Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

Based on multispecies ethnography in rural Kazakhstan, this paper explores children’s relations with animals and land, arguing that multispecies reciprocity emerges not as stable mutualism but as a fragile negotiation within landscapes shaped by colonial and ecological harm.

Paper long abstract

Across the social sciences, multispecies relations are increasingly framed as forms of mutualism grounded in interdependence and processes of becoming-with across species (Haraway 2008). Yet beginning analysis from the assumption of mutual benefit can obscure the historical and ecological conditions that shape such relations. This paper approaches multispecies relations from the opposite direction: starting with harm.

Drawing on multispecies ethnographic research in rural southeastern Kazakhstan, the paper examines how children learn with animals, land, and seasonal landscapes through everyday practices such as tending livestock, gathering berries, and caring for small animals. These interactions reflect relational cosmologies grounded in local philosophies of kut (blessing) and yrys (abundance), which frame relations with animals, land, and ancestors as reciprocal and ethically binding. Learning emerges through embodied engagements with more-than-human worlds: processes of becoming-with humans, animals, and environments (Barad 2007; Braidotti 2011; Ingold 2011). These orientations resonate with Kazakh nomadic ecological knowledge systems that historically structured reciprocal relations with land and animals (Kasabek & Kasabek 1998; Kaimuldinova et al. 2023).

At the same time, these relations unfold within landscapes profoundly shaped by colonial and industrial histories. Russian settler colonialism, Soviet collectivization, and contemporary resource extraction have disrupted pastoral lifeways and ecological relations across rural Kazakhstan. Attending to these tensions reveals the non-innocence of multispecies reciprocity. Rather than stable mutualisms, relations between humans, animals, and landscapes emerge as historically contingent negotiations within damaged environments. By foregrounding harm alongside care, the paper situates everyday practices of coexistence within broader histories of colonial transformation and ecological change.