Paper short abstract:

In connecting multi-species ethnography and the anthropology of urban prototyping, this paper elicits the movements of wild boars into the city of Barcelona as a 'protoecology' that bodies forth potential failure to prefigure new possibilities for interspecies coexistence.

Paper long abstract:

Wild boars not only abound at the periphery of Barcelona but exhibit a pioneering initiative to explore central districts as well. While conservationists try to control the relations between the city and its adjacent 'nature', these unsettling porcine movements challenge the ecologic boundaries between rural and urban landscapes, as well as the status of wild boars as a 'wild' species. This article connects the wide field of 'multispecies ethnography' and the anthropology of 'prototyping', as it applies to new theorisations and potentialities of the urban. The 'protoecological' outlook is proposed for capturing a troubling orchestration of genetic, affective, infrastructural and climatic transformations, which leads to experimenting with interspecies encounters in contemporary Barcelona. Wild boar protoecology acts here as a 'relational prototype' that bodies forth potential failure to prefigure new possibilities for interspecies coexistence.