Short Abstract

This panel explores how populist and authoritarian regimes reshape human-nonhuman relations, producing new multispecies conflicts and forms of violence. Through ethnographic cases, it examines how power, affect, and ideology polarise life in the Anthropocene.

Long Abstract

Multispecies ethnography (Kirksey and Helmreich 2010) began as an effort to engage with life forms and beings that had long existed on the margins of anthropological inquiry. Since then, it has become a central field, revealing the entangled relations between humans, nonhumans, climate, and capitalism, domains once conceptualised as separate. Today, multispecies ethnography serves not only as a tool to examine exploitation and capitalist symbiosis but also as an entry point into emerging ambiences and affective regimes that generate new forms of violence. One striking example is the rise of a right-wing populist regime in India that venerates cows while inciting violence against Muslims (Govindrajan 2021). Recognising that populist and authoritarian regimes actively regulate cross-species relations (Mathews 2014) offers a valuable lens for understanding contemporary political transformations. Such regimes mobilise anthropocentric conflicts and polarisations, as seen, for example, in the anti-bear hysteria during Fico’s electoral campaign in Slovakia, the rising cult of trophy hunting in Orbán’s Hungary, or the shifting roles of spirits in the border mountains between Russia and Mongolia amid geopolitical change. This panel invites ethnographic case studies from diverse contexts (beyond these examples) to examine how emergent authoritarian formations shape interspecies relations and produce new regimes of multispecies oppression. By situating multispecies politics within the broader dynamics of right-wing populism and autocratic rule, the panel invites a rethinking of how power, affect, and violence move through the porous relations among species, generating new entanglements, clashes, and responses.

Propose paper