Paper short abstract:

Non-human animals can become irreplaceable allies for homeless people, both teaming up in mutual care. Yet, more-than-human relationships seems to fall out of the scope of social work practices. In which ways could we thus imagine the hybridization of care and social work practices ?

Paper long abstract:

As loyal companions, friends and confidants, non-human animals can become irreplaceable allies for homeless people, both teaming up in mutual care. As testified by the emergence of animal-assisted care in contemporary occidental societies, more-than-human relationships present a deep therapeutical potential, which appears to be particularly relevant in social work with homeless people.

Yet, it seems that not all non-humans have a claim to participate, as homeless non-humans appear to fall out of the normative criterias defining legitimate care actors. Added to the fact that their sole presence alongside their human companions is often forbidden inside community and public services buildings, this situation leads to exclude both of them from accessing housing and care resources. Under these conditions, is it possible to requalify homeless nonhumans as care partners, both actors and beneficiaries of social work? In what way(s) can more-than-human relationships be considered in social work practices with homeless people?

As part of a sociological study of human-animal relationships (HAR), we focus on the case of dogs in contemporary times, and more specifically their presence and participation in the community services welcoming homeless people in Montréal (Canada). Keeping an eye on the issues and the obstacles of taking HAR into account, particularly in temporary housing services, we present and analyze two pilot initiatives illustrating the conditions and possible modalities of the hybridization of care and social work practices.

Paper short abstract:

In examining the care practices of human-elephant relations in South India, this paper presents how mahouts (elephant handlers) attend to uniqueness of each elephant and how such practices that involves a reversal of ownership make elephants part of home and family.

Paper long abstract:

Elephants have been an integral part of social life in India as war elephants, divine beings, laborers, and now as cosmopolitan figures of conservation. However, such intimate and complex relations have come under scrutiny with the growing studies on elephant intelligence and debates in animal rights discourse, all of which delve into the ethicality of elephant captivity and training practices (Kulick, 2017). While the moral concerns made by the activistic and scientific discourse are grounded in concrete experiences, ethnographic evidences from South India show that such totalizing perceptions shadow the ways through which elephant handlers (known as mahouts) and elephants are attuned, and how humans and elephants care for each other. Accomplishing a successful relationship with the elephant involves attentive care that acknowledge the uniqueness of each elephant and working according to the elephant's reethi – a way of doing things and engaging with the world. Such care and attention to elephant ways also reflect a reversal of ownership in human-elephant interactions. In presenting these ethnographic evidences of care practices from Kerala, South India, where elephants are treated as children and become part of the conceptual defines of home, the paper posits that an ethnographic inquiry into the ordinary yet extraordinary interactions between caretakers and elephants offers an alternate interpretation of moral experience - grounded in phenomenological concerns of care, beyond the defines of torture.

Paper short abstract:

This contribution, drawing on laboratory studies and participatory observation, will examine how a definition of “home” is achieved and negotiated among a consortium of scientists interested in zoonotic processes (the transmission of antimicrobial resistant bacteria) within family households.

Paper long abstract:

This contribution examines how a certain definition of “home” is achieved and negotiated among a consortium of scientists interested in zoonotic processes within family households.

Inspired by laboratory studies (especially Lynch, 1993), and drawing on a participatory observation (as being myself a member of the research program), this contribution builds on a study of a cross-disciplinary research team.

The research team, involving epidemiologists, molecular biologists, veterinarians, and social scientists, works on a project exploring the dynamics of antimicrobial resistance transmission between humans and animals in their daily environment, ie. at home, where close contacts creates opportunities for transmission and dissemination of resistant bacteria – a crucial issue as antimicrobial resistance has recently been identified as “the top 10 global public health threats facing humanity” by WHO.

The ethnographic material is constituted of conversational exchanges taking place during preparatory meetings to elaborate the study design. As the project deals with the transmission of AMR bacteria between household members (specifically between dogs and their caretakers), the definition of “home”, its extension and its boundary, in relation to sanitary issues, is crucial for the inclusion criteria: what counts as a “household member” is directly related to the circumscription of home as an analytical unit: is home just a spatial entity, where different family members get together; is it a demographic unit – and if so, how to delimit the boundaries of who is a household member and who is not? The analysis reveals how epidemiological definitions are in fact practical problems for scientists.

Paper short abstract:

Making Oddkin is an architectural experiment that tells about other kinds of kinship and companionship beyond our well known anthropocentric relationships to the other species on earth. A home in 2025 becomes a place for unusual encounters in which we live almost in mutualism with other creatures.

Paper long abstract:

The project draws inspiration from Donna Haraway's book „Staying with the Trouble“. Haraway coined the term Making Oddkin to describe the need for unexpected collaborations and combinations between humans and non-humans.

But why would we live together in a house with animals and not in nature?

Our species has been conquering the spaces of other animals without much hesitation for quite a while now. Whether through cultivating land or pouring concrete - (the majority of) Homo sapiens is spreading profusely, while leaving the habitats of other animals behind in devastating conditions.

Making Oddkin opens up the private home as the manifestation of the famous culture-nature divide and questions our right to solitude in favour of solidarity.

The safe spaces we create to protect us from the wilderness become places to reconnect with the wilderness and other creatures.

To preserve some of what we call nature and adapt our way of life to environments in flux, unfamiliar models of cohabitation and partnership might even become necessary - models that go well beyond the idea of exploitation.

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In the Home of 2025 we work with invasive raccoons on their eating habits to protect endangered species in our wilderness while connecting with pigs through play to learn about our not-so-exceptional human traits. In the domestic setting the borders between culture and nature start to blur - to become a space for rewiring the entanglements with the other critters on our planet in surprising ways.

Paper short abstract:

This paper looks into the relations Turkish migrants living in Germany have with their house and garden plants and it traces the role of intimate human-plant relationships in migrants’ home-making in their newly settled land. Home, here, appears as a multispecies constellation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper finds inspiration in approaching the home as a constellation, especially for the people who have histories of migration, ie. as the location of day-to-day care activities, the sites of memories and longings, and as the sociopolitical entity that situates them within legislation and norms (Fabos and Brun 2015). It then argues that home-making, in all three senses, is never an individual or a single-species activity; it is performed and experienced in cooperation with the living beings other than the human. Based on my DFG funded ethnographic research on the relations Turkish migrants living in Germany have with their house and garden plants, it traces the role of intimate human-plant relationships in migrants’ senses of feeling at home in their newly settled land. These relationships include elements of transborder traffic in plants, joint struggles of climactic adaptation, strong emotional attachments, identifications, nostalgic yearnings, attentive care, as well as pragmatic, utilitarian and purely aesthetic engagements. Each one of these elements have strong implications for the three dimensions of home-making: they instantiate hands on care, involve invocations of memories and require negotiations with authorities. Alongside the materialities of plant presence in migrant lives, different temporalities—circadian rhythms, seasonal changes, growth and reaction times, life spans—of human migrants and their plant companions add a second level of analysis that affect this constellation in overt and subtle ways and address the question of uncertainty in migrant lives.

Paper short abstract:

By celebrating rather than suppressing nonhuman biogenic growth on the architectural organic skin - a phenomena described as 'Epidermitecture'- this paper propose ways to coexist with nonhuman life forms that are an intrinsic part of architecture and the environment.

Paper long abstract:

Almost all architectural and urban surfaces are conditioned to be maintained and protected with weather-resistant coatings to obtain their desired state, yet all material components are going through an inescapable cycle of changes. This inevitable transformation, which affects all material surfaces, is not only caused by dynamic forces such as wind and rain but is also the result of microorganism activity, thus any naturally occurring stains on surfaces are usually considered a subject of removal, dating back to ancient Greece and their ceremonies of cleaning sculptures during festivities. What happens when we question what the outside of a building needs to look like and why? And how might this deepen our understanding of what grows on the surface?

Biopatina, a thin layer of microorganisms on architecture organic skin, is a symbiosis of cyanobacteria, microalgae, fungi and lichen that metamorphose, change and respond to its environments. The results of their activities affect how material surfaces transform visually in terms of colour, texture and structural integrity. This paper is primarily concerned with biopatina’s microorganisms and their ability to restore and regenerate the environment while exploring their cultural, visual, and sensual potentialities. By collecting, analysing, cultivating, and representing the biopatina of Villa Tugendhat, this paper will reflect on new ways of how buildings are maintained by proposing so-called ‘bio-restoration’ of the cultural heritage.

Paper short abstract:

The mindscape of the Finnish second home as closely connected to nature and a simple way of life has a strong hold (Pitkänen et al.2011) While some hesitate to break a branch, some re-make the landscape with jetties and dredging. Second homes are liminal spaces where human and more-than-human meet.

Paper long abstract:

Everyday life consists of a rising attachment to more than one place of residence (Hiltunen och Rehunen 2014). This brings us to home-making in connection to second homes. Finns spend more time at their second homes than ever before (Voutilainen m.fl. 2021). While some re-make their second home landscape with jetties, terrasses and dredging, others hesitate to break a branch. As people in urban landscapes tend to be more willing to co-exist with non humans in liminal spaces (Rupprecht 2017) second homes as liminal spaces (everyday life/free-time, urban/rural) opens up new opportunities to look at different aspects of more than human care.

The mindscape of the Finnish second home is closely connected to the Finnish national landscape and the idea of living out the simple way of life in the middle of untouched nature in harmony with the more than human. While many second home owners want to live out their second home life in a sustainable way, their perception of a sustainable and ecological way of life are not always in line with scientific knowledge. (Pitkänen 2011; Massa, Ahonen, och Ahlqvist 2006)

With focus on narratives in connection to second homes in the coastal area of Finland and with a material consisting of fieldwork, interviews and a questionnaire I hope to highlight the values connected to the environment and more than human care.

Paper short abstract:

How can we share a common habitat with nuclear residues without allowing for the continuation of their mass-production? I will investigate into some proposals for a critical politics of maintenance of our radioactive inheritage that take into account the agency of residues.

Paper long abstract:

Nuclear waste has often been seen as a paradigmatic example of those products of modernity with which it is simply impossible to share a common habitat. Within the industry, nuclear production’s radioactive residues are generally depicted as something that has to disappear, either through recycling projects or through long term underground disposal. These two paradigms associate in a promise of technological control through which waste is seen as a bulky, risky, but yet ultimately passive result of past technological activity that will ultimately disappear from our home.

The first step of my proposal is to, instead, take into account the agency of residues with which we do share a common world. It implies a more complete temporal, geographical, ecological description of residues’ potentialities. But this first step is not politically nor morally satisfying, as it could very well accomodate with a neoliberal risk management policy that would leave their production unquestionned. Not only do we live with radioactive residues, but we have to dwell, i.e. share a common habitat with them under common rules. This implies a critical politics of maintenance for our residual inheritage. My hypothesis is that one can find the lineaments of such a politics into two different sources.

First, I will investigate into the documents produced by the French Syndicat National de l’Energie Atomique in the 1970s about the handling of radioactive residues. Second, I will mobilize some of the international discussions around the concept of « rolling stewardship » of nuclear waste.