Presentation short abstract:

Can we find the relational conditions for a communal future in a history of interspecies conflict? How co-presence - even when in competition - might lead to a sense of co-belonging and an openness to communicate and share the world with wildlife

Presentation long abstract:

Analysis of “conflict” often positions human and wildlife in competition for resources, while compartmentalising the world into divergent perspectives and domains. However, as anthropologists have argued, other modes of interspecies relations can exist alongside antagonism in a common environment.

This paper will focus on a group of farmers undermined by crop depredations from wildlife, yet who went on to play a vital role in securing a wildlife corridor that passed through their property. How did this act of solidarity in a shared landscape emerge? Can we find the relational conditions for a communal future in this history of conflict?

Ethnography can articulate the vulnerability of living with a wild more-than-human agency, and how co-presence - even when in conflict - can lead to a sense of co-belonging. In particular, I will analyse a sacrificial practice that demonstrates a willingness to communicate with and partly concede the world to the more-than-human. The oft-cited attitude of tolerance is insufficient for conceptualising the political and hopeful possibilities of human-wildlife coexistence