Paper short abstract:

The paper shows the changing relations between humans and beavers in Polish national parks near rivers. The author will present how beavers became collaborators and allies in the renaturalization processes and unruly actors shaping the wetland landscape, taking into account their own agenda.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores the dynamic shifts in human-beaver relations within Polish national parks near rivers. Drawing on ethnographic research and archive analysis, the author examines the multiplicity of beavers' social roles, from collaborators in renaturalization processes to unruly actors shaping the wetlands by their own agenda. Beavers also function as subjects of naturalist studies, prey and protected animals. Insight into these different positions offers starting point for a new perspective on wildlife as multinatural ecology of becomings (Lorimer, 2015).

Engaging with a rich anthropological tradition of discussing beavers' work dating back to the XIX century (Morgan, 1868), the paper addresses also questions about (un)doing categories of wilderness and domestication, nature and culture, instinct and creativity. In many anthropological works (Ingold, 1990; Feeley-Harnik, 2001; Ogden, 2018) and in Polish tradition, beavers are simultaneously symbols of untamed forces of nature and engineers, inventors, acting as liminal selves mediating between the wild and the tamed. This duality challenges naturalists' and anthropologists' categorizations, introducing a fascinating complexity to common and technoscientific knowledge.

The beavers can be seen as agents challenging traditional classifications and emphasizing the limitations of dominant anthropological models in the emergent Anthropocene landscape.