are related to and embedded in an Eurocentric modernist worldview, and how the underlying distinctions and connections operate in other contexts. We are interested to share insights in and experiences with experimental and innovative methods, approaches and themes that practically overcome these dichotomies, discuss and reflect on their strengths and weaknesses, and how anthropological research of this kind may affect and be of service to the futures of societies as well as the scientific knowledge making system.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 23 July, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork among indigenous communities adversely affected by monocrop oil palm developments in West Papua, this paper examines the methodological, ethical, and epistemological challenges of reconciling multispecies and ontological perspectives on the more-than-world.
Paper long abstract:
The paper explores how indigenous Marind communities in the Indonesian-controlled region of West Papua conceptualize the radical socio-environmental transformations wrought by large-scale deforestation and monocrop oil palm expansion on their customary lands and forests. Within the 'ecology of selves' (Kohn 2013) of the Marind lifeworld, oil palm constitutes a particular kind of person, endowed with particular agencies and affects. Its unwillingness to participate in symbiotic socialities with other species jeopardizes the wellbeing of the lifeforms populating a dynamic multispecies cosmology - including humans. Drawing from ontological theories and the multispecies approach (particularly the "plant turn"), I explore how assumptions of human exceptionalism eschewed by posthumanist currents come under question in the context of a vegetal being that is exceptional in its own particular and destructive ways. Arguing for greater attention to other-than-human species that are 'unloving' rather than 'unloved,' I attend to the methodological, epistemic, and ethical frictions that arise when one strives to take seriously the perspective of plants on the one hand, and the perspective of situated humans with regards to plants on the other. I offer the notion of 'dispersed ontologies' as a means of appreciating the relationality of multispecies worldings while also attending to violence, asymmetries, and rupture within such worldings.
Paper short abstract:
Herding and hunting are often considered as antagonistic practices. Herding tends to be associated with a domestic area, whereas hunting is strongly linked with the wild taïga. In between, the herd grazes at a certain distance from the tents, but no too far as well.
Paper long abstract:
Herding and hunting are the two main activities of the Eveny of Yakutia (Russian Federation). From daily interactions with their reindeer, such as riding, milking, etc. some animals tend to be closer to the tents than other, socially and spatially. At the opposite, wild reindeer live far from the camps and are considered as game. The literature on Siberian populations or human-animal relationships leads to the idea of the classical two fields and categories such as "domestic" and "wild" to understand the way populations treat their animals and territories. By the description of the relationships and herding techniques, not with one animal, but the whole herd, I suggest here a different way to understand human-environment in relationships, to exceed the dualistic conception of territories and animals.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the potential of consecrated animals -unique individuals kept by Tibetan herders as protectors of the household- to question not only local, competing understandings of livestock animals but also anthropological theories of pastoralism and methods of inquiry.
Paper long abstract:
Pastoralists of the Tibetan plateau select individual animals from among their horses, their yak herds and their flocks of sheep and consecrate them in a ritual after which the animals are excluded from a number of productive and labour functions. They remain in the herds as protectors of the household, understood both in its animal and in its human dimensions. Selected on the basis of their salient physiognomic or psychological features, consecrated animals bear witness to pastoralists' sensitivity to the diversity of individuals that make up their herds and to their elaborate treatment of said animal individuality. Furthermore, the role such singular animals play in the protection of the household's human and animal members indicates that for pastoralists, human agency is not the only, or even the central, factor of the prosperity of their herds. Instead, non-human beings such as said consecrated animals or landscape deities are regarded as key agents influencing the fortune of the hybrid communities in which herders live. This challenges classical anthropological theories of the human-animal link upon which pastoralism is grounded and, most importantly, questions both Buddhist cosmological divides between sentient beings and modernist, market-oriented views of livestock espoused by Chinese state-planners. Based on a thirteen-month long field research among pastoralists of North Eastern Tibet, the proposed paper discusses the methodological challenges of an ethnography attuned to animal individuality and explores the potential of consecrated animals to shake different understandings of livestock animals currently shaping the ontological landscape of the Tibetan plateau.
Paper short abstract:
How can a more symmetrical anthropology (a terminological trap itself) be put to work methodologically beyond the debates of behaviorism, anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism? I followed that question into the crisis-ridden knowled gepractices of beekeeping and honey bee health care.
Paper long abstract:
Doing ethnographic research in human animal contact-zones has gained a new framework in the last decade. The formation of multi-species-studies is answering to post-humanist demands and a proclaimed animal turn in the humanities and social sciences. But how can a more symmetrical anthropology (a terminological trap itself) be put to work methodologically beyond the debates of behaviorism, anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism?
In my fieldwork I followed that question into the crisis-ridden field of beekeeping and honey bee health research. I was trying to learn (apprentice like) how knowledge was produced within an assemblage of technologies, practices, agencies and emotions of humans and western honeybees - concerned with a virus bearing parasite named Varroa destructor. In the presentation I focus on myself in an auto-ethnographic manner reflecting on the devices (beekeeping tools and infrastructures) that enable resonance (or disaffection) between myself (as a beekeeper and scientist) and the colonies I tried to deal response-able with. Immersing myself into this I experienced the modern foundations of todays knowledge on bees, how it is necessarily based on beekeeping innovations assuming a domesticated status of the bees and its ontological problems in solving the wilderness of the varroa crisis.
Paper short abstract:
Based on mobilities of the “Ćemovsko Dogs”, a group of street dogs in Podgorica, this paper discusses boundaries in spatial and cultural orders along spacing and placing, “owner’s dogs” and “street dogs” as well as “trends” and outcasts. Building upon this it aims to reflect on ideas of an urban anthropology beyond the human.
Paper long abstract:
Based on multispecies-ethnographic fieldwork in Podgorica (Montenegro), this paper focuses on spatial practices of multispecies agents on Ćemovsko Polje, a brownfield area in the southwest of the City. “Ćemovsko” is confined by vineyards, the city’s cattle market, a hobby airport and the residential quarters Vrela Ribnička and Stari Aerodrom. It has been used by shepherds, as a transit area from Vrela Ribnička towards the city center and as a meeting point for lovers and drug users. With the construction of a “park” consisting of fitness devices, playground equipments and the “dog park”, Montenegro’s first area devoted to humans and their owned dogs, “Ćemovsko” became also a highly frequented space for leisure activities. In autumn 2015 animal welfare activists positioned there self-constructed huts for street dogs found all over Podgorica. From spring 2016 on, the “Ćemovsko Dogs” started to roam around their dwellings. They appeared in the “dog park”, chased cars of visitors of the hobby airport and finally appeared regularly in Stari Aerodrom. Their human-initiated as well as animal-initiated practices of claiming spaces are oscillating between animal spaces as spaces that are given to animals in human orderings and beastly places which animals claim apart from them (Philo/Wilbert 2000). Starting from the mobilities of the “Ćemovsko Dogs” this paper discusses boundaries in spatial and cultural orders along spacing and placing, “owner’s dogs” and “street dogs” as well as “trends” and outcasts. Building upon this it aims to reflect on ideas of an urban anthropology beyond the human.
Paper short abstract:
In research on the practice of wearing crystals in ontological and new animist perspective, crystals as material objects are rather other-than-human persons, and actively involved in human existence. Ontological questions about objects can reveal their significance and non-human agency.
Paper long abstract:
Crystals spread in New Spirituality are natural minerals, that are mined globally, sold in esoteric shops and used in various practices. I have researched the practice of wearing crystals in Estonia. Most often, people wear crystals daily, and develop intimate relationships with them. My theoretical and methodological perspective on crystals as material religion derives from material culture studies that focuses on human-thing mutual relationship and interaction. Still, posthuman methodology, especially ontological and new animist perspective is needed to understand objects as my informants do. I will argue that through asking ontological questions about objects, we can reach their significance and non-human agency.
Ontological perspective on material culture aims to overcome object/concept dichotomy by think through things as people do. As a result, things are identical to concepts, and crystals, for my informants, are different kind of objects. My informants claim that crystals emit spiritual energy and they have consciousness, or they are alive in some sense. For new animist approach, the key question is not, is it alive, but how should we relate. In new animist terms, crystals are other-than-human entities, as they are engaged in mutual communication with people, and they have agency to act towards people. Moreover, as people use crystals to support themselves in everyday life, they are involved in human life as active companions.
Through ontological and new animist perspective in methodology, objects can become other-than-human persons, which are actively involved in human existence, and have an agency of their own.
Paper short abstract:
This paper suggests a collaborative ethnography -involving human and non-human agency- to capture the ontological occupation of the Kawsak Sacha (living forest). A methodological approach able to acknowledge multiple ontologies as a possibility to exist and be politically recognized is essential in environmental debates.
Paper long abstract:
Starting with the reflection that relationality between multispecies is always situated in a specific environmental and social context, this paper makes a call to reinvent methodologies able to comprehend juridical devices proposed in the Amazon -with specific ecological criteria- arise from environmental concerns. Although since 2008 the Rights of Nature have been acknowledged in the Ecuadorian Constitution, the Kichwa community of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon launched a declaration appealing to grant legal personhood to the Kawsak Sacha (living forest) and the beings belonging to the animal, vegetable, mineral, spiritual and cosmic world as a new legal category of protected area within state law. This recognition includes cosmic-ecological principles of the community such as Sumak Allpa, to be converted into legal concepts. I suggest a collaborative ethnography consisting of three stages involving human and non-human agency: a social (ontological) cartography, an exploration of a specific genre of material culture – in this case, the elaboration of pottery and a feminist approach –my body as my first territory. I intend to capture the ontological occupation of the Kawsak Sacha while understanding other communication forms with non-human beings, the different worldings (Blaser, 2013) within and answer why they should be protected. This means as well to deal with other-ways-of-knowing (de Sousa Santos, 2018) and the pluriverses (Escobar, 2014) of a community, which is a necessary step to understand elements that are invisible and unimaginable to the “outside world”, without being essentialized and romanticized, but conceived as a legal question that must be respected.
Paper short abstract:
Based on fieldwork with rewilding projects, this paper explores how biota are classified as “native” or “invasive”. To understand the complex entanglements of and relationships between more-than-human lives we must think not only with the species that are present, but also about haunting absences.
Paper long abstract:
Rewilding, an increasingly popular practice of ecosystem transformation, addresses the clashes between (un)desired presences and absences and within ecologies. Based on my fieldwork in Scotland, I look at notions of “native” and “invasive” biota, interrogating how different species are assigned qualities of usefulness and desirability. Who is classified as unwanted, wanted, and longed for by whom and to what end?
As a practice, rewilding is based on a critical analysis of environmental history and how different agents have shaped it. By looking at how humans and more-than-humans have impacted “nature” historically and in the present, rewilding lends itself to a deconstructive approach towards the nature – culture dichotomy. In this paper I examine how the relationships of humans to more-than-human environments are actively reimagined, along with what it means to be an agent in first place, who and what is eligible, and the frictions that arise around these questions.
In order to fully comprehend the complex networks and relations rewilding projects hope to (re)instore, however, I argue we must not only think about and with those biota currently present in the Scottish ecologies, but also account for those absences, which haunt Scottish lives and landscapes today. Imagination and creative practice become useful tools in this instance, whose benefits and limits I discuss in this paper.
The final question I will pose is what lessons we can (or should) learn from rewilding and methods of more-than-human studies to move towards a world of multi-species conviviality and more-than-human survival in the Anthropocene.