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Paper short abstract

Planetary biology abstracts land/sea-scapes into mappable data, invisibilising more-than-human cultures. Drawing on Tsing's “friction” to overcome the local/planetary dichotomy, the paper combines multispecies ethnography, STS, and decolonial theory to argue for accountability to specific lifeworlds

Paper long abstract

Planetary biodiversity mapping hinges on a particular kind of abstraction of land- and sea-scapes. This often invisibilises non-human and more-than-human cultures and histories, more-than-living relationships and modes of being. The very practice of encoding biodiversity, deciding what counts as life, what is sampled, what is measured, embeds choices that have profound consequences.

Aiming to overcome the local vs planetary dichotomy, and instead drawing on Anna Tsing's concept of friction (Tsing 2005), I argue that genuine accountability to earthly multiplicity demands taking seriously the cultural and relational dimensions of more-than-human lifeworlds. To that end, the paper proposes a transdisciplinary approach, building on multispecies ethnographic work with the lifeworlds of macaques in Bali and urban pigeons in Warsaw, critical STS-minded ethnographic work with biologists and comparative psychologists, and a theoretical reframing of non-human cultures informed by the decolonial and more-than-human turns in anthropology.

Quantitative, planetary-level studies can be necessary in pursuit of multispecies justice (Chao et al. 2022), but they defeat their purpose unless accountable to particular, situated lifeworlds. Joining the recent debates in conservation science that take animal cultures into account (Brakes et al. 2019, 2025), the paper contributes to a rethinking of the conservation units, considering beings as enmeshed in complex networks, territorial knowledges, and forms of collective agency, and looking beyond the kinds of bodies they have.